The year 1970 was a turning point in the life of Elizabeth Bishop. The poet was living in Ouro Prêto, Brazil, with a young American woman, Suzanne Bowen, and her three-year-old son, Googie (these names are pseudonyms used by Bishop’s biographer Brett Millier). Their home, called Casa Mariana in honor of Marianne Moore and because it was on the road to the town of Mariana, was a rambling early-eighteenth-century colonial house with a spectacular view of the valley, a big garden, and fruit trees, that Bishop had saved from disrepair after long-distance battles with contractors (she was living in San Francisco at the time) and considerable expense. She had first visited Brazil in 1951 on what was planned as a longer trip, and stayed when she fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares, a Brazilian landscape designer and urban planner. (Soares designed and oversaw the construction of Luna Park in Rio de Janeiro, a major public project, which Bishop mentions visiting in the postcard that completes this selection of her correspondence.) Bishop and Soares lived together in Brazil until Soares’s suicide in 1967. Now, in Ouro Prêto with Bowen, Bishop was making a last attempt to hold onto her Brazilian life.
Bishop liked Ouro Prêto, a mining town in the mountainous province of Minas Gerais, in part because it was remote, as Brazil itself had seemed to her in the 1950s. But she and Bowen were painfully isolated there. Bishop was feuding with her closest friend in Ouro Prêto, Lilli Correia de Araújo, who, in Bishop’s view, had set the town against her. Bishop and Bowen, meanwhile, were often set against each other. Bowen, in her late twenties, was expected to serve as a “secretary” for the fifty-nine-year-old poet. These differences in their ages and positions made for tension and unhappiness. So did Bishop’s alcoholism, a lifelong illness that intensified in this period. Bowen, under the strain of the situation, showed signs of mental illness, and in April, she had a serious breakdown. Bishop arranged for her hospitalization, for Googie’s care in the home of a local family, and for a flight back to the United States for mother and child, once Bowen could travel. For Bishop, the crisis must have seemed like the cruel reprise of a familiar drama in her life. It recalled Soares’s struggle with depression. It also recalled the breakdown and confinement of Bishop’s mother, after the death of Bishop’s father, when Bishop was a child just slightly older than Googie.
The letters by Bishop that follow describe these events and their aftermath. Writing to Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, distinguished duo pianists who were good friends of Soares, Bishop is unusually confiding. In these long letters, urgent and meandering by turns, she keeps adding another paragraph, beginning again just when it seemed she had finished. Gold and Fizdale, who had visited Bishop while touring in Brazil in 1969, knew something of her Ouro Prêto world, and she evokes it for them with easy familiarity and a sprinkling of Portuguese. We meet a range of supporting characters: Flavio, Soares’s nephew, who remained close to Bishop after his aunt’s death; José Alberto Nemer, a painter staying at Casa Mariana, who was the brother of Bishop’s friend Linda Nemer; José Aparacido, a local boy and budding painter from whom Gold and Fizdale “commissioned” a work; Eva, the maid, with her curious noises; the good Jair and Zenith, who took in the forlorn Googie. These people Bishop evokes with affection and a great letter-writer’s eye. Then there are vignettes to be savored: Flavio and his wife are locked out of their bedroom, and the fire department gets involved; Bishop learns she has won the National Book Award for her Complete Poems when she goes to the post office to call her publisher, Robert Giroux, and she is just in time to take his call from the United States. All the while she circles around her predicament, disclosing something further whenever she returns to the subject of Suzanne. We feel her effort to avoid self-pity and recrimination, and her need for companionship and sympathy.
She found both in James Merrill. Merrill, who was also a friend of Gold and Fizdale, extended a trip to Peru to visit her in Ouro Prêto in July. Although they had known each other for many years, the two poets had been cordial, rather than intimate, friends—up to this point, when Bishop turned to Merrill in her distress. The two letters printed here show Bishop’s excitement, but also her trepidation, before the arrival of her first “real visitor” (an American and a poet) in a long time. As if testing him before fully trusting him, Bishop instructs her younger fellow poet, like a knight errant, to bring to her certain items hard to obtain in Ouro Prêto. These desired objects (good tea, powdered ginger; Scotch) are all colored by personal, semi-symbolic associations, but none more so than the stove parts she took the liberty of having sent to Merrill’s home in Connecticut. These evoke the family stove that appears in “Sestina,” a poem about her childhood experience of bereavement and consolation in Nova Scotia. In Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography by Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, Merrill commented: “Before I had left [for Brazil], a strangely shaped package came from a stove works in the state of Washington, and I was about to send it back when a letter came from Elizabeth saying a part of [her] stove needed to be replaced and she had asked them to send it to me. Would I mind bringing it along? It was quite heavy. She goes on a bit in a letter about it and said, ‘I had better stop or I will end up telling you the first dirty joke I ever heard.’ When I got there, I said, ‘What was the dirty joke?’ And she said, ‘Well, simply name three parts of the stove.’ And the answer is lifter, leg, and poker.’ Elizabeth gave me a little tin stove as a going-away present, with little pots with real beans and real rice in the pots, very much her kind of gift, when you think of what the stove means [in ‘Sestina’].”
Despite Bowen’s breakdown, or because of it, Bishop returned to the writing of poems. In June she told Gold and Fizdale she had done a “lot of work,” including a start on “the first poem in 3 years.” The poem was her masterful dramatic monologue, “Crusoe in England,” which invites us to see the older, retrospective Crusoe as a version of the poet looking back on her life in Brazil. Bishop included in the same letter a copy of another important new poem in nearly final form, “In the Waiting Room.”
“And then one day they came and took us off,” Bishop’s Crusoe says in bafflement about his unforeseen rescue and return home. Bishop’s own rescue came in the summer of 1970 in the form of an invitation from the Harvard English Department to take the place of Robert Lowell as a teacher of poetry writing for the coming school year. As it turned out, Bishop continued to teach in the United States until her death in 1979. She kept the house in Ouro Prêto until 1974, but the final phase of her life had begun.
Bishop’s letters to Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale come from their papers in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library. The two letters by Bishop to Merrill printed here are held in the Bishop Papers of the Vassar College Library Special Collections. They appear by permission of the estate of Elizabeth Bishop and the Beinecke and Vassar College libraries. Bishop’s minor errors and her distinctive use of the dash in these typewritten letters have been preserved in most cases. The letters were transcribed by Erica Sayers.
Caixa Postal 79, Ouro Preto
Minas Gerais, Brasil
March 12th, 1970
Dearest Bobby & Arthur:
I got as far as the heading yesterday and then the power went off all over town & my typewriter stopped, too, naturally. Now it is Friday, the 13th. Flavio (Lota’s nephew) is here with his wife of about two weeks (officially), on his way to Brasilia, coitado, to start living there for at least a year. He’s in the diplomatic service—a very bright boy; he and Lota had the last brains in the family I think. They’ll be with us until Monday. Imagine—Regina, the girl, has never been there; they have never seen their apartment (but I’ve seen those apartments…); their furniture is being sent by the DC [Diplomatic Corps]—along with a thousand other people’s—and they say the DC has “one truck.” Their expenses are only paid by the government at an hotel for two days—and I can’t imagine what the poor dears will do after that…
I got your note of the 6th day before yesterday, and thank you very much for the congratulations [on receiving the National Book Award]. Well—here things are a bit different from Petropólis—I have probably given my low opinion of the mineiro
character already. It was in the local papers and of course the “thousand dollars” was mentioned—so yesterday we had three people who had worked for us and been fired arrive at the door saying that of course we owed them all more money…One this morning so far. And I haven’t even received the money yet. I did get some from Rio a day or two ago, however—and they probably know all about that, too. (When I got here everyone in town knew my bank balance, except me.) And that’s the Ouro Preto spirit. It was fun getting the Award here because in their ignorance people are terribly impressed—the 2 fearful picture magazines have been here for “interviews” (which I almost had to write for them) and pictures. I’m hoping some of the house will come out well, at least. Oh—one nice thing—José Aparacido had started in on the painting of the house for you the day the best photographer arrived. He came to the door wearing a tiny rose-pink courderoy cap and looking so adorable I wanted to eat him up, really. He is a wonderful boy. I think he may even have grown half an inch—his nose looks definitely bigger, so maybe the glands have started to work. We had had him to a sort of tea party to arrange it, with other friends, including a young painter I like very much. Nothing bothers José Aparacido at all—he talks so nicely and always says just what you’d like to have him say. Well, I think on the strength of your “commission” he has acquired a good easel and a new paint box, and he was out on the sidewalk painting away. So we got pictures of him painting a picture of the house, and me, and a picture of the house, all at the same time. He can only paint Saturdays and Sundays—tomorrow we have invited him for lunch, too.
My publisher was almost in a state of hysteria the last week—he had seven nominations, and won two awards, and the cables came thick and fast. I was supposed to call him and put it off until I thought he’d know. When I put the call in to my surprise a Rio operator was trying to reach me—so I knew at once that it was Bob Giroux and that I’d won, and our calls met in mid-Atlantic. Since then I’ve had clippings, etc. I’m rather sorry I missed it all, except that I would have had to make a speech, I think. Cal [Robert Lowell] accepted for me—and got into a fight with [Kenneth] Rexroth, one of the judges (this is in the NY Times). Then they had a grand dinner at Luchow’s, which might have been fun. They paid my fare—oh, and got hold of me at one point through the Police
here, who sent an officer and had a police car ready to take me to catch a plane in Belo Horizonte—1st time I’ve known the police to be even polite. Much hand-shaking all around, salutes, and “always at your orders,” and so on—very funny.
But I didn’t want to spend the money, even with the fare paid, and—very feminine of me—I had no clothes! (My fur coat is in storage in San Francisco.) And with only about 24 hours to spare, I didn’t think I could do it. That award is really a big event for publishers, anyway—but impressive here, as I said, and the $1,000 will come in handy.
Saturday morning
Heavens, how long-winded that first page is; I’m sorry. José Aparacido is out on the sidewalk painting again, and today I’ll give him lunch—I just made a huge pot of “Spanish Bean Soup”—a Key-West-Cuban dish, with garbanzos. I think it is divine, but probably these dumbbells will all want their daily black beans.
Last night was marvellous here—at least I enjoyed it very much; the rest of the household didn’t seem to. Flavio & his wife went out and he locked their bedroom door—then lost the key (which is 6 inches long and weighs a pound, but anyway…) It’s the room on the front. The 2 windows on the sidewalk are kept locked and barred; no entrance that way. The third window was open, fortunately, but between it and the sidewalk is an abyss of thirty feet or so. We put our ladder across, proposing to hitch along the ladder, over the abyss, and get in that way—but the ladder wasn’t quite long enough to make it safely. So at about 11 Flavio and I started out for help. We went first to the filling-station where one sleepy little man sat on an oil can. Yes, they had a long ladder, but they had lent it to the lady across the street. Yes, they had a telephone—there—oh, but of course it was locked up. Where is the fire department? Down there. After asking at every bar still open we found the fire department—a blaze of light. All painted white and bright red, with a big red Latin motto about Saving Others on the wall, and two seals—the Fire Dept.’s, and that of Ouro Preto—three big black peaks with gilt edges, and another Latin motto saying “Precious, even if black.” They have one large red truck and one real fire-wagon, huge and apparently brand new—also all painted with seals and Latin mottos. Another sleepy young man, on duty. After getting my name and address—this took a long time (meanwhile my house could have burnt to the ground, if that had been the problem)—he woke up five other firemen, who came in one by one, yawning and buttoning their clothes. It was then past midnight. Then there was a long discussion, and finally they managed to take a ladder of the fire-truck and tie it onto the smaller truck—6 men, arguing over every knot, getting their feet through the rungs, and so on. I went with them, in the middle, to show the way. At the big praça the driver asked me if I’d mind if he stopped to buy some cigarettes…Finally we got here, using the siren and the red light the last stretch, just to give me a thrill, I suspect. At the house I found a policeman I know, working away on the lock—he had just dropped by and seen the door open. Well, 2 or 3 firemen got in in about a minute and opened the window onto the street, then began on the door. I saw a perfectly strange man climbing in the window and asked “Who’s that?" but he turned out to be another fireman, in mufti. Finally we all had, of course, cafézihnos, rum, shook hands all around several times, and got to bed about 2:30. Now I’m sure that the whole town today is telling each other that my house is burned to the ground. Oh, I forgot another bit—as we left the fire-station, the man on my right asked the driver "Where’s my screw driver?” And he said, “Don’t you remember? We lent it and we haven’t got it back yet…”
March 16th
We have been leading such an unusually social life for us the past three days—complicated by one functioning bathroom for six people and no hot water—and yesterday a small automobile accident, too. (My very first in Brazil; hard to believe, but true.) We were side-swiped on a curve going to Mariana—obviously the other man’s fault, he was swinging around the curve away over on the left—18 people gathered from nowhere immediately, and it all got very Latin and exhausting…No serious damage, hub-caps and fenders—and by luck the same policeman who was trying to break into the locked bedroom was on duty, and saw us through—a most unusual, intelligent one—he wants to see Suzanne again “to exchange ideas” (although I know perfectly well he has a wife & 4 or 5 children). This means our guests stay over another night, and since the course of true love doesn’t seem to run smooth, I am getting a bit frazzled.
Lunch at a wonderful squalid little place I wish I’d known about when you were here—Chicão. He is a big black man who does the cooking himself; you order it 24 hours ahead and eat in a little back room, all crooked, painted pink and green—the cooking pots come to the table, very black, and the drinks are plunked down in a large bottle. But he’s a superb cook for Brazilian-African dishes—yesterday a soup called Bambá—pink, and full of big green leaves and a lot of pepper, and I don’t know what else but awfully good—served with polenta.
Zé Aparacido is about ⅔rds finished with your painting and I think you’re going to like it very much—if I can find any way of getting it to you…
I loved your account of Christmas Eve in Rome—sad though it is—I hope, but am sure, the Mozart concerto was a wild success. I hope you are not sitting in weeds again…I hope this reaches you fairly soon—and do give our love to the Hales [friends from San Francisco] if you see them. Give Googie’s love to “J.J.”—and just listen to J.J. talk! I don’t think I have their address—they were house-hunting—but you have probably reached him through the History Dept.
Do not mention this when you write again—but I am of two minds about selling the house—now that the weather is so beautiful and I seem to have a few friends, mostly from Belo—I mostly think I can’t bear to give it up. I’ve had 6 or 7 offers—but I don’t think they’re serious enough. If I could get a fortune for it, I’d probably sell.
I think if I send this to San Francisco you will probably get it on your second stop there. Forgive all this day-by-day report—now off to an antiquario, I believe. I’ve been interviewed and photographed at tedious length—but if any pictures of the house come out well, I’ll send.
(Today is Lota’s birthday. We used to give wonderful dinner-parties for it in Samambia. I miss her more every day of my life. I just can’t bear the stupid destruction of all that wit and intelligence—oh this country...)
With much love to you both always and best wishes for your tour—I’ll go play one of your discos now, I think—
Elizabeth
Caixa Postal 79, Ouro Preto
Minas Gerais
May 5th, 1970
Dear Jim:
Heavens, but you must be annoyed with me, or wondering about me, or perhaps even, if you feel very kindly, worried about me…and you would be right to feel all of those things. I have had a very bad time here, in fact it is still going on, although I think I see daylight now. I don’t want to go into details but I know I owe you some sort of explanation, you have been so extremely kind about José Alberto [Nemer, whom Bishop encouraged to apply to the Ingram Merrill Foundation]—and please believe that he appreciates it very much. I have had everything except the final copying and part of the curriculum vitae here for months now, and thought that at any minute all would be in the mail to New York. However, the last four months—and probably for long before that, but I didn’t fully realize it—my “secretary” has been very sick, and growing sicker. I didn’t even know the work had not been done until the dead-line came. I don’t want to tell this to anyone much, but I shall tell you—she had a complete breakdown, is now in a clinic in Belo Horizonte, and the doctors and I are just hoping she’ll get well enough to go back to the USA fairly soon, with her 3½ year old son, for treatment there. This sad business has occupied me completely for over a month now and I have had to be in Belo Horizonte much of the time. I finally got back here a few days ago—with the little boy, poor child—and then I found someone nice here to leave him with—with other children—and this is the very first day I have been up to writing a letter for myself, or had the time to. I’m sorry to be writing such sad things—this is the third time I have been through this with someone I am fond of in the last few years. I should really be getting used to it. My papers and letters are in complete chaos and I am hoping for a young ex–Peace Corps boy to come here fairly soon to work with me on them. I did keep your letter carefully, however, thank goodness. I’d be very, very grateful if you didn’t speak of this to anyone—for the girl’s sake—I am just writing to her family, or have already, and our various doctors.
So I am here quite alone—and after one more trip to Belo Horizonte, I think I’ll be able to settle down and maybe even consider some of my own work.
I told Nemer about the next [fellowship] possibility, and he is very eager to try that, too. (No—nothing got lost—I do hope John Myers didn’t search too hard.) He does have a very slight chance of a bolsa (scholarship) from the French Embassy—one out of 19, something like that—but he wants much more to go to New York. If by any chance the French thing does work out I think he’d still want to go to NY, later (if he hasn’t starved to death in France, in the meantime). I love him very much—everyone does. I’ll say now that I think he is a remarkable boy, and he has been so kind, and helped me so much throughout this last awful stretch. I think I’ll enclose one snapshot of him and one of his prize-winning posters. (I like some of the other posters more—he has won prizes with almost all of them.) I am hoping he will be over this week-end to stay with me and we’ll talk about his papers again and maybe be able to finish them up—for November. Thank you for being so awfully kind about it all, Jim.
The wonderful news is that you may actually be coming here…Yes, I am almost positive I’ll still be here, for many months now, probably—trying to make up for lost time. I still don’t really know what living here and working here might be like, since I don’t feel as if I had really started yet. If you go to Peru—but you must go, and then come to visit me. I am all alone in a rather big house, two or three extra bedrooms, and I have a clean but somewhat incompetent maid—the best I’ve been able to find here, however. You can’t imagine how much I would like to see you—a real representative and friend from the real world. Bobby and Arthur can tell you a bit about Ouro Preto (I’m going to try to write to them today, too)—I think they liked it. I would show you the sights and we could rent a car and driver to go to see some even better sights, if you wanted to.
You fly from Lima straight to Rio—I’ve done it by day and by night—the Andes are frightening, but the day flight is worth it, I think—you’ll see how exactly like some of Klee’s paintings they look. (Rather a worn comparison now, but it is striking.) In Rio you have to change airports—usually—sometimes there is a flight to Brasilia that stops in Belo Horizonte. I’ll write you what you should pay the cab driver…From the airport of Galeão to the small city airport of Santos Dumont (who discovered the airplane, they say here, in case you didn’t know—you must not mention the Wright Brothers). Or maybe you’d like to stop over for a few days in Rio—if so, I like the Hotel Ouro Verde best. The flight from Rio to Belo Horizonte is a little less than an hour. If you know when you are coming you could wire me and I’d send over a favorite driver of my own—or you can make a bargain with an airport taxi driver, but do not pay more than 50 New Cruzeiros…Ask for Dona Elizabetchy—or, Rua Quintiliana, 546, or “Os Lages” (ledges), and stop at the big yellow door. It is also the “Estrada para Mariana” and my house is named for Marianne Moore and has a small placque on the door-post: casa mariana. You see, I have you coming in the door already.
I’m about 50 miles from Belo Horizonte, the world’s ugliest city. There are very few “interesting” people here—I can think of three—but Nemer comes over most week-ends and you could meet him—perhaps Vinícius de Mores might show up, and a Rio painter I like also has a house here and is often here. Oh dear, July is the month of the “Arts Festival”—I forgot—when the town is full of young people and, last year, looked rather like the Berkeley Campus…But we could stay at home admiring the view, or go some place else…Don’t let B & A tell you about my favorite church—I want to surprise you with it, too.
If you come, Jimmy,—I seem to be putting everything in this letter—will you bring me three things I am greatly in need of? Not heavy. 1. some good tea. I like Ridgway’s—is it Queen Mary’s or Queen Victoria’s mix?—anyway, black tea, in a small tin box. Or Twining’s Queen E’s or Queen M’s. I also like lapsang souchong or any good green tea once in a while. I’m all out now—and a half pound of any good tea, or quarter of a pound black, and quarter of a pound green, would be wonderful. They actually raise tea here, but it isn’t any good. 2. Some powdered ginger. I can get the roots here occasionally, but not the powdered, and, like Carlyle, my favorite food is gingerbread. A bottle of Spice Islands ginger—and another of their curry (curry here, too, but not good) would brighten life a lot…that’s all. I’m really not as bad as Lawrence, am I—I don’t say look in the bottom of the trunk and find the faded blue notebook and also send along the complete MS of Lady Chatterly, etc, etc…
These snapshots should go in Nemer’s file, I suppose, but I just want to show you he really exists, and has more social charm than I’ve ever seen in such a young man. Please do visit me—I honestly think you’d like it. Bring warm clothes—it is “winter” then. I have a fireplace and an electric sheet for you.
With Love,
Elizabeth
Bring a friend, if you want—
Caixa Postal 79, Ouro Preto
Minas Gerais
May 12th, 1970
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I didn’t realize I had let over a month go by without answering your letter. Well, a great deal has been happening here, in fact just about everything that could happen, I think. I have some very bad news, and I’ll get it over with right away. I am just telling a few very close friends (and Dr. B. [Dr. Anny Baumann, Bishop’s friend and personal physician], whom I know Arthur doesn’t trust too much, but I hope he’s wrong this time), so I hope you will keep it to yourselves. Suzanne had a very bad breakdown. I had been having an increasingly difficult time with her & because of her for many months. I don’t think I realized that she was actually sick—and why does the person closest never realize—(and I have been through this now several times just in the past few years and should have known better, it seems)—until about four months, or three and a half months, ago. It suddenly dawned on me then. My one idea was to get her back to the US as soon as possible. However, Googie did have to be returned to his father around the first of May, so I just hoped for the best, and kept thinking that maybe she, and I, could hold out until then. Whenever she was in a good mood I kept saying she should take Googie back, and take a long rest, and se an “analyst,” etc.—and she would seem to accept it all; but the next time she got upset (which was many times a day, finally) she would refuse to go, say I was “throwing her out” and so on. You remember the trouble we had that last night you were here, when you both came so beautifully to my rescue. That—and other episodes like that—should have warned me, but didn’t. I don’t want to go into the details, they are really too sad and awful, but finally, with help from our nice young doctor from Belo Horizonte, and our friends, most of the Nemer family, eventually, I managed to get her to Belo Horizonte, and after midnight the next night we all finally persuaded her to go to a hospital. She was there from April 28th until May 10th. She was getting worse very rapidly the last week or so here, but improved a bit with treatment—enough, the doctors thought, so she could make the trip to Seattle.
I came back here the 29th—Googie was here with the maid, coitado. I don’t think you met one of my favorite people here, Jair, the official “restorer” for the Património in this state? Well, he is a wonderful young man, black, and I have known him off and on for many years now. He had scholarships to study in Brussells, at Harvard, etc.—but eventually came back here, married, and has three children, and took up his old job. I sent Googie to play with his children one afternoon, and Zenith (wife’s name!—but pronounced Zen-eetchy) proved to be just as nice as he is—she offered to keep Googie for me—she is the one person here I’ve told a bit about it all. So Googie stayed there, for over a week. Last Saturday I took Googie and Bags to Belo H—and a suitcase full of money, too. Early Sunday morning Linda Nemer went with Suzanne (I didn’t see her again after the night she went to the hospital) & Googie to Rio, and saw her on board the plane to San Francisco. There she was to be met by someone from her family, to make the last leg of the trip. Now I am waiting, worried sick, of course, to get a cable from her mother saying that she made it safely, and that she’s in the hospital I recommended.…
Everything has happened that could happen I think—except that the plane has been hi-jacked, and Suzanne and Googie are now in Havana…But the doctor was here last night and he hadn’t heard of any recent hi-jackings, so I hope and pray she made it—and that her mother has been paying attention to my many letters, and believes what I say. They were a very poor family—not so poor any more, I gather—but with a typical “poor” point of view, I think, that I thought I might help Suzanne get over. (Ye gods, I actually thought I could help the poor child…) So I am terribly afraid that first they’d think the bosom of the family would be the place for her—and it wouldn’t at all, from what I know of the family; or second, they might put her in some horrible state home or something…She is such a brilliant actress, too—she really had me quite fooled about many things—it wasn’t until I got her into the hospital in Belo that I found out so many tragic and fantastic things, here in the house, and that she’d done in the town, that I didn’t know about. She has made some awful problems for me here, but I hope with time I’ll live them down.
I didn’t mean to go on so long about it, but I can’t seem to make it much shorter than that. The person I am sorriest of all for is Googie, of course—he was so sad and confused, and it all reminds me only too much of my own early days. I hope he’s with his father now. I don’t think much of his father, I’m afraid, but at least he adores his various children. Googie didn’t want to leave Zenith’s house—it was dreadful—Zenith was crying, too. If I had had the right to, I think I would have left him there, given him to that wonderful family to bring up—he’d be so much better off than with any of his own people. He is such a beautiful little boy, and already he has serious problems, I think. (I was lucky, having loving grandparents and aunts.)
So—now I’m here all alone and not minding a bit, so far. I have a fairly good maid, for here—at least she is very clean, 18, I think, pretty, keeps the house clean, can’t cook much but I don’t mind that- and she goes to school five nights a week to learn reading & writing. Suzanne, coitada, fired her—and then she asked me if she couldn’t come back. My job is much in demand because I pay the highest wages in town, i.e., I pay the legal minimum salary [in the margin: about $32.00 a month]…(& no doubt everyone says that the American millionaire is spoiling the servants). Eva, that’s her name, sleeps here. One unfortunate trait is that at 7 am she goes to her bathroom and clears her throat in an amazingly loud and horrible way. I feel as if I had a very virile old man in the house. I am getting up my courage to ask her why she does this, and if just blowing her nose on my Kleenex wouldn’t serve the purpose. Also, when I call her, she says “Oigh!”—it sounds like a pig, rather. This is the normal form of greeting on the streets here, I’ve learned. “Oigh?” “Oigh.” I think I do get called Senhora—most of the time—but that’s just because I have white hair and they all think I am simply remarkable for my tremendous age.
Well, Zenith was just here and I handed over all Googie’s little outgrown clothes, a bag of materials to make clothes with, a lot of busted toys too heavy to go by air, and an almost brand-new tricycle…(S bought this without asking me about three weeks before he was to leave. This was one of the bad symptoms—for over two years she had been so careful with my money, and so thrifty, and suddenly she just went wild. I have managed to return some things.) But, anyway—Zenith deserves a tricycle; she couldn’t possibly afford one, and she kept Googie, who was very difficult, for eight days. He was calling her “mother” in Portuguese. One of her little girls, oddly enough, is named Suzanne. Oh dear. It is such a pretty name, isn’t it. I have it in my family, too.
I should be making a design for the double closet and the windows in the basement, but I find it is so nice, and such a relief, if you don’t mind, just talking to nice civilised people for a change…I finally did what I should have done in the first place, years ago now, took a construction firm from Belo Horizonte to get the house in working order. They are so E, I just can’t believe it. Two bathrooms working fine now, with hot water, etc., and a third being put in the basement. All the wiring had to be done over again, too—and I am having a lightning rod put on the end of the roof, where it has been struck twice already… All this costs a fortune, and what with it and my late expenses—oh well, I must just get to work and earn some money, that’s all. I think I can if I try. I am now the accepted poetry critic for The New Yorker. I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’re hatched, since I haven’t sent them anything yet, but it is one critical job I think I’d really like to do. I don’t have to be nasty to anyone. And the books can be sent me here.
James Merrill wrote me that he may visit me in July—I hope he does. Hilda wrote to San Francisco, then here, and finally got me on the telephone. She sounds completely different from that awful visit in São Paulo—really herself again. I do think she must have been drugged then—anyway, she is coming to visit in June, I think. So I think I can manage here all right for some months more, and I really want to give living and working here a try—I don’t think I have yet. I am too crazy about the house to sell it, after all—at least I’lI try to keep it until I feel I am too decrepit to cope by myself with this dour and cruel population alone; then I’ll try to get a small fortune for it and go to live in the Plaza or some such place…
I don’t know what to do about the San Francisco apartment, but I’ve written everyone concerned. I don’t want to have to go back there, but shall eventually, no doubt. The school-teachers’ sublet is up in June; there is another possible sub-let, but I don’t know. I’d like to give it up and put everything in storage—but don’t know anyone there to do this for me—and Suzanne had quite a few things there and she should not go back there for a long time, if ever…Well, it will get straightened out somehow. Oh—and the Volkswagon—a friend of S’s was paying the installments on it, for the use of it and supposedly sending us our mail—and she was supposed to mail presents to a few friends, last November, too, but didn’t—you never received anything Brazilian did you? I have written a stiff letter—no results. Bob Giroux told Suzanne, in one of her fights, that the younger generation is full of shit. I don’t think I’d go that far, but a lot of them do seem to be full of some inferior substance.
If you have the Hale’s Washington address, I’d like to write them sometime. I’m afraid John had designs on Suzanne…I’m also afraid maybe they hid J.J.—who is adorable—because he has grown fatter…When we were there they were limiting him to three muffins for tea.
I just went to take a look at your painting to see if it is all right, and it is, and it is very nice, too. I couldn’t very well send it up by Suzanne—maybe Jimmy will take it, or I’ll find someone eventually. I think you will like it.
Why don’t you send me your Gourmet articles—I am very impressed…The cook-book is a fine idea, too—couldn’t I please contribute one or two of my more exotic dishes, such as “Maidens Drool,” or Acarajés? But the garbanzo soup, too, if you’d like it…
I’d love to have the Bizet record, even if Googie has gone. His father sent him several presents, some quite big & heavy, and he apparently got them all safely, to my surprise, so you might try—oh dear, I guess not—I remember that they are especially hard on records, because they make them here. And I did tell you, didn’t I?—or maybe not, since I seem to be answering the letter in which you spoke of it—Jose’s painting is a present. When I see you I’ll tell you the funny story of the payment, too.
What are the best restaurants in S F? I think I was taken to only one of them—it was called Ed’s or Jack’s—something straightforward like that—but was extremely plushy, and very good food.
I’ll send you some snapshots fairly soon—my films have 40 on each, and it takes me a long time to fill one—then I think they should be developed in Belo H, not here. I can’t bear to think of going back to that ugly city for a long time, but I’m afraid I may have to.
I am heart-broken about Suzanne—it is such a tragedy. Neither doctor here would risk a prognosis—I just hope she gets over this attack quickly, and is herself again—but whether I have ever known her real self or not I don’t know. I was one of the very few people who ever liked the poor girl—and I have never known anyone who needed affection so much and went about getting it in so completely the wrong way…I had been advised (I made her go to a doctor, and went to one myself, in S F, I had been so depressed for so long) not to bring her to Brazil. But on the trip east she seemed so unusually well and happy, and handled all the business of the readings for me so well, etc.—and she was dying to travel, coitada…but it was a bad mistake, and I do feel guilty about that much of it. The doctors in Belo say it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. But her ambivalence towards me was incredible—well, I have a very interesting theory about it all, and I think I am right—I know of another case very much like it—but it is all too grim to go into. Sometime I’d like very much to tell you some of it—not my troubles, but my theory, and how things actually were—because I don’t believe you had them quite right, only I didn’t like to talk about it when you were here. I only hope now she doesn’t convince her rather ignorant family that it was all my fault—but I shouldn’t even think such things and certainly not commit them to paper. She began telling everyone I wouldn’t give her a vacation, would never give her a “day off”—all quite untrue, of course. In fact the poor child didn’t do one of the things I brought her here to do for me—and hasn’t written a letter for me, even, for four or five months, nor paid my taxes for two years, and so on…There are 2 piles of papers three feet high in her room, still to be sorted out. I am not complaining, but I do seem to want someone who will believe me [to] know the truth! I am trying to get an ex–Peace Corps boy who can type and take dictation, come and stay with me for a month or two—I think I may have one—and help with the papers and the 3,000 books, mine and Lota’s…
Lilli has “not spoken” for 8 months now. Partly her fault, partly S’s. What is worse—she has told people who came to see me & went to ask her where I lived, that I was not in town, had returned to the US, and so on. This was really pretty naughty of her, and I’m afraid I can’t forgive it—it has been pretty lonely. We were really ostracised—still are, or I am—by most of the town. This is quite crazy—since she [Lilli] was the one who made the mistakes [arranging payment for work on Casa Mariana], or her accountants did, not me—and she agreed completely to my hiring an out-of-town accountant to go over the books. It took him almost two months to straighten everything out, and then he proved—to Lilli, and one of her book-keepers, too, that I was owed about $2,000.00. (I had paid for things for two other houses* she was working on, etc.—plus cases of whiskey and god knows what all, when I wasn’t here.) She was convinced, apparently, but didn’t pay. I said I would give her until May—8 months—and then sue (oh dear). And that’s the way it is now…She told everyone in town how awful I am, and how awful especially, Suzanne was—but did not tell them this, of course—so everyone thinks I am being horrid to poor dear Lilli. And I refuse to defend myself. She also tells everyone she loves me, that it is all S’s bad influence (actually, I first noticed the weird items in the accounts myself), and even wrote a note, I just learned last night, ot my doctor, saying please do something about S—this was about the time S began to get sickest. Also Zenith told me she met Lilli on the street and her “eyes filled with tears” talking about me…Well, that is very nice. But I was here alone—with Googie, until I farmed him out—for ten or twelve days and not one person in town came to see me or offered any help, except Zenith. I would have appreciated the use of a telephone, or a lift in a car, very much. And some of these people—a painter here now, one girl, etc.—I thought were really my friends. So you see—I am a pariah—but I don’t care. Better no friends at all than friends like that. However, sometimes I can’t believe I am the same person who read at the Guggenheim Museum, because that night I felt I did have a lot of friends who loved me.
Now my darlings I have told you all. Or most. I hope I haven’t depressed you too much. I am very well, however; I just tend to fall asleep these nights about 8 o’clock, but that is improving, too. I just wish I’d hear if Suzanne got there, and I shall keep this letter open because Eva will bring back the mail at any minute now…No—no telegram—
Are you in summer residence yet? I will visit you there some day—I’d love to. Maybe you’ll even visit me here again sometime—it is so nice here now, absolutely beautiful skies and clouds and all the Lent Trees in bloom, deep purple. I am really feeling more like myself—as I haven’t felt for four years—every day—I just wish I could shed them, but then I am remarkably well preserved, I keep telling myself. And you are, too.
With much love always—
Elizabeth
*This is besides the fact that I had to do all the wiring and plumbing over again—some of it three times now, because the local workmen I first got were so bad. The house is worth its weight in gold now, and I’m determined to enjoy it. The present workers, the good firm, have found a mile or so of unnecessary piping put in, just to spend money—14 extra valves for the water—& all the floors had to be re-scraped and so on and so on—and I never mentioned any of this carelessness to Lilli. I’m not even especially cross with her—1st because I don’t have much of a temper, and 2nd because I couldn’t have kept books myself—or had them kept, probably,—any better—I still don’t see why we couldn’t have settled it amicably. But then—she has always been a beautiful Viking child. (“Hamlet was right”—remember?)
Caixa Postal 79, Ouro Preto
Minas Gerais
June 10th, 1970
Dear Jim:
Everything is being made ready for your visit—you are the first real visitor, I feel—from away of, and on purpose—not just from Belo Horizonte, or someone who discovered I was here and wanted to see if I’m really as eccentric as I’ve been depicted here. If only I could find you a decent bed-lamp. Please expect a good deal of chaos still, however—but everything is now functioning fairly well. I am having a large woodpile stored, for evenings by the fire, and have made mustard pickles (if José Alberto doesn’t eat them all up before you get here).
This is to warn you you will be receiving a small (I hope) package from the Everett Stove Works, Everett, Washington. I bought a Franklin Stove from them, in 1966, and a “Cannonball” Stove for my study—and the lid-lifter (for pothole) didn’t arrive for the smaller stove. So I asked them to send ti to you, and they may also send a shaker—or whatever one calls the other handle—because that has been mislaid now. As I remember, they do everything up in large crates—so you can unwrap the package and just put the lid-lifter (?) in with your socks…And I hope it doesn’t weigh too much. Oh dear—this keeps reminding me of a dirty joke from my childhood, and I am trying not to tell it to you…)
Now that is absolutely all I want except 1 or 2 chapsticks, and I think all the drugstores have them. LIPAIDE seems to be vanilla-flavored and so is the pleasantest—but anything will do. What the Brazilians do in the dry season here, I don’t know—use lard, probably.
Oh, a can of stove polish if you run across such a thing—maybe they still sell it in Connecticut. I made my own, two versions, out of Mrs. Beaton (did you realize how horribly domestic I am?). One had a beer base, the other vinegar, and when the stove in Petrópolis got hot it first smelled like an old barroom and then like an old salad…And that is absolutely all, or I’lI really be sounding like D. H. Lawrence—or Byron, who is always asking for 2 bulldogs and toothpowder (red only).
Being such a world traveller (but that is beginning to sound modest now) you know all about the tax-free cigarettes and liquor business at the airports. I am stopping smoking so won’t bother you about that, but suggest if you like Scotch (I don’t) you bring some—and if you don’t want it you can use it for presents, because it is de rigueur here in fashionable society, and costs about $25–30 a bottle. I might venture on a mint julep with you if I can find the mint then—or do you like Kirsch [in the margin: hints] with your pineapples? I’ll soon be sending you menus for you to check, like in the hospital, so I’d better stop. I am actually writing some poems—after three years or more—so I am feeling very cheerful. Be sure to bring your last book…
With love and don’t be jittery—
Elizabeth
P.S. I’lI meet your plane in Belo Horizonte, and you might get there from Lima to avoid two trips and changes in Rio—very disagreeable. I think there are planes that stop in Brasilia—then it’s an hour or a bit more to Belo H. If you happen to want to stay over in Brasilia, let me know, and I’ll send you Lota’s nephew’s address there. He is now a Third Secretary in the Diplomatic Corps, an awfully nice boy and quite a good poet, too—very brainy, & speaks English.
Bring a friend if you like—& a warm jacket & sweaters—rubber-soled shoes best for walking here on the cobbles—
Ouro Preto
June 15th, 1970
Dearest young men-in-the-prime-of-life:
Thank you so much for your letter—and I’m glad you liked the sound of that faded piece of homespun over the telephone—that I did the painting up in…I hope you also like the painting. The dear little boy was here to call on me yesterday—he occasionally makes these slightly formal Sunday afternoon calls, and he sat by the fire in the rocking chair and we talked. He is so perfectly natural it hurts—I’ve never seen such a nice child. One of my infant beggars came in then, too. I had bought him a wool jacket for the winter (now) with zipper, since he has nothing but a buttonless cotton shirt. José Aparacido helped get him into it, then out of it—it was a size too small—while Adão (Adam), the little boy, held onto the sleeves because he didn’t want me to take it away from him—he wanted to give it to his perfectly imaginary “brother” he’s always trying to take things home to. (I’ve already got another in the right size.) José A was so sweet with him—gentle, but sort of laughing at the same time. Then he even ventured on some of his English idiotismos with me—he has a list of eighty-one. He seems especially taken with “to look out upon”—so we went to the window, to demonstrate that one. Oh I almost forgot—I am going to put the—well, what is the idiotismo for that—ask you for some money. He wants a bolsa again for this July, when he’ll really get to paint, for the Arts Festival month. I said I’d give him the money next Sunday. It is 250 cruzeiros—that is about $54.00 US. Since I am rather broke at the moment—well, not really, but having to save (I’lI tell you why in a minute), I thought maybe we could go thirds on this? $16.00 each? I hope this is all right with you. He gets everything for that—room and board (which I’ll help by having him here to meals occasionally—the food is pretty bad I imagine) and his painting lessons. He says he’ll give me a painting, too. I’m hoping he’ll have one that will catch Jim Merrill’s eye when he’s here, the end of July…
I gather you did not get my long long and very depressing letter about all my troubles—about three weeks ago now, I imagine. However, you may have received it after you wrote me—one batch of letters to New York seemed to arrive in the wrong order, I have learned. I couldn’t bear to tell it all over again and rather hope you didn’t get it—I really told you almost all. It is chiefly that Suzanne had a bad breakdown, was in a hospital here—or in Belo Horizonte—for 10 days, made it back to the US (I don’t think she had even left when I wrote you and is there in Tacoma & Seattle now, still hideously sick, but her god damned fool of a mother won’t do anything about it, and she is making much trouble for everyone…including me, away off here. (Injunctions about the S F apartment and so on…all heart breaking. I suppose I wrote it all to you partly because you came to my rescue so beautifully that time here—and things like that should have been warnings to me, of course. I certainly should know enough about schizophrenia by now, but I never seem to learn. Anyway—I got her up there & ironically I wish I hadn’t—she’d be better cared for here, I’m afraid—and I don’t know what is going to happen to her next, poor crazy girl. I am going out—as soon as Eva gets back from her night school (18, and she’s made 3rd grade) to telephone my one good friend in Seattle to see what has happened now. It is a mess—what to do about the S F flat, Iliked so much—well, I have to give it up anyway. Oh, I am going to teach at Harvard this fall—so I think I’ll try to find a flat there and have everything sent there, for a change. Won’t you please be playing at Symphony Hall, or Tremont Temple, or the Old Howard—no, it’s gone.
I seem to be thriving on suffering. I have done a lot of work—just from the awful relief of getting Suzanne into a hospital here, I think—I began that day and wrote the first poem in 3 years. Here is another I think I’d like you to see [“In the Waiting Room”]. I think Arthur may have some interesting comments—and criticise freely—I’ll leave this open until I come back from the telephone company—
I hope you are both well and the ocean is lovely and the pianos are resounding madly. I do want the Bizet; dare you risk one? With love always—
I began to say good-bye too soon. Have to wait for Eva. This sickness of S’s with all the hospital bills, plane fares, cables, telephone calls, etc., besides the future moving and undoubtedly more hospital bills—are why I am being so niggardly. Poor Suzanne’s poor ex-husband has now taken to cabling and writing, too. The very worst thing about it all is Googie—thank goodness his father adores him, and that will help, if only Suzanne can be made to stay away for a while. He was terribly upset when he left here—I did the best I could, and had some luck with giving him to my favorite couple here—with three small children, too—for ten days or so before he left. The woman is wonderful—they both are—Jair is the head “restorer” in Minas, a very brilliant, quiet young black man who has studied in Europe, Harvard, etc. and then came back here to go on restoring saints and churches and fountains—although he loathes the church…I wish you could have met him. But poor Googie—he didn’t want to leave—we were all in tears. He is so beautiful to look at now—and I’m so afraid he is damaged by what we went through here the past few months.
The house is getting better and better—and now I am all alone in it, no Googie, I can put out the bric-a-brac and the floors gleam—but I’d rather have them all scuffed up if only Googie were happier, and put everything away in the closet again…I am trying desperately to get another “secretary”—an ex–Peace Corps boy or someone—to help me—books and papers in chaos worse than when I moved in. Suzanne had been able to do nothing for months.
Well, an American guitarist, a young girl named something like—it ends in TZT, so must be Hungarian, is playing at the little theatre this week—and why I should offer you of all people my pathetic crumb of musical life I can’t imagine! Do you suppose I am trying to show you I keep abreast? (She is playing a “contemporary group,” even Benjamin Britten!)
I’ll close this later. Such a funny man took the painting up to you—a John Stage, a photographer. Ever heard of him? Very successful, I gather. He did that “100 Pipers” Scotch ad, for one thing—but made light of it—only $9,000 a year from that
one, I think he said. He came up to me as I sat in the local café and I thought he said he was John Cage which I knew he wasn’t, so I was very chilly at first.
An hour and a half later—well, I got my Seattle friend—could barely hear her—nothing new seems to have happened. But I have to get an injunction to keep S from getting into the S F apartment—guess I already have it—this is loathesome. Oh why doesn’t someone put that poor child in the hospital—I’ll probably end up by going up there myself—not that I could do it. And why did I ever let her go from the one here, now. She has done such awful things I don’t think I’ve even begun to take them in yet.—My reactions are very slow.—This town goes to bed at ten—it’s after 11 now—deserted streets, and when I came out of the telephone co. a boy was whistling the sad tune from La Strada. I stepped over two large sleeping dogs. A young man coming down the hill pointed to his heart, and said something I didn’t catch. Al very Gogol, Arthur, don’t you think—
Goodnight, sweet dreams—
Elizabeth
Rio
Sept 19th, 1970
Dear Bobby & Arthur:
I am very happy to say that the park is looking awfully well—someone had reported that it was dirty, littered, etc., but it seems very clean now. I’m spending a few grim and solitary days at a downtown hotel here, seeing the lawyers, getting some clothes made, etc. I go to NY–Boston–Cambridge the night of the 23rd.
There isn’t a soul in town I want to see—I just saw in the paper that Guiomar Novaes is playing (with the Brazilian Symphony...) this afternoon, right next door almost—so I think I’ll go, and this made me think of you, of course. I first heard her something like 38 years ago—horrors—so she must be even older than I am, if possible. This makes me think I must really get down to work—this and a show of paintings—a friend of mine I’m sorry you didn’t meet—at the M of M.A. here—over 600 pictures…But then—both painters and piano-players can repeat, in a way that poets can’t—or shouldn’t.
No other news. I did find someone pretty good, I think, to stay in the house—on a Ford grant, just renewed, so that sounds well. He has to work in the O P archives for 5 or 6 months. Has a wife (I’m a bit worried about her—this seems to be the year for people to crack up & she shows signs) well—lets hope—
Much love, & kisses,
Elizabeth
Editors’ Note: The Yale Review is committed to publishing pieces from its archive as they originally appeared, without alterations to spelling, content, or style. Occasionally, errors creep in due to the digitization process; we work to correct these errors as we find them. You can email [email protected] with any you find.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. Her collections include Poems: North & South / A Cold Spring, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
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