Dancing In a Jar (6 page)

Good luck with the squirrels in the attic. Here there are no attics and no squirrels, so we have left behind some problems at least.

As ever,
Donald

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 22, 1933

Dear Dorothy,

Mother and Daddy have passed along your news and I am so thrilled
for you and Bill. I know you have always wanted a house full of children so hats off to you for getting started! I am sure Bill is excited to get another little Scotsman into the Mutch clan. Daddy, too, of course, and I’m sure he’s secretly praying for a boy to offset his life of girls.

It is impossible not to think of children in a town like this. I have never seen so many youngsters in all my life. Right in our own boarding house there are four adorable ones that keep us all busy and entertained. Don and I both have lots of fun with them. Blanche is the youngest at three and I’ve never seen a healthier child given what’s available to eat here. Walter is six and a real boy who waits for Don to come home every day to be thrown around like a football. Leonis (yes that’s a girl’s name) is quite bashful, but I hope to do some sewing with her if we can ever get Siebert to send us a machine. Alfred, at eleven, is quite an artist and a very likable boy. Completing the picture is Mrs. G, who is very progressive and intelligent. Mr. G is the most industrious man, for his small size, I have ever seen.

This is also the smallest family in the community! I have learned that small families generally mean that children have died in childbirth or at a young age. Certainly there are small crosses, lots of them, in the cemetery. The town still bustles with children in every yard, on every path, and in every meadow.

They are at once beautiful and pitiful. Some of them surely exist on bread, fish, and potatoes and take turns to eat. But I will say a washcloth is licked over every one of them in the mornings on the way to school because it’s hard to find a child looking Dickensian, despite the poverty. I see Mrs. G dropping off some of her homemade blueberry jam or loaves of bread to some families and I wonder how any of them are surviving on so little. It has been a terrible time in this part of the world. Oh I know it has been everywhere, but this really seems exceptional. No one complains, certainly not to me, a stranger, but it is very simple to see now that I have opened my eyes.

I guess I didn’t allow anything to disturb my vision of an idyllic village life. How infantile of me. I am somewhat ashamed of my short
sightedness. The sheer number of mouths to feed would shock you and, given the hold of the Catholic Church on the community, I don’t see the numbers dropping.

Mrs. G’s neighbor told me she had eleven children in eleven years. I was sure she had to be wrong about that and I spent a good part of last night working out my mathematics. One child a year is not at all unusual.

So over to you, my darling Dorothy. Bring this beautiful healthy child of yours into the world and give them every opportunity, as I know you and Bill will. Our love to you both and let me know every ache, pain, and the joyful bits too.

Love,
Urla

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 30, 1933

Dear Ivah,

I was thinking about you today as I know you are writing your first exams and submitting those dastardly final papers. I can sure appreciate how stressful yet enervating this time is for you. I think I was homesick for all that excitement because I was feeling very moody and blue this morning. But Mrs. G has convinced me the fog does that to everyone.

You may think you have seen fog. Even Don, who crossed the Atlantic twice, thought he knew fog. But here we are dealing with something in a category all its own.

The fog is relentless. I have come to believe I will be permanently blinded when my eyes have to adjust to sunshine. I think we are into our fifth straight day of not being able to see across the harbor. In fact, you can barely see the house next door or your own feet. I don’t know
how people can find their own home when the fog rolls in. I’ve heard reports of it being foggy for weeks at a time and I think I would go mad.

The only good thing about the fog is that it softens the hard edges of the town. All around the harbor, the cliffs disappear sharply into the sea and every rolling hill is interrupted with knobs of granite. If you were painting this scenery you would only need fine brushes. The trees are set in the oddest angles thanks to the wind (when it’s not foggy it’s windy). Even the people are chiselled somehow. There’s not a soft line anywhere. So perhaps I’ll be grateful for the fog for now for providing some relief from the hard lines.

Then I have days where I wonder why we would expect nature to be soft anyway. Maybe this landscape is the more natural one and we have softened everything around us unnecessarily. Don thinks I’m trying to trick my brain into not missing the soft rolling hills of New Jersey, but I’m not convinced. Anyway, let’s just say there are days the hardness doesn’t bother me so much.

I even managed to find a “reader” from Mr. Aubrey Farrell next door and discovered a wonderful Newfoundland poet to share with you.

“Erosion”

It took the sea a thousand years,
A thousand years to trace
The granite features of this cliff,
In crag and scarp and base.

It took the sea an hour one night,
An hour of storm to place
The sculpture of these granite seams
Upon a woman’s face.

E.J. PRATT

So my dear sister, here are my musings on this soft foggy day. Say a little prayer that tomorrow will indeed hurt my eyes and maybe even bring a hint of winter and Christmas with it.

Hope your days and mind are not foggy at all. Good luck with your exams, and report in whenever you have a chance.

Lots of love,
Urla

Bucknell University
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

December 12, 1933

Dear Urla,

I’m having a lonely spell tonight and sad that you are so far away.

I miss you as a confidante and have had to make due with Meryl Lawson who is the only other person here from Nutley. She will do in a pinch. Do you remember her sister Charlotte played French horn in the symphony? They are all quite serious but dependable.

Vanessa runs hot and cold and I seem to be mostly encountering the cold. I am so impressed at the men who flock around her like chickens (okay like roosters) and I have to admit that I like being part of her entourage.

Last night Vanessa referred to my nose (always a sore spot as you know) as “assertive.” What in God’s name does that mean? Remember Daddy used to kid me that my nose came in the room before I did? Anyway, no one has enlightened me about alternate parentage so I can only assume it was a miscalculation on God’s part. I’m hoping when my sister becomes a world famous author she can pay for me to get this nose looking more patrician.

I would love to cut my hair into a nice bob but I think the curls would spring to attention and never lay neat like everyone else’s. I need your advice badly.

Thanks for your poem and you’re right—there’s a lot of sharp edges but your Mr. Pratt softens them beautifully.

At my end, we just finished an entire semester of Carl Sandburg. I’m sure you’ll remember how he describes the fog arriving “on little cat feet” and how it looks over the harbor “on silent haunches /and then moves on.”

So try giving that fog of yours some feline features and that might help you get through the bad days. Speaking of which, our exams go very late this year, so I won’t be heading home until the 23rd of December. By then I suspect I will be blue and moody having to have Christmas without you.

Lots of love,
Ivah

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

December 17, 1933

Dear Mom and Pop,

I’m not sure how many more letters will get to you before Christmas. I imagine you are all getting ready for the season while here they have yet to have a snowfall and most days are gray and rainy. Not a hint of Christmas in sight.

We really have no idea how it will be celebrated here, but I don’t imagine it will be a lavish affair. Just a couple of weeks ago, Urla and I attended the mass to pray for those who died in the earthquake here several years ago. We normally don’t go to these things, but we were so shocked to find out there had been an earthquake in this part of the world and to imagine people had suffered from that as well as everything else that has occurred in the last couple of years.

On November 18th, 1929, there was a massive earthquake off the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, resulting in a tidal wave that struck this peninsula. Twenty-seven people died and the whole peninsula was devastated. The earthquake and tidal wave struck without
warning, affecting over forty towns and villages and about 10,000 people. St. Lawrence was hardest hit in terms of loss of property but no one died. A committee addressed all the claims, and people were compensated to some degree but, coupled with the world recession, this has left the area more fragile than most.

Compounding the loss, many around here say that the fishery has not been the same since the waves hit this coast and its fish banks. As a result, the men lost much of the one method of making a living that was left to them, inshore fishing. Add to that the desperate financial shape of the Government of Newfoundland, and you have a population very dependent on the dole and scraps of work here and there. It’s been a help to me of course in looking for men to work, although the need to be paid by Siebert is that much more critical. I would say a third of the families in St. Lawrence receive government assistance.

I’m heading over this week to the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. They are only sixteen miles away by boat and I’m hoping Siebert sent some of the piping I need. I hope you managed to get the sewing machine included in the shipment. It still seems strange to me to have to go to another country to get the equipment and materials we need for this mining venture but the tariff here is one heck of a pill to swallow. I know the government is desperate but talk about cutting off your nose.

I’m hoping to get some perfume and cigars to send your way for Christmas, so keep your eyes on the mailbox.

Lots of love,
Donald

Bucknell University
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

December 19, 1933

Dear Urla,

We have had our first light snowfall, so I’m getting excited about the end of term and getting home for Christmas. Only one more paper due and home I go.

I am bursting with news on the romantic front. On Saturday past, the Phi Psis invited three sororities for their Christmas dance. I had four dances with William Gibson, which left me light headed and giddy like a schoolgirl. William is an old friend of Vanessa’s and I knew he was interested a few times when he came round to collect her for class. I’m going to enlist her help before we break for Christmas and see if we can’t make something happen. I would love to invite them both to the city to see the new Broadway musical
As Thousands Cheer
. Apparently Irving Berlin works his magic and you know I love Leslie Adams so I’m dying to go. I will keep you posted, dear Sis.

We will miss you so much around the house and I don’t really want to speak of it so I shall not. Just know that we will be thinking of you and missing you very much.

Lots of love,
Ivah

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

December 23, 1933

Dear Mother and Dad, Ivah and Sturdy,

I can hardly believe the date as I write it. I thought I would have lots of time to write given that very little was happening in the lead up to Christmas. Then one morning, the whole town sprang into action and we haven’t stopped since. It must be common practice to paint at least your kitchen for Christmas, so everything is taken out like we would for spring cleaning, the room painted and reassembled. Then we started in on some serious gift preparation. Every evening, Mrs. G’s friends would come by with the sleeve of a sweater or one sock left to go and knit furiously trying to keep their craft secret from the children. I hesitate to bring out my petit point, which looks so tiny and silly among their practical work. I may just attempt knitting to get me through the winter although I dare not trouble anyone to teach me now.

The Christmas baking has been a lesson in fortitude and flexibility. The basic flour here is what they call brown flour and is all you can get during the depression. Trouble is it tends to go rancid and it’s not unusual to find weevils in it. One solution is to add copious amounts of molasses and a handful of raisins to make the most delicious cookies. But the resourceful women of this town have also been putting aside treasured amounts of white flour, so yesterday we made all kinds of treats, including shortbreads, pinwheels, and cinnamon buns for Christmas morning.

Don made the cinnamon buns possible by bringing back cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger from Saint Pierre. He was brimming with excitement over all the fine things that can be bought there and how welcoming the French people were. He also brought home a hangover that looked to be about the size of a bottle of rum! He promises there will be more treats on Christmas morning.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Don and I just came back from an evening walk. There is still no snow to brighten the darkness. Part of me is really starting to like this little town. But everything takes on a new malevolence in the dark. Walking home with no lights anywhere I wonder where in God’s name have we found ourselves?

Of course you can’t stay introspective for long in this little town. Just as your mind wanders and you are miles away, it’s quite possible to run into a cow or a chicken, which brings you back to reality quickly. I think I told you there are no real roads in town, just paths that wind from house to house. They’re always filled with animals, and the cows in particular will accompany you right into your house unless you chase them. The animals here run wild all year and sometimes wander miles away. You don’t see them until the cold weather sets in and they return home to the right places. The oxen then get hitched up to homemade sleds to haul in the wood when the snow gets deep. Everything here feels part of a big story to me.