In any event here she is, installed in my dining room. I hated to show her the mail, stored in bushel baskets in the empty spare bedroom. She did not flinch. Grasped each bushel by the handles, marched it downstairs, and dumped onto the maple table one mountain for each month. Bravely she dives in, even before we’ve found her a filing cabinet or acceptable typewriter. (Royal or L. C. Smith.) We shall put the bathroom door back on its hinges, as soon as I’ve cleared its surface of all piles and chapters, and found a proper desk myself. For now, when one of us needs the WC, the other steps out the back door, pretending to call the cats. This and more, she suffers with perfect composure.
Mrs. Brown is a force: small, unadorned, unapologetic. Her eyebrows arch like a pair of bridges across her wide forehead. Her blouses button to the top, she wears white cotton gloves even on warm days, and she can still any troubled waters with her austere calm and peculiar antique grammar. Each morning on arrival she taps on the front door, puts in her head and calls out, “Mr. Shepherd, where be ye?”
Her words seem scripted by Chaucer. She says “strip-ed” and “learn-ed,” making an extra syllable of the past tense. A sack is a “poke.” Surveying the piles of letters she declared, “Mr. Shepherd, you get mail by the passel.” She says “nought” and “nary a one,” and the garden greens she brought me were “sallets,” the word Shakespeare used. She says “queasy” to mean worried, as did King Lear. When I noted this, she replied, “Well I expect he had a lot to be queasy about. He was a king, wasn’t he?”
When pressed about her origins she said her people were “Mountain Whites.” She seems reluctant to say more, only that it means Highlanders, people who came through the gap from England ages ago, and reckoned they ought to stay. Remaining on the spot, with idiom intact. She means “reckon” in the British sense, akin to reconnoiter, until knowing a thing for certain, which is to “ken it.”
Most shocking was this pronouncement: “My family be there still, living in a cabin home in the hells.” This is a kind of bush, evidently, a rhododendron. “They grow thick as can be. If you came to be lost in there, you couldn’t push out with a stick. So it’s called hells. Pardon if you’re offended. It isn’t a foul word in that sense.”
No offense taken. Her past can stay where it is, lost in the hells, not my business, as my childhood hells are none of hers. We concern ourselves with the future, which we agreed should begin at once, in my dining room, as soon as she could give proper notice. And today here she is, dispatching the mess with carbon paper and a buttoned-up smile.
May 28
Mrs. Brown’s advice about the schoolgirls: they won’t bite. I took her word on that, and left the house for the first time in a while to wander up to the cemetery. A belated outing for Mother’s birthday; it always seems important to go somewhere for her sake. But she is nowhere any longer, least of all the Riverside Cemetery. Even the writer O. Henry might have “up and gone” from here, as Mrs. Brown would say. Tom Wolfe is still in situ, though the town is evidently still put out with him. Many graves bore jars of wilting peonies today, but nary a posy for poor Tom, a man so recently gone, dramatically and in his prime, reeling from the fracas of fame. Maybe Mrs. Brown could have saved him.
A sample of one day’s mail, posted forward from Stratford and Sons, received on June 6, 1946, six months after publication of Vassals of Majesty. (Spelling sic.)—VB
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
Your book Vassals of Majesty is tops. I sobbed my heart out hundreds of times, especially at the end when the soldiers burnt up all the King’s parrots in the fire. My mother has a Parakeet named Mickey Rooney. My sister never stopped razzing me because I stayed up all night, scared out of my wig on the gory parts. Then she read it, and blew her top. I think Lt. Remedios is a dream boat, but she is all for Cuautla. Which one is supposed to be the best? I am a budding author too. Please send an autograph photo and keep it coming. (My sister says, 2 please!)
Thanks!
LINDSAY PARKS
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
I am writing about your book in regards to the War in Mexico. Usually I sit on the fence and don’t argue with people or try to tell them how it is. The horror of war is part of life since recorded history. But your book showed how men really feel when they are soldiers. I served in the 12th Infantry Regiment, F Company. One of the few that made it out of Berdorf. I read your book in the Van Wyck Army Hospital. About ten other guys on my ward read your book, and most of the others couldn’t hold a book or see to read one. Everything about war is bad like you said. Some of us have a bet that you were an Infantry Man yourself.
Yours truly,
GEORGE M. COOK
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
My name is Eleanor White and I reside in Springfield, Missouri. I am currently attending college at Webster Women’s College. I myself am not a big reader but I must say, your book made me want to read more, more, more. Now I understand the Mexican Conquistadors through new eyes. I am recommending my History professor to read it. My hat is off to you! Yours truly,
ELEANOR WHITE
Dear Mr. Harrison,
My name is Gary Duncan and I live in California. My girlfriend was hanging icicles all over me until I read your book Vessels of Majesty. In a word: “Stimulating.” I found your destriptions very thought provoking, even if I didn’t think it is the best book ever wrote. But am I going to tell Shelley that?
I would be tops in her book if you sent a photo. Her birthday is coming up here quick, June 14. Her name is Shelley. And the last name, same as yours, Harrison. Can you top that?
YOUR FRIEND, GARY
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
I would like to say thank you. Your writing is an inspiration to us all, or anyway that is how I feel. Your book hit me when it made me think how the boys on both sides of the war were still human whether Spanish or the Mexicans. Every person is human, even Japs, their mothers must have all cried tears just the same. That gave me something to ponder. Please continue to write more books.
Yours sincerely,
ALICE KENDALL
All correspondence answered with a short note, no photographs or inclusions.—VB
July 6, 1946
Dear Diego,
I trust Frida is still recovering from the surgery in New York. I have no address for her there, but could not let her birthday pass. I expect she is angry with me for failing to visit. Please forward my saludos, and tell her I never fail to bake a rosca in her honor on this day, whether she is present to eat it or not.