Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
April, 1924
John,
I have a favour to beg. Naomi's trying to get a teaching placement and having no luck. Can you make enquiries?
Also to tell you what a following little Helen has at Patterson St. Everyone adores her – not just her parents and the usual suspects. Jem says she gets that from Faith, and she says she gets it from him. Who has your vote?
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Jo
New Manse
Glen St Mary
May, 1924,
Jo,
I'm sitting in the manse study, surrounded by Easter lilies Rosemary cut from the garden. They smell of greenery and new life, as I think every Easter season, and are competing gently with the irises under the window – also Rosemary's doing. There's fresh, clean-smelling thyme and parsley running riot in the window-boxes, also hers. It makes me feel the height of disloyal for what I am going to write to you.
Helen got that effortless, easy adoration from my Cecilia. She was just the same. Gil said once that Helen got Faith's laugh. She unequivocally got Faith's golden looks, if Jem's eyes. But inasmuch as such things are possible, I tend to think she got Cecilia's soul.
People couldn't help loving her. I don't only mean me; I'm not sure I even and only mean 'love' in the worn-out romantic sense. Cecilia was one of those people that other people looked at and wanted to know better. They cultivated her like a flower. As I say, they loved her. I've never seen the like of it since. But when I look at Helen or read of her, I think she is made of the same shape and inclination as the grandmother she never knew.
I have long thought this, in some disquiet corner of my brain, ever since I held Helen that first time and traced the smile she secreted at the corner of her mouth. She was hours old, a warm, milky-scented slip of a thing; I looked at her, and knew her. She radiated gentleness in waves, even as a newborn. I looked at Helen and thought of Galatians; But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith…And of God, and how after all, when he was not in the whirlwind, he was in the still small voice. Jo, never before had I held anything so still and small as that child; I felt I was holding and impossibly fragile eternity in my arms.
Then, inevitably, Helen opened her eyes, so curious and quietly eager to know the world, and to love it. That's always how I think of Cecilia; Bright, curious and alert. I thought only Carl inherited that from her, never supposing it could skip like eye-colour across her descendants. It made me heart-glad to see it in Helen, and then, as I say, disloyal for seeing it at all. Have I not been given much, much more than my due in the years since her death?
I expect, if I went looking, I would see Rosemary in her too, but somehow, to even invite that comparison seems far, far worse. Now I'm sitting here, breathing in the Easter smell of Rosemary's lilies and trying to explain this to you in a way that makes sense, when, in all probability, such an exercise is beyond me.
On to more earthly concerns. Consider your favour done. I hear through the grapevine (read Anne Blythe, who sits on the board) that even the staunchest of her supporters grow tired of Miss Reese's tyranny (Anne's word, mine would be tenure) over the Glen school. Your Naomi would be a welcome change.
J.M.
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
May, 1924
Change? A good thing? In what church do you preach, for it can be neither a small village kirk nor of Presbyterian persuasion. Don't you know it takes half a dozen committees of six just to buy new Advent candles?
In all seriousness, thank you. It heartens me to think of Naomi among friends. But when did Anne take on the board? I must have missed that revelation.
I can, perhaps, do better by the rest of your letter. I find nothing to fault in it. How else do we carry our dead before us, but to look for their echoes in our families? Is there anything more natural? It doesn't diminish the family around you; Rather it enriches it by keeping past happiness alive, so that Helen's inheritance, from her grandmothers, as you observe, is twofold. I never known you in your Maywater days, but if they are even a pale reflection of your Glen interval, then Helen Clare is rich in bounty as any child could be; Goodness and gentleness and a love. What more can we hope for?
Gil wrote once about the weight and legacy of names, and he was right. Sometimes, looking at Jake's Andrew, I catch myself looking for hints of the uncle he cannot know. This is different. This is an inheritance you have entrusted to Helen as all her own, and that is better. At the risk of disgruntling Susan – who will say I am too much at Fox Corner – ego te absolvo.
I suppose the Glen is still being ritually scandalised by your post. Do pass on any news you might have of our foreign correspondents. We're due the usual monthly letter, but as it is atypically late, I suspect the Foreign Mission School of having a Secretariat and swallowing Una's spare time with paperwork. I wouldn't like to encourage it's neglect, but I hope she has a hobby or two, however noble the cause. You might just drop a hint. I don't think she would listen to me. (Nor should she; It's a stone I cannot reasonably cast.)
Be well, do good work and keep in touch.
Jo
Ingleside,
Glen St. Mary,
July, 1924
Jo,
Tell Naomi well done landing the school. It's about time a sane person took it on. Ethel Reese ran it far too long, and her pupils have caught snippiness like a virus. They traverse the village in pinched-looking clutches. Assorted patients (chiefly Cornelia) continue confused about what it was Miss Reese ever wanted with teaching school in the first place. Susan believes Miss Reese thought it was a road to matrimony, having, Ethel-like, supposed this was how our children secured their happiness. If she's right, I think I may be dangerously close to feeling sorry for one of Rilla's everlasting nemeses. She seems to have fundamentally misunderstood a lesson no classroom could teach.
Also tell Naomi that Ingleside has a place ready for her. Anne would say 'the sparest of spare rooms,' but since we are presently three people rattling about in a house that has comfortably held ten, we can almost certainly go one better than that. The Manse has theology on its side, and I've heard your daughter and John wrangle the best way to translate John 1:1 into the wee sma's, but Anne and I were both rather good, in yesteryear at English and will happily parse Donne and Marvell with her at leisure. None of our girls ever took to the Early Moderns much; We'd enjoy an excuse to brush up on them. (Anne especially. Debating long-distance with Priss and Stella isn't the same as was wrangling with them while crammed onto the window seat of her blue room in Patty's Place.)
I was going to further enumerate our good points in a water-tight case, but the telephone is ringing. It seems Mary Douglas is having that third child now. So I am off, though Susan's roast smells ever so perfectly crisped and browned.
Love ever,
Gil
New Manse,
Glen St Mary,
August, 1924
Jo,
Carl's latest letter regales us with plants and insects from Singapore's botanic gardens. None of us can pronounce them, but we can picture them, because Carl includes diagrams. Rosemary is for framing them, Gilbert for making copies, and Bruce busily collecting the stamps. Between them, Una and Carl have gifted him some gems, and his classmates (the interested ones) are envious of his collection.
Rosemary tells me, by way of Anne and a Ladies Aid session, that the Glen School has contracted your daughter to teach. Tell Naomi she is welcome to board here if convenient. We have quite the (amicable) competition woth Ingleside over her since the houses feel quite empty without the children of yesteryear. You might just hint that her opinions on John will be missed if she decides on Ingleside.
J.M.
Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
August, 1924
John,
No danger there. In the first place, between your letters and Gil's (never mind Anne's to Phil) the impression is that two or three are always together where Blythes and Merediths are concerned. In the second, the day Naomi stops on the subject of theology is the day I look for the coming of the kingdom. The greater danger is that she will teach nothing else and be so ecumenical on her subject as to leave the parents in doubt to her orthodoxy. (All my fault – but how to set a stricture on who to help, much less quash her gift?) Of course, she will teach them lots of Donne and Herbert too for variety, which will placate Anne, but I fear for the Glen's aspiring cartographers. Geography won't make the curriculum, and that, as Miss Susan Baker would say, you may tie to.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Jo
New Manse,
Glen St Mary
August,1924
Jo,
Rest assured the cartographers were well-served in bygone years by Jem, who charted courses of explorers and revolutionaries enough for one Glen Epoch. I venture that if Carl could teach Darwin at Over Harbour and live to tell the tale (just), your Naomi can safely explain the Mandatum.
Can you believe Una's letter about the three hour church service? Three hours! Never tell Miss Cornelia. She would be mortified to hear we had found a way of outlasting the Roman Mass.
Love and blessings,
J.M.