4th March, 1946
Dear Miss,
At first, I did not want to go to any book meetings. My farm is a lot of work, and I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never was, doing things they never did.
Then in 1942 I started to court the Widow Hubert. When we’d go for a walk, she’d march a few steps ahead of me on the path and never let me take her arm. She let Ralph Murchey take her arm, so I knew I was failing in my suit.
Ralph, he’s a bragger when he drinks, and he said to all in the tavern, “Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt—a grease spot on the grass.” That’s no way to talk about a lady, and I knew right then he didn’t want the Widow Hubert for her own self, the way I did. He wanted only her grazing land for his cows. So I thought—If it’s rhymes the Widow Hubert wants, I will find me some.
I went to see Mr. Fox in his bookshop and asked for some love poetry. He didn’t have many books left by that time—folks bought them to burn, and when he finally caught on, he closed his shop for good—so he gave me some fellow named Catullus.
He was a Roman. Do you know the kind of things he said in verse? I knew I couldn’t say those words to a nice lady. He did hanker after one woman, Lesbia, who spurned him after taking him into her bed. I don’t wonder she did so—he did not like it when she petted her downy little sparrow. Jealous of a bitty bird, he was. He went home and took up his pen to write of his anguish at seeing her cuddle the little birdy to her bosom. He took it hard, and he never liked women after that and wrote mean poems about them.
He was a tight one too. Do you want to see a poem he wrote when a fallen woman charged him for her favors—poor lass. I will copy it out for you.
Those are love tokens? I told my friend Eben I never saw such spiteful stuff. He said to me I had just not read the right poets. He took me into his cottage and lent me a little book of his own. It was the poetry of Wilfred Owen. He was an officer in the First World War, and he knew what was what and called it by its right name. I was there, too, at Passchendaele, and I knew what he knew, but I could never put it into words for myself.
Well, after that, I thought there might be something to this poetry after all. I began to go to meetings, and I’m glad I did, else how would I have read the works of William Wordsworth—he would have stayed unknown to me. I learned many of his poems by heart.
Anyway, I did win the hand of the Widow Hubert—my Nancy. I got her to go for a walk along the cliffs one evening, and I said, “Lookie there, Nancy. The gentleness of Heaven broods o’er the sea—Listen, the mighty Being is awake.” She let me kiss her. She is now my wife.
Yours truly,
Clovis Fossey
P.S. Mrs. Maugery lent me a book last week. It’s called
I hunted all through that book for poems by Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. There weren’t any—nary a one. And do you know why not? Because this Mr. Yeats said—he said, “I deliberately chose NOT to include any poems from World War I. I have a distaste for them. Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry.”
Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! I nearly seized up. What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” What’s passive about that, I’d like to know? That’s exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats.
Yours truly,
Clovis Fossey
From Eben to Juliet
10th March, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Thank you for your letter and your kind questions about my grandson, Eli. He is the child of my daughter, Jane. Jane and her new-born baby died in hospital on the day that the Germans bombed us, 28th June, 1940. Eli’s father was killed in North Africa in 1942, so I have Eli in my keeping now.
Eli left Guernsey on 20th June, along with the thousands of babies and schoolchildren who were evacuated to England. We knew the Germans were coming and Jane worried for his safety here. The doctor would not let Jane sail with them, the baby’s birth being so close.
We did not have any news of the children for six months. Then I got a postcard from the Red Cross, saying Eli was well, but not where he was situated—we never knew what towns our children were in, though we prayed not in a big city. An even longer time passed before I could send him a card in return, but I was of two minds about that. I dreaded to tell him that his mother and the baby had died. I hated to think of my boy reading those cold words on the back of a postcard. But I had to do it. And then a second time, after I got word about his father.
Eli did not come back until the war was over—and they did send all the children home at once. That was a day! More wonderful even than when the British soldiers came to liberate Guernsey. Eli, he was the first boy down the gangway—he’d grown long legs in five years—and I don’t think I could have left off hugging him to me, if Isola hadn’t pushed me a bit so she could hug him herself.
I bless God that he was boarded with a farm family in Yorkshire. They were very good to him. Eli gave me a letter they had written for me—it was full of all the things I had missed seeing in his growing up. They told of his schooling, how he helped on the farm, how he tried to be steadfast when he got my postcards.
He fishes with me and helps me tend my cow and garden, but carving wood is what he likes best—Dawsey and I are teaching him how to do it. He fashioned a fine snake from a bit of broken fence rail last week, though it’s my guess that the broken fence rail was really a rafter from Dawsey’s barn. Dawsey just smiled when I asked him of it,
