Love,
Juliet
From Juliet to Sidney
11th August, 1946
Dear Sidney,
I am happy that you are happy with my progress on Elizabeth’s biography. But more about that later—for I have something to tell you that simply cannot wait. I hardly dare believe it myself, but it’s true. I saw it with my own eyes!
If, and mind you only if, I am correct, Stephens & Stark will have the publishing coup of the century. Papers will be written, degrees granted, and Isola will be pursued by every scholar, university, library, and filthy-rich private collector in the Western Hemisphere.
Here are the facts—Isola was to speak at last night’s Society meeting on
She pulled the letters out of her pocket, and Will Thisbee, seeing them swathed in pink silk and tied with a satin bow, cried out, “Love letters, I’ll be bound! Will there be secrets? Intimacies? Should gentlemen leave the room?”
Isola told him to hush up and sit down. She said they were letters to her Granny Pheen from a very kind man—a stranger—when she was but a little girl. Granny had kept them in a biscuit tin and had often read them to her, Isola, as a bedtime story.
Sidney, there were eight letters, and I’m not going to attempt to describe their contents to you—I’d fail miserably.
Isola told us that when Granny Pheen was nine years old, her father drowned her cat. Muffin had apparently climbed onto the table and licked the butter dish. That was enough for Pheen’s beastly father—he thrust Muffin into a burlap bag, added some rocks, tied up the sack, and flung Muffin into the ocean. Then, meeting Pheen walking home from school, he told her what he’d done—and good riddance, too.
He then toddled off to the tavern and left Granny sitting plumb in the middle of the road, sobbing out her heart.
A carriage, driving far too fast, came within a whisker of running her down. The coachman rose from his seat and began to curse her, but his passenger—a very big man, in a dark coat with a fur collar, jumped out. He told the driver to be quiet, leaned over Pheen, and asked if he could help her.
Granny Pheen said no, no—she was beyond help. Her cat was gone! Her Pa had drowned Muffin, and now Muffin was dead—dead and gone forever.
The man said, “Of course Muffin’s not dead. You do know cats have nine lives, don’t you?” When Pheen said yes, she had heard of such before, the man said, “Well, I happen to know your Muffin was only on her third life, so she has six lives left.”
Pheen asked how he knew. He said he just did, He Always Knew—it was a gift he’d been born with. He didn’t know how or why it happened, but cats would often appear in his mind and chat with him. Well, not in words of course, but in pictures.
Then he sat down in the road beside her and said for them to keep still—very still. He would see if Muffin wanted to visit with him. They sat in silence for several minutes, when suddenly the man grabbed Pheen’s hand!
“Ah—yes! There she is! She’s being born this minute! In a mansion—no, a castle. I think she’s in France—yes, she’s in France. There’s a little boy petting her—stroking her fur. He loves her already, and he’s going to name her —how strange, he is going to name her Solange. That’s a strange name for a cat, but still. She is going to live a long, lovely venturesome life. This Solange has great spirit, great verve, I can tell already!”
Granny Pheen told Isola she was so rapt by Muffin’s new fate, she quit crying. But she told the man she would still miss Muffin so much. The man lifted her to her feet and said of course she would—she
However, he said, he would call on Solange every once in a while and find out how she was faring and what she was up to. He asked Granny Pheen’s name and the name of the farm where she lived. He wrote her answers down in a small notebook with a silver pencil, told her she’d be hearing from him, kissed her hand, got back into the carriage, and left.
Absurd as all this sounds, Sidney, Granny Pheen did receive letters. Eight long letters over a year—all about Muffin’s life as the French cat Solange. She was, apparently, something of a feline Musketeer. She was no idle cat, lolling about on cushions, lapping up cream—she lived through one wild adventure after another—the only cat ever to be awarded the red rosette of the Legion of Honor.
What a story this man made up for Pheen—lively, witty, full of drama and suspense. I can only tell you the effect it had on me—on all of us. We sat enchanted—even Will was left speechless.
But here, at last, is why I need a sane head and sober counsel. When the program was over (and much applauded), I asked Isola if I could see the letters, and she handed them to me.
Sidney, the writer had signed his letters with a grand flourish:
Sidney, do you suppose? Could it possibly be that Isola has inherited eight letters written by Oscar Wilde? Oh God, I am beside myself.
I believe it because I
