All letters – Page 20 – BERTHA BALLOU LETTERS

Before we knew it we had 10 cats

To Nell Babbitt from Bertha (letter never sent) – Approx. date

[Note: This was added: “She was a good looking enough woman in a undistinguished sort of way, paled as we are were in the tropics in ______ days when makeup was still regarded as vulgar – and why it isn’t still a bit of a puzzler.”]

2920 W. Denwood Avenue
Spokane, Washington

Dearest Nell,

Thank you so very much for your lovely letter and the beautiful handkerchief which I received on my birthday. You really should not have sent the letter but it was very sweet of you and I am enjoying it and using it with pride.

It does not seem possible that I have let two months pass without writing – but such a lot of work had piled up – and leisure hours, such as they are – and few enough – are so often interrupted – so that, thinking of you daily and intending to write. I have kept putting it off for the time when I could really collect my thoughts. Writing is so unsatisfactory as compared with seeing and visiting – to think that I had never made you understand what a great ______ and favor I considered the loan of your apartment – how deeply I appreciated it and how completely I realized the generosity of such an offer. Also, as I finally tell you, it came a time when the friendliness of the atmosphere was especially restful. It was almost – but alas, not quite like seeing you and Ethel to be in your home, recalling so many other times – over such a stretch of years.

Since beginning this, I’ve taken time off for lunch with Sally – whose day off it is – and an hour’s work in the studio – thinking as I worked along how awfully nice it would be if you could come out here and visit us sometime. You have never been one to dwell on your troubles but I do know from casual mentions of this or that occurrence, that you have had a hard life – lots of difficulties which you have met gallantly and I find myself wondering what the retirement conditions are in New York. It must surely be getting towards the time for you to take a rest. I hope there is some arrangement by which you can do so. I suppose the Social Security operates all over the country on the same basis – not much to live on – but better than nothing.

I infer that you still go to Newark when you are well enough. What about the headaches now? Am so distressed to know that you are always been subject to severe headaches, haven’t you?

How is Ethel? Is she able to do any drawing at present? We simply hate a lot of the book illustrations that are being done and would like to see some Bob Blossoms.

They own activities. A little painting here and there – a dozen things that _____ to be finished out aren’t, a little housekeeping that never really arrived, a bit of gardening that makes the beds look as if chicken has been scratching. I never felt such a muddler before – if any I could clear the seats once – I’d like to start over.

The winter has been mild – but spring has been interminably slow in coming. Half the hardy plants winter killed. It will be mid-summer before we realize that winter is over – and this spring has been complicated by a serious epidemic among the cats.

We have a cat family. I am ashamed to confess that the two we intended to keep, were three instead – and all females so before we knew it we had 10 cats, each one so charming in it’s own individual way that we couldn’t dispose of it. So 10 cats we had it sounds like some of the terrible old women we read of who live all alone with 40 cats and murder people.

While we haven’t taken to murder yet, although, Sally was threatening it at noon as she read her weekly book review and considered one of the modern poets. Said it had to be done but all of this is a discussion.

The 10 cats all were very sick – except the one pure white Angora – several at a time for one solid month – extra expense for the vet, for medicine – for special food – endless newspaper to burn, etcetera, etcetera – but we pulled them through 100% – and still have 10 cats. There’s the white one, Sugarplum, the black one Caliope, her black son, Bruno, her black and white son with a patch over one eye, Pagliacci, her black with white paws daughter, Tippy Toe – her brother, the big ex-tomcat, Rosetti with beautiful tiger markings and Pixie, the little tiger cat and Linxie, the big longhaired calico and ______ the wooly tan Persian and Lilli who looks like exactly like Leslie Caron and who came to us out of the bushes last summer. Besides these 10, we have two visiting tomcats who come see our ladies. Decided it was a good place and appealed to my sympathies so that they have to have handouts once a day. It’s quite a place – enough to satisfy any cat lover – and discussed anyone else but keeps us busy. Perhaps if you can come and see us, we won’t have so many by that time for we…

[Note: Draft letter ends]

Still working in my studio through not much this winter

To Evelyn Hope Daniels from Bertha – March 22, 1970

[Note: This is last letter we have. Bertha is 80 and has eight years to live. It was returned to sender, “cause: recipient deceased”.]

2920 West Sherwood Avenue
Spokane, Washington

Dear Evelyn Hope,

At last in going through old cards and papers, I have run across an address in Franklin, North Carolina.

I write at once – want the address at Christmas but couldn’t find it.

Well, I’m still here, in my eightieth year, but strong and active, still working in my studio through not much this winter, a few portraits every year, usually pupils, but not during the last six months. Have been asked to write the story of my life but haven’t dared mention it to my mind younger sister, Sally, with whom I live. She would probably be outraged at the idea so I keep it under my hat.

Sorry that your mother had to use a wheelchair, those things come to the most rigorous. I was happy on living here with studio next door during my mother’s last years. Could keep painting and teaching and then come in in the afternoon and make tea and read for her.

Now there is only Sally (12 years younger) and myself.

Not too good a set up. I am busy as I like to be, do a bit of gardening and have lived in Spokane as home base for around fifty or sixty years.

Do let me hear more from you. I wrote to one of your cousins in New York City last year, to get news, but without definite result.

What am I doing now? Working, riding herd on three dogs and ten or fifteen cats and kittens. Flowers are beginning, we are far north, but a reasonably good climate. Do let me hear right if this reaches you. Am trying to “pick up the threads.” Was married as you know. Got a divorce, the deceased wife’s family came to me and begged me to keep the children, so I wasn’t too bad a step mother. But, of course, I couldn’t keep the children much as I wished.

Went abroad for a couple of years, back to work. And that’s about it.

Pleases write. I’ve thought of you so often. Found a burglar in the house day before yesterday and got the police, when they came, they were so nice and comforting (though the burglar had run away) that it “took me back” to the old days in New York City (crossing the streets).

Do let me know if you are well, happy, working?

With fondest recollections of happy days,

Bertha (Ballou)

From Bertha Ballou
2920 West Sherwood Avenue
Spokane II, Washington
Miss Evelyn Hope Daniels
Main Street
Franklin North Carolina
DECEASED
Please forward.

Obituary

Full text here.

Epilogue

EDITOR’S PICK

By Stephen Ballou

[Note: Steve is a physician living in Ottawa, Canada. He is the son Bill Ballou – who was the son of Bertha’s brother Senn.]

In 1982, when I was a young student in Montreal, my father called me one day. His Aunt Sally, living alone in Spokane, Washington, was not well. Could I go to see her?

My father had lived with Aunt Sally and her sister Bertha during high school. The aunts had brought him out of a chaotic home, where his single mother had recently died. His father had been absent for years. Sally was a city librarian, and Bertha was a professional artist, and they civilized my father. By the time he was old enough to lie about his age and join the army, he was educated, polished and determined to succeed. He was forever grateful to them.

Bertha had died several years before my father’s phone call. Sally was living alone in the old house, with 17 cats and 5 dogs. Severely handicapped by rheumatoid arthritis, her world was an armchair, with a path between waist-high piles of newspapers to the kitchen and the bathroom. When I first opened the front door, I fell back from the smell. In the darkness I heard her small voice, asking who was there. This is how our friendship began.

I went back for several visits, the last time to help her move to an assisted care center. It was painful for both of us. Sally lost her last bit of freedom, while I did my best to empty her house of seventy years of hoarding. Under the newspapers and rubbish there were a number of fine pieces of furniture, paintings and books. All had the unforgettable odor of feral dogs and cats. Everything was trucked to my parents’ house in South Carolina, where it spent many months in the garage. Most was eventually recovered and restored, and the collection gave a fine image of Sally and Bertha’s life at their prime.

My father eventually decided to bring Sally to South Carolina to be near the family. My last memory is of her lying in a hospital bed, looking very small. My wife Louise sat our baby daughter Eloise on the bed beside her. Aunt Sally was unable to talk, but she smiled. I had only seen her smile a few times in all the years that I had known her. She died of a stroke two months later.