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Palmer’s Method of Penmanship
- University of Wisconsin Press
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126Palmer’s Method of Penmanship Palmer drained his Scotch in a sin gle gulp. He fol lowed that with an other, and then a third. His drink ing was de lib er ate and in ten tional: he was doing what was nec es sary to get drunk. Maybe other hus bands wouldn’t have to get drunk be fore they could write a eu logy to their wife. Not he. This was not an op er a tion he could carry out with out first an esthetiz ing him self. He wrote with a foun tain pen. He used real ink. Black. From his desk he could see, out the win dow, snow fall ing on Joss Court. It made him think of James Joyce’s story “The Dead.” It made him think of North um bria in the eighth cen tury. He had pub lished a book on North um bria in the eighth cen tury. That was the rum thing about being a his to rian: every thing re minded you of some thing else. His head was over run with ref er ences. He had lived his life in the past tense. He made an effort now to create a por trait of his wife as ir re place able, be yond sub sti tu tion, unique, and present. Which, in his mind, she was—as present as she had been for all the years he had known her. He thought back to their first meet ing, at the Merchants’ Pa rade with its array of clever floats. He began to write: When I met Nina for the first time and told her that I could be in love with her, I cer tainly did not mean that I was. Who falls in love at first sight? Okay, Dante, but who else? I had seen her photo graph in 127 Palmer’s Method of Penmanship her books, of course, but I wasn’t in love with a photo graph. Maybe with the words? Any way, what I meant when I said that to her was what I said: that I could be, in time, if things worked out. As for the no tion of “fall ing in love,” it’s my im pres sion that for the most part peo ple don’t fall in love. What they do is de cide to be in love and then talk them selves into being in love with so-and-so. It’s a type of self-hypnotism. That’s the way it is for a man, at least. It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t give your life for the one you’ve cho sen. I’d have given up mine in a sec ond to save Nina’s. The child was a bonus. That was what I wanted: a fam ily, a life out side my work. A for bear ing woman who would stick around for the du ra tion. That day at the Merchants’ Pa rade, when Tavy got lost in the crowd and I grabbed hold of her for Nina, what I saw was a woman with red-brown hair, in one of those sum mery sorts of dresses—it was sleeve less—and san dals, and she kept turn ing her head to look for her daugh ter so I saw her pro file. Do you re mem ber Gene viève Bu jold? She had Gene viève Bujold’s pro file. In the Her mi tage in Saint Pe ters burg I saw a paint ing by Pi casso of a woman in me di eval dress, in clud ing one of those tall cone-shaped hats called a hen nin, with a veil trail ing from it. Nina looked like her, too. She was wor ried sick that Tavy was lost. Or kid napped. My guess is that the adren a line rush caused by that is what made her con nect with me. But I would never have told her that. I just said we had chem is try. Ibe came a his to rian be cause I wanted to know what had hap pened in the world be fore I ar rived. I chose Brit ish his tory rather than Amer ican be cause there’s more of it. I chose me di eval his tory be cause I had seen Picasso’s me di eval lady and had fal len in love...