Among my most treasured items
is a packet of letters, Christmas cards and birthday cards from my Grandma
Shimeta. The envelopes and letters are tied
together with a ribbon. They represent
my communication with my Grandma from my college years until I was
married. There in her shaky penmanship
she tells me about her garden, fruit trees in her yard, my cousins, aunts and
uncles, her neighbors, which people stopped by her house for a visit and stayed
for dinner and what she would be doing for any given holiday. Her word usage and verb conjugations are, if
nothing else, creative as English was her sixth language and she only had an
eighth grade education. Yet, as I read
them I can see her sitting at her kitchen table writing, smell the food she may
have cooked for lunch or dinner and imagine being in her presence or staying in
her warm, inviting home. Those pieces of
paper, my Grandma’s letters, are my history with her.
Letters……hand written letters are precious keepsakes and
a vision into the past like nothing else in our lives. They tell us stories of our present and past,
give us a view into the history of the day the letter was written and most important
reveal the letter writer’s inner most thoughts and emotions. When you hold that letter in your hand, you
hold a part of the person who wrote it.
The world of music embraces
letters whether being written, received or read. From Mozart, Massenet, Offenbach, Verdi and
Tchaikovsky are opera arias and duets about letters. Emotions, lots of emotions are expressed in
those letters as only opera is capable of conveying. In the pop music world we have the songs,
“P.S. I Love You,” “Take a Letter, Maria,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” and "I’m Gonna Sit
Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”
Letters …….. the importance of letters for without them our
understanding of history would have blank places.
When a music researcher comes
upon letters either written or received by a composer, a new perspective of that
person comes into view. Composers were
notorious letter writers when they did not have the present day luxury of the
internet, texting, Facebook or tweeting.
Over the years of getting to
know Gena Branscombe, I have learned she was a prolific letter writer. In the music publisher Arthur P. Schmidt’s
collection at the Library of Congress are letters from every composer he
published. In Gena’s file are pictures
of her, her daughters and all of her letters to Mr. Schmidt. Many expressed her thanks for the royalty
checks she received and an explanation of what music she was working on. Then, there was always a paragraph or two
about her personal life whether about concerts she was performing or the details
of her daughters’ shenanigans! Some of
her letters were ones that broke my heart.
She would request a loan against her future royalty checks as she needed
the money to pay for her daughters’ medical bills. The letter where she described the death of
her daughter, Betty, was particularly poignant. There was her life spelled out
in her own handwriting with her emotions bubbling from the page I held in my
hand.
In my possession I have
several of her letters thanks to members of the Branscombe Choral or their
families. After the Choral disbanded she
kept in contact with the members through letter writing commenting on the
women’s lives, their children, sending them copies of articles she wrote and
always wishing them good health and happiness.
She wrote thank you letters to those who hosted her for lunch or those
who had visited. With a positive and
encouraging word to anyone with whom she had been in contact, she wrote and
wrote letters.
Reading Miss Branscombe’s letters I have learned she was a caring, loving individual with exemplary communication skills. Letter writing was a way to self-promote her compositions and performances of her music. She was a driven and passionate person whose life had not been easy. Despite all that, music was her life no matter the road blocks. Her ardor and emotions emanate from the paper on which she wrote.
This past week, two more of her letters came into my possession. Written to pianist and author, Anya Laurence-Thiel, Miss Branscombe expresses her thanks for Anya’s visit and her sharing the music of composer Arthur Farwell. The second note congratulates Anya on the completion of her book and Gena’s wishes for good luck with her publishers. The letters were written a few months before Gena’s death in July 1977.
Included with these two
letters was an October 1977 card/note from Gena Tenney Phenix, Gena
Branscombe’s daughter, to Anya. Gena,
Jr. also congratulates Anya on her book, then thanks her for dedicating the
book to her mother, and, requests that copies be sent to Laurine Elkins Marlow
and Dr. Adrienne Fried-Block. I took
notice that Gena, Jr. signed the card, “The Two Genas.” Her mother had been dead three months. The daughter carries on her mother’s legacy
of writing letters and showing her appreciation for the continuance of her
mother’s music career.
What can we learn from these
examples of letter writing? Putting pen
to paper, using our own physical being to write and express your emotions and
happenings in life becomes a piece of your personal history. For the recipient of your letter, the
information fills in the blanks of your everyday life…..what you are doing,
what you have eaten, how you are handling stress, what books you may be reading,
what play you saw, your relationships, health and the list goes on and on.
Yes, we can express all that
in a typed e-mail or Facebook posting using all the internet abbreviations and
emoticons. Writing may be considered old
fashioned right now. Returning to letter
writing, in my opinion, is a must. We engage
our physical being to sort through our thoughts and emotions, we touch pen and
paper with that in mind and give the gift of ourselves unlike any other kind of
communication.....the telling of your own history.
When I began making contacts
in Picton, I found people who would then give me other names, phone numbers and
e-mail addresses of someone who might have information. One surprise was being in touch with one of
Gena’s relatives! All of these people were
more than willing to help me in my quest for information from over 100 years
ago. 
