Rosa to Jessie Northcutt, 15 January 1943, Patzcuaro, Michoacan -- "patience tops all virtues in this wonderful country"

Looking back through letters, I think living in Patzcuaro in 1942-43 was the happiest time in Rosa's life. She was 25, completely in love, thrilled to get out of New York City, and was immersed in photography, art, and the kind of "figure it out" homemaking she always liked best. Knowing Murray would be drafted soon gave the pleasure an extra edge.
 

Dearest Mother,

Have just finished repairing my shower curtain. I don't mean to pass myself off as a pioneer for the accomplishment, but it isn't a bad curtain for 35 cents -- 20 cents for 4 meters of pale yellow stuff that looks slightly like linen, 10 cents for four pairs of large, rustproof earrings to hand it from, and 3 cents for a nice hand-whittled pole. Plus 2 cents worth of buckshot which, sewn into the hem, makes it hang beautifully.

The moonlight is always very bright here in the clear mountain air, with the reflection from the lake, but tonight it is especially effective from our windows. Yesterday Don Juan finished painting all the trees with white lime and tonight the whole orchard is shining silver, stretching in long rows like a ballet chorus. The trees are very small and will not bear very much, but one tiny peach tree is bursting into pink blossom, apparently unaware that this is January and there is frost nearly every night.

Bluey grows more like a dog and more lovable every day. Walking to the hotel for mail today, with Haj at his heels and Bluey rolling along at hers, Murray got ten offers for him which is about the daily average. When I saw he is growing to look like a dog it may be indulgence, because no small dog was ever so fat before. We were quite relieved when he first barked because it might well have been an oink instead of a woof.

... You would be amazed to see how many things your money bought in Patzcuaro. And I know it could have bought some pretty important things in Tacoma too, like a new rug. I'm awfully glad you made yourself a Christmas present of the Minton ware. Really satisfyingly beautiful things are never an extravagance. You are certain to get their value in pleasure from just looking at them. I confess tho, Mother, that I can't think of a group of seventeen people I'd like to eat dinner with all at the same time. Murray wouldn't let me buy a pottery set for eight because he said there weren't that many people he'd invite to dinner. Howard set the limit at four for Judy, but then he is really anti-social. Of course that was in New York, where hospitality is comparatively undiscovered. I wish you had my pretty coffee set to use with your China. My plates are very attractive, with incredibly childlike drawings of horses, cows, canoes, houses, etc. in the center, but they are half an inch thick and rather out of tune with the dainty, graceful sterling. It has to be graceful; I designed it myself.

Among the other good things 1943 has brought to the Morgans are the end of Murray's book, which has already been sent to Howard, and encouraging war news on our own small, but very satisfactory radio. We brought the radio back from Mexico City as a Christmas present to each other when we found we couldn't afford an enlarger. While most of our programs come on the shortwave band we get amazing reception at night on standard broadcasts. Tonight we heard the Fred Allen program exactly as you probably heard him. The president's speech was a clear here as it was in Washington D.C.

The familiar programs like Jack Benny and Information Please, and on New Year's Day, the Rose Bowl game, bring Patzcuaro much closer to Tacoma. The wonderful concert programs on every evening around midnight have filled the only real lack in Patzcuaro life.

Murray has just wounded my feelings by suggesting that the chocolate fudge I made today would be good with ice cream under it, the fudge being an unusually fine syrup. I think the altitude is to blame. I would be very happy to get the ice cream, but the nearest is in Morelia, the capital of this state. ...

Not only ice cream but cream is unavailable except on rare occasions in this country. Coffee is served black like most European coffee or with hot milk as it is in England. I have learned to like the hot milk combination. Anyway we have the coffee and it is cheap, abundant, and very good. Last week when the house was filled with the fragrance of fresh coffee roasting over the charcoal fire in the kitchen I thought of the one cup a day limit at home and felt very selfish but it is impossible to send a grain of it across the border.

We, Amelia mostly, made tamales too last week, a much more complicated process than you imagine. Since our corn hasn't even been planted yet we had to buy the grain, a thing that wouldn't happen to most of our neighbors. The first step is a lye bath for the corn, very short so that it doesn’t turn into hominy but is slightly softened.

Wood gathering in Erongricuaro -- credit: Rosa Morgan

The next day the corn spends sunning on a large pottery tray in the back yard. On the third day it is milled in a little hand mill which also handles the coffee and is an extravagance justified by the back-aches which accompany grinding in the stone metate. The materials which went into the sauce, however, were ground in a large, three footed, hollowed stone with a smaller stone, called a molcajete. Tomatoes, onions, garlic, a "mild" dried red pepper, cloves, something like sage and bayleaf, and a dozen other spices, all of which Amelia purchased in little twists of brown paper, went into the most fragrant and piquant, and also the hottest sauce you ever tasted. Also into the sauce went two pounds of well-cooked pork loin. The secret of good tamales, Amelia said, is beating. And for an hour and a half she stood beating, hard, the shortening into the corn meal. Amelia is not big but I think she could cure Glenn of his handshaking tricks. To finish the tamales, meat and sauce go into the cornmeal, which is spread in well-washed white corn husks and each neat package is fitted into our biggest olla (pottery jug) and the collection is steamed rather than boiled for about an hour. It must have been discouraging for Amelia to see the results of a day's work disappear in a few minutes.

Mother, will you look up the recipe for butterscotch, banana cream pie in the cook book from Hoquiam and send it to me, along with one for biscuits and any others you can think of? As I mentioned before, there are no prepared or semi-prepared foods, especially desserts like jello, chocolate pudding, and Hostess cakes or ice cream, so I need a cook book like I never did before. I have one printed in Spanish but, as if that didn't complicate it enough, the measurements are in grams and kilos instead of cups and teaspoons and I have no scales. Besides, the results of most of the recipes would be as unfamiliar as the ingredients are, and I would never know whether I had a success.

So far I have no oven, except for a small cast-iron Dutch oven which hasn't been too successful, but I hope to bring one back from Guadalajara where we are going tomorrow.

We had a turkey here on New Year's Day, or rather served at the stroke of midnight, with Bill and Carmella as guests but it was baked in a bread baker's oven, a friend of Amelia's. It was a good turkey but not quite a U.S. one. The stuffing, Mexican style, had carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and chopped zucchini squash in it, but it was flavored with sage, among other things, and it had pineapple slices centered with cherries around it. Absent were sweet potatoes, cranberries, pies, mince or pumpkin, and other turkey trimmings.

We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at the Fords' house. Jacqueline is a genius, and besides that, she has eight people working in the kitchen. I've never tasted a better mince pie. And I've never seen such a pretty tree as their long needled pine tree with colored bows tied all over it. The walls were decorated in surrealistic confections in colored paper which are more appropriate for a festive, celebrating air than any holiday trimmings I've seen. All of these things including the fact that Gordon gave us one of his pictures, made especially for us, didn't make the day seem like Christmas, but as Murray said, it was like a very nice Thanksgiving.

The carving came back, along with Bill and his 4-F. I have it now

We said goodbye to Bill [Fett] and saw him off on the train to Laredo and his army induction four days ago. He was miserable about leaving Patzcuaro and we were sorry to see him go, only partly because he took with him a beautiful wood carving which he had loaned to us and we had grown to feel possessive about. Standing above our fireplace it gave a special character to the whole room which is gone now. We still have a head carved by Bill and two of his pictures and we will see a lot of his wife, Carmella.

...

The General's promised horse has not arrived yet, but I expect it any day. It has to come by train, I think, from Mexico, abut 200 miles. When it does arrive I will need something to wear on it. Slacks are not worn here, where the women wear their skirts to their ankles, and I have none. (Slacks, not ankles) If you could roll up my old green breeches and send them to me, care of the hotel, I don't think the duty will be too much. They were only $2.00 new and they are well worn now. ... Boots will probably be cheaper here than the mailing cost and duty.

Is Bob home now? I would like to hear from him and from Glenn. According to a report in Time, most of the fighting against the Japs in the jungles of New Guinea, a mosquito and fever filled, truly unpleasant place, is being done by former members of the Washington and Oregon National Guard. I'm glad my brothers weren't plump enough to be eligible for that particular part of the war.

It's very late now, nearly 3:00 and here in the country we go to bed early usually. Tomorrow we will leave for Guadalajara. We've planned the trip since Christmas, or rather since the scholarship check arrived, but had to postpone it daily waiting for one tire to be repaired in Morelia. Patience tops all virtues in this wonderful country.

Love,

Rosa and Murray

P.S. Give my love to Dad Morgan. Constance Ann sends out most of the correspondence from that end now. She said in her last letter than you were looking beautiful.

Gordon Onslow Ford to Morgans, 12 December 1943

 

When Rosa and Murray moved to Patzcuaro in 1942, living on Murray's Pulitzer traveling scholarship, whose conditions he met by reporting on the Mexican press, they met an expat community of artists and writers centered around the English Surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford. They spent a lot of time together until the Morgans returned to Tacoma in the summer of '43 to await the draft.

Although he came from a family of artists, Ford was sent to a naval college at 14 and had only in 1940 left the service to paint full time. He and his American wife, the writer Jacqueline Johnson, were a few years older than Murray and Rosa and much more sophisticated. Gordon's description of his military service makes him sound like a reflective elder, though he was 32 at the time. Remarkably, his vision of an artistic community overlooking the sea, full of creative ferment and "beautiful women," was largely realized when they moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1947.

 

El Molino

Eronguaricuaro 

Dear Rosa and Murray,

We have been following your news with great sympathy. I can well imagine your military training having been through much the same thing myself—the abstract wife [?] of authority, the way the mind thinks only of bodily needs in states of bodily fatigue, the training schedule brought down to the level of the most stupid, the kick of drilling to perfection, the spirit of competition between one group and another, the occasional friend in the vast flock, the hopeless feeling of being part of an enormous wave, the luxury of a day’s rest, the importance of mail and dreams of the future. I sometimes feel very badly that I too am not in the thick of it, but it was not to be, and so I am still here on the banks of Lake Patzcuaro working like a demon and learning every day. My role as painter is clear, it is not to take an active part in progressive politics, not to gird myself about with super machine guns & fight the enemy. It is to paint pictures, create new objects, find a new way to explain the world. What influence it will have on culture is as difficult to predict as it is to know how any baby will develop. 

 

from left: Murray, Bill Fett, Jacqueline and Gordon, Carmen Fett

I am disgusted with all that I hear about the art world, art dealers, and museums. I hope to be able to leave them to stew in their own gravy and start something new with a small group of friends independently. Last spring I resigned from Surrealism --  all good reasons for being a surrealist had been destroyed. My only regret is a temporary break with my dear friends Breton and Tanguy, but I gather that all surrealist activity proper has by now more or less collapsed and the parole is now with imitations of what was alive twenty years ago. Breton is once again hard at work on no one knows what. The country here is a constant source of inspiration and theoretic inspiration comes mainly from American philosophy and modern physics. Of our old friends from Europe it is only with [Wolfgang] Paalen  that a real spirit of friendship and understanding exists and it is with him that we are going to work in ever closer contact. Jacqueline is becoming co-editor of Dyn for a new series beginning No7 where emphasis is going to be much more on practice than theory. Bill [Fett] and other young American friends probably contributing. If you have any ideas please send them in. Paalen has been seriously ill for 6 months with unknown microbes but now after being temporarily paralyzed is up and about again. Dyn 4.5 the Amerindian number is at the press. It will be of the best publications on the subject with a good article on the northwest coat. Needless to say our minds eye has as horizon the Pacific probably two years away as yet. Dyn will probably move with us maybe in disguise of a new title. The sun setting over the sea magnificent coastal scenery, contact with the orient, beautiful women, good printing presses, a young generation full of unprejudiced energy, the possibility of not only being a primitive of a new art, but also a primitive of a new civilization. Just imagine the influence of a first class art magazine—painting, poetry and architecture, prose, photography and anything that might lead to a more exciting way of living. Big reproductions in full colour, cheap color prints, interior decoration, colored cartoons, exhibitions, lectures, debates, new fashions, new manners. All this starting in a very humble way but growing like ripples in water from a falling stone.

When my dear Rosa and Murray you have your own paper we shall expect you to crusade for the Pacific World as yet only existing in dreams. In any case whatever the future holds for us let’s not lose contact even though we seldom write. Here’s to the day when we can meet again and both devote our energies to creation.

Happy Xmas and all good things possible for 1944

Gordon Onslow-Ford

Jacqueline (Johnson) Onslow Ford to Morgans, Fall 1943 -- "So strange this time and place"

 

Dear Rosa and Murray,

So strange this time and space and matter of displacements; there you are far away and yet it is easy to imagine Tacoma, easy and painful imagining fresh butter, bacon, oh glory, rationing indeed, among all the green lawns and clean sidewalks ice-cream sodas and shiny bicycles; would you please lend me a fresh strawberry pecan nut special? did you ever stop to realize how much is wasted in circulars from bond houses alone? Let all talk of the State Dept. continue to fall on deaf I mean deef ears all tangled up as they are with their clean hands rolling snakes disguised as hoops, they (all of them of course) according to this oracle will find themselves in some sinister fairy circles before they eat their lobster thermidor, Rue Thermidor, again.

I do not think I like war stories but I think they have to be written. The accounts of action if Life are some of the best things I've read, especially one about Guadalcanal. I'm amazed at the tact and sensitiveness and good bare style that seems to give you the thing as it is; truth is a meaning too, and probably the one we Americans feel most, its austere sweetness even distempering us for other values that we need perhaps to fatten out our spirits. But I rather hope I shall not read because I hope you will not have to write any of the war experiences of Murray Morgan. We’ve just heard the news of the American bombing of the Roumanian oil fields, 99% of the Nazi supply, someone said. The British owned the wells, but the Americans have no hesitation therefore; what curiously thoughtful faces there must be behind the desks in both capitals sometimes, saying nothing but tapping their teeth with their pencils.

Gordon has been alternately living in Washington and Oregon, on sound and snow-peak, island and beach. To the point where I had to wire Californians Inc. who did not I am sorry to say quite come up to scratch; influence of Hollywood draping a beauty more or less ready for bathing around every scenic marvel including the frozen waterfalls, which meant, as a matter of focus, cutting out the waterfalls. As far as I can tell he has taken to living permanently somewhere in a sound, but whether Washington or Oregon I'm not sure; it's very bright blue in the picture.

Yesterday little grey kitten (who came with a blue bow) Chickadee had three different coloured cats, one an obvious scoundrel with a white, yellow, brown black and grey face, he ought to be drowned but we can't find anyone with the heart to do it. She is fine and not very surprised. One of them looks like her. I've just read that the discovery of a dark planet outside the solar system leads our most responsible astronomer to say there are probably thousands of inhabited planets, all dark, all not doing anything but revolving in a permanent black-out; all dark boats launched on their indefinite length fixed cruise for to see and to admire.

Lake Patzcuaro "That reflecting stillness in which all things are double"  Rosa Morgan photograph