Topical Guide 237
Mark Dorset
Names, Pronunciation of
When I was a child, I called my grandparents “Gumma” and “Guppa.” Originally, the names were just mispronunciations of “Grandma” and “Grandpa,” of course, but as time passed they became terms of endearment, and I continued to use them long after I was able to say “Grandma” and “Grandpa” clearly. I shifted, uncomfortably, to something like “Gram” and “Gramp” for a brief time during adolescence, when childhood leftovers embarrassed me, but I soon returned to “Gumma” and “Guppa,” and once back never strayed again.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Preface
NOTE: “Guppa,” should be pronounced GUHP-uh, not GOO-pah or goo-PAH. “Gumma” should be pronounced GUHM-uh, not GOO-mah or goo-MAH.
Growing Up (Slowly, in an Autobiography or Memoir)
I think that underlying my persistent use of my childhood names for them was an assertion that my grandparents were, and would always remain, the Gumma and Guppa I had known when I was a child. My Gumma was large and soft, generous, enduringly pretty, pleasant, devoted to the domestic arts, the provider of huge beige-and-white meals — biscuits, boiled onions, chicken, cream sauces, and potatoes prepared in a thousand ways, the best of them a German potato salad that filled the house with the pungency of vinegar and bacon — an amateur logician and mathematician, occasionally a repairer of jewelry, a reader of best-selling novels, mostly historical ones. My Guppa was small and quick, apparently always either amused or puzzled, a talented and hard-working salesman, a tireless home handyman, an amateur inventor, a happy tinkerer. Now, after so many years, and after it was too late, Gumma was, it seemed to me, asking me to get to know them as someone else entirely, as what other people called them: Herb and Lorna.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Preface
To write about one’s childhood is comparatively simple. One’s life has a natural defining frame. One knows who one is; in childish egotism, one supposes people have a relationship only with oneself. But after the age of twenty, the frame is uncertain, change is hard to pin down, one is less and less sure of who one is, and other egos with their court of adherents invade one’s privacy with theirs. One’s freedom is inhibited by their natural insistence on themselves; also, the professional writer who spends his time becoming other people and places, real or imaginary, finds he has written his life away and has become almost nothing. The true autobiography of this egotist is exposed in all its intimate foliage in his work.
Cocktails with a Curator: Constable’s “White Horse”
Frick curator Aimee Ng hosts us at her apartment for “Cocktails with a Curator.” She tells us the story of one of John Constable’s favorite and monumental paintings, “The White Horse.” Aimee shares Constable’s inventive sketches and his nostalgic memories of the English countryside. Tonight’s drink is Gin and Dubonnet, reportedly Queen Elizabeth II’s cocktail of choice.
Cocktail Recipe Gin and Dubonnet
1 part London dry gin
2 parts Dubonnet Rouge
squeeze of lemon
stirred and strained over 3 ice cubes and lemon wedge
[more to come on Thursday, April 14, 2022]
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