Thursday, August 28th

YESTERDAY Ed and Susan Kenney came for lunch. I had looked forward so much to their visit, and it was a beautiful hot, clear day, comfortable because of the low humidity, and a bright blue sea to welcome them. We plunged at once into talk about Elizabeth Bowen. Ed has written an excellent monograph on her work. (I discovered him through his review of her posthumous book Pictures and Conversations in The New Republic and had written to thank him for it.) Ed and Susan saw Elizabeth in Hythe and described the tiny house where she lived. The second time they went, she was ill and received them in bed, but her great gift for instant intimacy was at work as she lay with their year-old Jamie beside her. I keep that image of the dying old woman with little Jamie. And I was comforted by Ed saying she had written him to warn that she longed to hear but that she simply did not write letters. It may partly explain her long silence as far as I am concerned.