Thursday, January 15th

IT DID NOT SNOW; instead, we had a wild night of rain, temperature up to 40°! Next morning I could hardly believe my eyes, as I could see brown grass at the end of the field. A treacherous mask of ice on the path and the road, but they did sand it and I was able to get out. I’m sick with a virus much like the one that knocked me out for six months last year. At such times it becomes plain that I cannot be ill here. I have to walk the dog, put out birdseed, fetch the mail, however I may feel. Otherwise I just lie around. Temperature 100° yesterday. My whole rhythm is in reverse as I can do nothing in the morning but sit at this desk and contemplate all I have no strength to do. But I do have a brief emergence of energy around four P.M. as the light goes over the sea.

Lee has decided against the house. Probably it was not right for her, but I wonder what she can find that is. This also depressed me, because I have spent energy I really didn’t have and wasted four or five days in all over this project. Waste of time enrages me. I am overaware these days of how little I have left, how few years. I used to brag that I could never retire, but now sometimes I dream of only living and gardening and leaving words alone. Heaven!

In all the bad old year one thing shines as pure joy—that at last Eva Le Gallienne is in a huge hit on Broadway, The Royal Family. How beautiful it is now to read in Newsweek, for instance, “Eva Le Gallienne makes you believe for two and a half hours that the theatre does breed people of unique beauty, grace and human richness. Now nearing 80, Miss Le Gallienne has been almost everything it’s possible to be in the theatre. She casts a rainbow across the stage.”