Sunday, June 13th

ON FRIDAY I went down to Cambridge to spend the night at Olivia Constable’s before Karen’s terminar for Union Graduate School, and in spite of 90° degree heat, I fell in love all over again with leafy Cambridge, with the gardens and spacious old houses. My feet felt at home on the pavements as I walked from Craigie Street to see Anne Thorp and Agnes at The Barn. Children were playing in a fountain in front of what used to be Denman Ross’s house, and I drank in the great copper beeches, the elms, the arbors of roses, and at Anne’s a tulip tree in flower—I don’t believe I have ever seen one before. It all felt like home, and of course was home through all my childhood. But last Friday it had real magic for me again.

Olivia’s old mansard-roofed house spoke to my very bones—everything, from the masses of books in my bedroom (that used to be W.G.’s) to the old-fashioned bathtub, the presence everywhere of beautiful things, and, above all, the unself-conscious slightly shabby (but always elegant) air of every room, and the old incontinent bassets who are kept from going upstairs and from the drawing room by wooden child’s fences, the huge tabby cat. Such quality of life!

During the night the temperature dropped at last, and in the morning I lay in my bed in perfect bliss watching the light on leaves. The next morning there was a splendid discussion around Karen’s thesis.