Tuesday, July 13th

WE HAVE HAD RAIN at last, and time opens out since I don’t have to water. Yesterday, between showers, I picked some beet tops for supper, and a small handful of French strawberries to put in the hollow of a quarter melon, then at last got at the small beds on top of the wall where the heather is. And before that I put Tamas in the tub and gave him his first bath in nearly a year. I feel ashamed that I have waited so long, but he has no doggy smell at all and his fur shines whether he has a bath or not. He got a thorough wash, sweetened by a thundershower when I put him out, and was still quite damp when we went to bed.

I feel empty after the only blowup for ages and stormy tears on Sunday. Of course, as usual, I overreacted. But why are writers and artists fair game when a craftsman of equivalent stature would never be? It took place on Heidi’s boat when we were having drinks and a picnic lunch after a short sail. The builder of it joined us; I went out of my way to be warm, as I admire all I know about him, including the sturdy elegant boat we were in at the moment. I brought him a plate of fried chicken, praised him, admitting my total ignorance of boats, but the pleasure this one gave me. Then somehow literature came in, and I mentioned that the woman’s movement had helped enormously to make me accepted and my work read. Perhaps this was the source of irritation, but he began talking about how little he read has any value these days. I reacted like a horse stung by a bee, shouted, and finally left and went home, crying so hard I could hardly see. Absurd? Of course. Yet what if I had chosen to say, on meeting him for the first time, “The boats I see around are certainly pretty shoddily built!” It is not conceivable that anyone would; yet that is really what he said about writers today. He would not have made a scene, but I would have been treated like a pariah by the other guests and he would have been defended at once.

What is the difference? Perhaps that a craft is easily accessible and literature is not? So there is always a slight resentment because writers are supposed to feel “superior”? Is it the hatred of the intellectual never far from the surface in America? On such occasions I want to run home to “old nurse Europe,” as Eva Le Gallienne calls it. For there is no doubt that the average European has far more respect for artists and writers than Americans do.

Anyway, in total constrast to that disaster, I had a simply heavenly evening on Saturday when Susan and George Garrett came for supper. We sat out in the terrace for drinks, and later watched a huge pale golden moon rise right in the center of the ocean in front of us. They are “my people,” and it was good to be home again with them.