taken covertly at the houghton. shh.

Back at the Houghton Library on a wonderfully crisp autumn morning. After an early morning asthma attack (which was followed later in the day by a post-frosty run asthma attack), I set out to navigate once again the absurdities of the Harvard libraries. I thought today would be relatively simple because I went thinking that I wanted to see four letters Anna Ticknor (the matriarch of the society I’ve been thinking about for awhile now) sent to Sarah Orne Jewett. I had thought – wrongly – that the letters would illuminate Jewett’s time as a student in the society. Not so, instead they mostly feature Ticknor’s obsequiously tripping over herself to figure out why Jewett never returned some darn book from the society library. But she does delightfully conclude one letter from Lenox, Mass (a place I used to love to drive to for brunch and good yarn when I taught in Lakeville, Connecticut): “Here everything is lovely, the foliage unusually fine the weather very cool, and the world in great glory, the world of nature I mean, for the reign of fashion has not begun yet.” I couldn’t agree more.