Letters

But hospitable as he certainly was, cordial, sympathetic, free of “hang-ups,” as the children say, and neither unmasculine nor cold of ma

Well. He was wearily amused at Harrison’s delusion that he Morgan had betrayed Tidewater Tech into the state university system; he explained to me (what I set forth in the postscript of my first vain letter to you) his worthy ambitions for the place and his confidence that, unless Schott and company carried the day, Marshyhope could become, not just another third-rate community college, but a quite special and admirable research centre. But (unlike the priggish fellow in your novel) Morgan had what amounted to a tragic, if not an altogether pessimistic, view of his aspirations: he would not be surprised, he told me, if Harrison’s association of Marshyhope with the mutinous American colonies had been inspired and encouraged by A. B. Cook, in John Schott’s behalf. Nor was he very sanguine of prevailing against them in the matter of the Tower of Truth. But he was not certain of defeat, either, and on that basis (I have not even mentioned his quite Jeffersonian respect for the net good judgement of ordinary people) he proceeded.

Half jokingly he suggested that I exploit in the college’s behalf my new role as Lady Pembroke. So the “Duke of York,” without especially intending to, had done: Morgan showed me the just completed and as yet unstaffed media centre, remarking with a smile that state legislators were ever readier to subsidize an impressive physical plant than an impressive faculty. Had I met Reg Prinz?

In early November I finally did. To spare myself (and, as I imagined, Jane) Harrison’s displays, I’d used my opening-of-semester business to excuse myself from visiting Tidewater Farms except rarely, despite Jane’s urgings. His fixation on “Lady Pembroke” was undiminished, she reported: he had a

It was true that in my presence Harrison behaved agreeably, spoke temperately and rationally more often than not, and made no amorous overtures. Even so… And I did have other things on my mind, including André’s business (of which nothing so far had come) and the approach of a certain fateful a

I went, trembling. Harrison was all charm and gallantry, and so apparently the master of his mania that one could easily have taken the George-and-Eliza business as a standing pleasantry for the occasion. Your Mr Andrews too proved a civilised surprise: a handsome, elderly bachelor, he held forth amusingly on the C.I.A.‘s three-million-dollar involvement in the National Student Association, recently disclosed, and chided Drew Mack (in absentia) for not making our local chapter of the S.D.S. menacing enough to attract some of that money to Marshyhope. In other circumstances I’d have taken less distracted pleasure in meeting him: it pleased me, for example, that he freely broke Jane’s prohibition, “for Harrison’s sake,” of our mentioning their son “the Prince of Wales,” and that Harrison seemed unperturbed thereby; for I was disinclined myself to walk on eggs with his eccentricities as did Jane (and Doctor #2). But of course it was Andrew Burlingame Cook whom I had come there tremulously to inspect, whose reintroduction to me, on that date of all dates, it was impossible to ascribe to coincidence… John: the man ca

Nor is he, by his own assertion, André’s half brother, though it could be held that they resemble each other as siblings might. Indeed, when I pressed him on that head (immediately upon remeeting him; he had not forgotten our previous encounter), he denied ever having heard the name Castine except in the history books and the “Student’s Second Tale” in Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside I