Later that evening Yvette and I brought in Chinese food from a take-out place — the Admiral used to say what distinguishes Kliban cats is how they do improbable things — cheerfully.
This is to tell friends and readers that I had a very good time at the EC/ASECS meeting in Philadelphia. I arrived in time for what was for me a high point of the conference, indeed to hear the tribute paid to my husband was worth a much farther journey. It meant a lot to me to hear someone who had known him praise him in terms which allowed me to recognize my Admiral. There was a second brief tribute to him at luncheon and on the new website he is remembered. See special announcement. People spoke to me of him.
I daresay I enjoyed the panels and papers in ways that reminded me of who and what I am: a literary scholar, a college teacher, a lover of the 18th century. With people who share and value our mutual interests. (I will write separately on the content of those I was able to take notes on on my Austen Reveries blog.) I felt I was among so many friends. A tribe.
To come to my two more specific goals: not to get lost and not to lose it, not to crack up. Well, I was never lost, though I did lose my purple beret (left it on the train) and left behind a lovely long black skirt (which my friend recognized as mine quicker than me and will send on). I always knew where I was and when my train was delayed for two hours on Sunday, I managed to buy a ticket for another train arriving at DC and after an initial confusion (having seen friends on a New York line), got myself to the right line. And I maintained a mostly cheerful demeanor — to the point two different groups of people said I looked peaceful.
I perhaps did say too much now and again: I am a character in a Pirandello play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. I keep looking for my author so as to end my part and let the curtain go down. But I cannot find the author of this play I am acting out to build myself a sort of life, to carry on; he is worse than Godot (of Waiting for Godot fame). On the other hand, I had such good talk with several friends I would not have wanted to be superficial, to make “small talk.” We talked for real.
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Aaron Becker, the illustrator
I’m now thinking I might go to the ASECS meeting in Williamsburg this spring. If a fancy dress is wanted for a ball, I’ve got an elegant 1930s number. . To record concrete happenings:
My train arrived an hour and one half late (!), but my generous loyal (angelic?) friends waited at the station near the top of the stairs for me. We had planned to go out to a good restaurant before going to the first night, but there was no time. (We made up for it the next day by lunching at a fine Greek restaurant.)
My panel went very well (really it did) and The oral/aural experience which included an abbreviated performance of Lovers Vows did function to teach me more about the characters in the play and hence Austen’s characters (Count Cassell is a lout, and we are probably intended to see this quality in Rushworth and thus know why Fanny cannot pretend to credit Mary’s assertion about Mrs Rushworth’s luck), but we do these plays and read aloud 18th century verse to one another to be together in these texts.
By staying with friends in a suburb of Philadelphia (Wayne) I saw more of Philadelphia from the train rides than I had in the several times the Admiral and I had come to Philly for conferences. November is a beautiful month with its variegated colors. I saw from the train (there is nothing as good as a train ride) several of the near-by small colleges (some famous), the pretty towns, and we ate in a fine pub on Saturday night. Sunday I read the New York Times Book Review, regaled by the illustration in the childrens’ book section as the newspaper revved up for Christmas sales. It was a break from the Internet. The world of print is different from the worlds of cyberspace.
The admiral would have enjoyed all of it.
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Yvette and Ian
The hardest part was coming home. The admiral and home have been one and the same to me for 45 years now and I found myself crying on the train, then the metro (people did look away), and lastly in the car driving back. He was here when Yvette and I came home from the Jane Austen summer program; he picked me up from the station (driving the PriusC himself) when I came home from Sharp, and the knowledge he was there as ever quickened the intensity and speed with which I would drive the last couple of miles. To get back to him.
The cats had suffered some anxiety. First one of the cats’s central presences had disappeared altogether; while I was packing they followed me about: I was doing something different, very suspicious. Still they don’t like these disappearance acts. When my mother died last year, and since it was so sudden, we had not been able to get someone to stay in the house for the two days we were missing, we found them huddled together under my queen-size bed, for all the world as if only some murderous hostile presence was lurking just outside the bedroom. Caroline says they want stafflings; they want secure companionship. Caroline had been here Thursday to play with said cats, and on Saturday she and Yvette planned a re-organization of Yvette’s room and picked out containers to buy in the container store.
What is life without that companionship, or the lesser-demanding word, friendship?
To a Friend on New Year’s Day
Dear friend, for thee, through ev’ry changing year,
Unchang’d affection draws the tie more near;
Treasure most precious, dearest to the heart,
Increas’d in value as the rest depart.
Tho’ kindred bonds may break, and love must fade,
Friendship still brightens in the deep’ning shade.
Time, silent and unseen, pursues his course,
And wearied nature sickens at her source.
Methinks I see the season onward roll,
When age, like winter, comes to chill the soul:
I tremble at that pow’r’s resistless sway
Who bears the flowers and fruit of life away …
Let me not linger on the verge of fate,
Nor weary duty to its utmost date;
Losing, in pain’s impatient gloom confin’d,
Freedom of thought, and dignity of mind;
Till pity views untouch’d the parting breath,
And cold indiff’rence adds a pang to death …
Let me still from self my feelings bear,
To sympathize with sorrow’s starting tear …
Let me remember, in the gloom of age,
To smile at follies happier youth engage;
See them fallacious, but indulgent spare
The fairy dreams experience cannot share.
Nor view the rising morn with jaundice eye,
Because for me no more the sparkling moments fly.
— Anne Hunter (1802)
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
P. S. Still The thing to keep one’s eye on is that nothing anyone did in the medical communities we endured changed the progress of his disease one iota. That what they did made his experience more dreadful (like making him a tiny stomach on top of what turned out to be a toxic liver). And most importantly of all, that they had no explanation for why an adverse effect was felt by one person and not by another. They can describe and explain the chemical processes, but how these lead to cancer, how they are differentiated among themselves, how they will effect individual groups of people is not what is researched. Drug companies will not do clinical trials against the interest of the company. People I told this to were not keen — one man though “admitted” he had cancer himself, was “borderline” and had to go for bi-monthly tests and from test to test could not tell how he was.
Responding to a friend who wrote: “I just read your blog and am so glad you enjoyed yourself. Losing your purple beret and black skirt (found!) is nothing in comparison to being with people you like. It IS hard to travel alone. I remember many years ago being anxious when I went to D.C. alone to look for a place to live. I stayed at a hostel in Georgetown, and the door couldn’t be locked at night, I wasn’t used to cities, and I couldn’t sleep. I also lost a bag … Perhaps I should reread Mansfield Park.”
I really did enjoy myself and in just the way I described.
The psychiatrist I’m seeing just now (assigned by Kaiser) said I was fussing too much about getting lost and losing things and people do this. Still when Jim was there I didn’t get lost — though I’d nearly lose things. I lack presence of mind because I’m nervous and anxious at being wholly responsible for myself. I keep coming back to how scary it feels to be in the world without him. I am now locking the doors all the time. I used to leave them open during the day sometimes because we do have a safe neighborhood. I don’t feel safe without him — or a man in the house. I surmise my neighbors have huge dogs to help protect themselves.
I’m reaching out to people too, out socializing so much more than ever I did — though it doesn’t take much, but it’s more than that. Some need beyond that. I am so glad when Caroline comes over — to sit and watch Antiques Road Show with her. Yvette watches with us. The world seems more stable again when she’s here.
Another friend who lives in Philadelphia wrote: “I am so glad that you got time away, and that there were really great moments. People can be so tremendously kind. I am glad they shared tributes to Jim – a man very worthy of them, and I am glad they were a comfort to you. Did you feel that you learned something new about him in these memorials? …”
Me: “… this time I saw more of Philadelphia than ever before and can see what a marvelous city it could be to live in — just the museums alone. All sorts of people.
I was struck by how many people called him “gentle.” The word was repeated by several people and when I asked someone about it, he said “yes, you could see that.” Well, my Admiral was non-violent, very determined and strong in his will, but hard put even to kill a roach: once when we lived in a rent-control pre-WW2 NYC apartment and had one of these fridges which do not de-frost themselves we’d have this build-up of ice in the freezer and every once in a while roaches would crawl in and Jim would talk of seeing them in the “frozen wastes” with “their little feet up in the air.” It’s no wonder the girl cat bonded so with him.