I’m up early every day, helping dress and get breakfast for Joshua and Nathan, the two Whittard boys. Professor Whittard is a physicist and, as you know, lectures at Harvard. The man is a genius but all the same very friendly, and his wife is so kind. But Katie, you wouldn’t believe the size of their house. I think it must be at least three times the size of ours. The kitchen is immense, and they also have a housekeeper who lives in. So instead of rent, I help her out. She’s a very nice black lady called Gertrude from down south. Miles away in Philadelphia, I think she told me. Well, I could listen to her talk all day, Katie. I just love her accent. She has to cook the kind of food the family like. Meat pies and potatoes and all that, but sometimes she’ll make some cornbread and it’s the best bread I have ever eaten. Imagine my shock when I found out she has two teenage boys of her own back home, living with her parents. Her husband died in the Korean war, so she has to provide for them all. Isn’t that just so sad? I know people have it tough on the island, we’re not rich like my Cambridge family, but at least mothers don’t have to leave their children. I think a lot about what Mother went through to bring us up. Now we are apart I can love her better. I miss her a little, but most of all I miss you!
My favourite times are the mornings I walk to lectures. All the foliage on the trees is glorious. I feel part of the change in the seasons, because I am changing too. There are still more boys than girls in the lectures, but we girls are connected. Even if we sit apart, we acknowledge each other. Each one of us an island in the sea of male voices! It feels so special to be part of a new generation of women who are independent and have something to contribute to academia in our own right. We are few, but we are steadfast! Just like our island at home, a rock of hard granite, which no number of nor’easters could ever blow away.
Sometimes after lectures, I don’t go to the library but spend the little bit of free time I have sitting in a café and drinking a cup of coffee. I know you might think it odd a girl would sit on her own and look out of the window at all the hustle and bustle of the streets of Harvard, but I love to watch the people. There are so many different kinds here. From all over the world; it is so wonderful. I imagine all their homelands and the different foods they eat and religions they follow. How I dream of travelling beyond America and seeing the whole wide world. But also, I love sitting in my café window, watching the regular folk at work, driving buses, taxi drivers honking at each other, delivery men and construction workers. I like listening to the chat in the café, and watching all the other students weighted down by their study books as they rush to a tutorial or lecture.
Would you like to be here too, Katie? If you work hard this year, maybe you could go to college too? You’ve only one year left in high school, so why not give it your best? I know you can do it. Might it be wise to stay in on Sundays and study? I know you are keen on Matthew Young, but believe me, there’s a big world out here and so many boys who will fall in love with you at the drop of a hat. We could save up for you to come visit me and I can show you all my favourite nooks in Harvard. The Whittards are good people; I’m sure they’d be happy for you to share my bed. Oh, wouldn’t that be so swell?
Time now to get back to my studying (the Reformation in Europe) while sitting in my beloved library as I write to you. But please think about your future, because this year is so important for you, Katie. Don’t let others tell you that you’re not clever enough to go to college. I know you the best, and I know you can do it. If you need me to talk to Mother for you and persuade her, I’ll come home, I promise, and do it at Thanksgiving. Just write me.
Give my love to Mother, and lots of love to you too!
Susannah folded the letter up and put it in the envelope. She’d post it first thing tomorrow. In her heart, she knew Kate would no sooner apply to go to college at Harvard or anywhere else than she would go to the North Pole. Of course, she was clever, but she didn’t work hard enough. The only shot Susannah had had was to get a scholarship, and she had had to work day and night the last few months to get the grades to even be considered. Kate was too distracted by Matthew Young to study. The first letter Kate had sent just the day before had been full of him. What Matthew wanted was to build
