When I got an email telling me I’d won a prize in an international short story competition, the message went on to say that my story would be read out at the annual Barbara Pym Conference at Harvard and I could either attend and read it in person, or a member of the judging panel would read it on my behalf.
It was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made – of course I wanted to turn up and read my story in person. Leaving my precious baby to the tender mercies (and untested reading skills) of some unknown mumbler was unthinkable … they would never do it justice.
So I flew to Boston and hopped on a train to Harvard, where I had a wonderful time at the conference and read my story out to great acclaim … and collected my cash prize!
Harvard is an incredible place – a beautiful campus full of huge, impressive buildings and fabulous museums. Which other university has an art gallery filled with Monets, Whistlers, Singer Sargents and has a whole exhibition dedicated to Munch?
I was surprised to learn that John Harvard had only been in the US for a year when he died, at the age of 32. He left half his fortune to the ‘Newtowne Colledge’, whose administrators were so grateful that they changed the name to Harvard. The name of the town had already been changed from Newtowne to Cambridge as a nod to the alma mater of so many of the early colonists.
In this respect Harvard reminded me of Smithson, who left his entire fortune for the advancement of learning in the United States, even though he’d never even been there. These men believed passionately in learning and they wanted the New World to benefit from outstanding education in the same way that Europe had. But I was pleased that Harvard hadn’t given them all his money, unlike Smithson, and he left some to his wife to save her from destitution.
So little is known about John Harvard that his statue is in fact a likeness of the sculptor’s friend, as nobody knew what he had looked like.
Cambridge, Massachusetts is – as you might expect – a very desirable place to live. The houses are New England, colonial-style mansions and are all immaculately maintained. Longfellow’s house was so desirable that that it had been requisitioned by the Unionists and turned into Washington’s headquarters during the Civil War. Longfellow then managed to snap it up when it came on the market sixty years later. Equally unsurprisingly, the Cambridge residents were all pro-King and anti-independence during that other war, and presumably all turned down their invitations to the Boston Tea Party.
The only negative thing I can think of to say about Cambridge and Harvard is that the weather’s terrible … and for a Brit to be complaining about the weather, it must be really bad.