I’m writing this from a castle in Scotland, on a work residency funded by the Hawthornden Foundation. The castle, built in the 15th century, was bought in the 1980s by the arts patron Drue Heinz who turned it into a retreat for writers. She’d married into the ketchup empire and spent her life using her fortune to support the making of literature.
In 2018, the last time I was here, Mrs. Heinz passed away, at age 103, in a room upstairs from the one where I’m staying.
I share what must have once been the service wing, with three other writers. Our bedrooms are narrow, with modest furnishings: a twin-sized bed, a pine desk, a small bookshelf, armchair, nightstand. But in mine there’s also an exquisite antique chest of drawers, mahogany inlaid with yellow-wood marquetry. It was from the bedroom of Mrs. Heinz said the site director, bringing my luggage into the room.
How can they trust writers not to ruin the veneer, I think each morning as I set a cup of coffee on a folded piece of paper — no coasters around.
Each drawer has a keyhole. The pulls are antique designs featuring bronze ribbons and cornucopia. The inlays are flowers and feathers and what look like the wings of angels. But this is what kills me. The inside of the drawers are glued with denim-blue floral paper. The paper isn’t just on the bottom, it’s up the sides — as used to be the custom with wood drawers when I was a girl. To line the inside with paper so clothes wouldn’t snag.
I imagine Mrs. Heinz papering the drawers herself — the edges don’t match, it’s an amateur’s job. And the thought of her hands, through which so much good came (Paris Review magazine, Ecco Press), taking time to push glued paper against the wood, smoothing it, perhaps lighting a cigarette as she stood back to admire her work — momentarily lessens my despair upon reading the news from home.
Such a small act, she’d have thought nothing of. Yet all these years later, her caring to do it says something to me — and perhaps, now, to you, too. We never know which of our endeavors will carry into the future.
Helen Klein Ross lives in Lakeville.
Postcard sent from Scotland
Hawthornden Castle after a sunshower.