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[[note]] Theresa de Kerpely writer & dear friend [[/note]] 

Infermiary [[Infirmary]]. Univ. of Massachusetts 
Amherst, Mass. 
Dec. 9, 1962

Dear Nellie,
I wasn't sure where you were - in England or New York - until Jean Starr wrote me that she had met you at the McDowell [[MacDowell]] Colony gathering...  I drove up to McDowell this summer to see Louise Talma and met a painter friend of yours - John Daly, who happened to be a friend of the young man who drove me up, so we had a good evening in his studio, and quite an affectionate reunion with Hyde Solomon, whom I was very pleased to see. The whole visit made me terribly nostalgic. I had a bad attack of Colony-yearning. 

Between then and now all sorts of things have happened, the most important being that my Dormitory, Abigail Adams House, burned down (or, rather burned out, for the walls are still standing) one Saturday evening in October, rendering me and my 125 students homeless. Many of them lost everything they possessed, but all lives were saved, and I, being an inhabitant of the ground floor, managed to save all my possessions as well. When I first left the burning house all I took with me were my precious manuscripts, but later I was able to go back in again with a slew of men students and get out the rest of my stuff before it was hopelessly damaged by water and smoke. It felt like the war all over again. Now we are temporarily homed all over the place. I am in a wing of the Infermiary [[Infirmary]], with 50 of my girls, others are encamped in the gym, others have been taken into private homes. Next semester about 80 of us will move into a not very comfortable house for the remainder of the year. 

I am not coming to New York this Christmas. As you probably know, Horace Gregory is still in the Sanatorium where he has been since March - undergoing therapy to 

Transcription Notes:
century-old artists' retreat known as the MacDowell Colony