Author and alumnus Thomas Mallon (1982) was a student at St Edmund’s House in the early 1980s. His eleven books of fiction include Henry and Clara, Fellow Travelers, Watergate (a Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award) and Up With the Sun. He has also written volumes of nonfiction about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), as well as two books of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).
In June 2025, Knopf published The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983–1994, a collection of Mallon’s personal journals. The volume includes reflections on his time at St Edmund’s, some of which he shares with us here.
I was a visiting scholar at St Edmund’s House, as it was then known, in 1982-83. I was thirty when I arrived there, an assistant professor at Vassar College in New York State. I was on sabbatical, writing a study of diaries that would be published in 1984 as A Book of One’s Own.
“St Ed’s had been recommended to me by my dissertation advisor at Harvard, Robert Kiely, who had been associated with the House when he was on leave in England in 1976-77. I even stayed there for a few days in the summers of 1978 and 1981.
“My terms at St Ed’s were so enjoyable that, looking back, I’m surprised I got my book written. I loved spending the days roaming the college and town, browsing the shops, talking with the new friends I made. My best work hours came between tea and dinner. I’d come downstairs for a quick cup at four o’clock and then go back to my desk in D-Wing until dinner, which I think was served at seven.
“My friends included Jonathan Kahn, already in possession of a doctorate but now studying veterinary medicine; the Rev. Gerry Gleeson from Australia; Dr Mary Katherine Tillman from Notre Dame; and Damian Leader, a doctoral student who went on to write a splendid history of Cambridge and then enjoy a distinguished career in the US foreign service. (Katherine has passed away, but I still see Damian here in Washington, DC., and would love to hear from Jonathan and Gerry!)
“I would also, while at St Ed’s, go down to Mawson Road to see the always-welcoming Claire Blunden, the widow of my dissertation subject, the World War I poet Edmund Blunden.
“St Ed’s struck me as a wonderful haven from Cambridge’s occasional pretensions and competitiveness. It was small and homey and eccentric. The place was full of Aussies, Yanks and South Americans. The food was plentiful and mostly tasty (“fish pie” was a favorite), though the meat was bound to disappoint an Argentinian. I remember sitting across the table from one who’d just arrived; encountering a beef dish that wasn’t up to his native standards, he said, with a sort of soft sorrow: “I am going to Wimpy’s.”
“St Edmund’s House wore its lingering Catholicism in a light, benevolent manner. Father John Coventry was the Master, and Father Joe Brennan the Dean. The Duke of Norfolk gazed down on the dining hall from his portrait. My own faith was a small, flickering lamp, but I would go to Mass and sometimes pray in the chapel, all alone, late at night.
“Several months ago I published a book of my own journals (The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994). They begin just after my sabbatical at St Ed’s but contain several entries about two return trips I made, in 1986 and 1987. I went back to my old haunts and saw some of my old friends who were still there, like Jonathan Kahn. Below are some of those diary jottings, as well as some photos, all of them made and taken with the same gratitude and affection I still feel for the college.
“On January 11 of ’86, I’m in London, experiencing the AIDS fears that bedeviled me in those days – and would send me into the chapel at St Ed’s almost as soon as I arrived in Cambridge:
Excerpts from The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994. Knopf, 2025.
JANUARY 11, 1986: Began the day in terror in a teashop. I was writing postcards (all with the wrong date) and reading the Herald Tribune, which carried a story about how it’s now thought vastly more people exposed to the AIDS virus will actually get it than was previously reckoned. Weeks have gone by without my worrying. I think: “Thank God, it’s now 3 years.” But people are still getting sick 6 years after being exposed. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself. Maybe this diary is just a long good-bye note.
JANUARY 12, 1986: [Returning to St Edmund’s House in Cambridge, where I’d been a visiting scholar in 1982– 83] I was too tired and terrified to get much sleep. Got up and went down into the chapel at 6 a.m. to pray. . . I felt better when I got up from my [knees]. I went back upstairs and sat down, struggling with the gas fire, to read Spender’s poems. I wrote my review of them and the journals tonight, & I think it’s the best short piece I’ve done in a while.. . . Took a walk into town after [breakfast]. Cold & windy & bright. The streets nearly empty; term hasn’t started yet. I could hear each of my footfalls make a satisfying click as I walked past King’s. Came back here with the papers. The Observer says [A Book of One’s Own, now out in England] has been “justly applauded.” Julian Symons in the TLS says it’s “engaging” and “sophisticated.” So I’m pleased…
Carried the water and wine to the altar at offertory. So many familiar faces in the chapel: the Elsmores, Mrs Archdeacon (who’s retired as proprietress of the Cow & Calf: she used to have a panic button under the bar— it would flip off whatever IRA song was playing on the jukebox when she saw a British patron taking offense).
… The place does get a little smarter, and a little less Catholic, each time I come to it.
The County Arms pub
JANUARY 13, 1986: I was sitting in the Combination Room with the papers just before breakfast when Sylvia walked through and gave me a hug: “’Allo, luv, you don’t look a die aoulder.” We had a nice chat. She told me all about the attempts to tart up the place, which she doesn’t like, and about [Father Coventry’s] last days, when he was pretty much manic-depressively off his head. The medication only made things worse for a while. “It was ’is tablets.” He’s in London now and doing fine. “’E was a cantankerous old sausage,” Sylvia says, and she clearly misses him . . . His portrait is in the refectory now— looking right down on the place he used to sit.
. . . [With my friend Jonathan Kahn in Grantchester. I was doing a travel article about the village for The New York Times] Weirdly enough, Jono’s father is buried right near the church. He worked in Cambridge in the 70s & had an apartment in the new Vicarage. He got on well with the new vicar, who [later] fixed things so that Mr Kahn, an unbelieving Jew, could be buried in the churchyard in 1978 . . . We tramped around for about an hour and a half looking for local color— which today was mostly gray.
Jonathan Kahn and Thomas Mallon's return visit 1986
JANUARY 14, 1986: [Visiting Claire Blunden] Walked down to Mawson Road at lunchtime . . . Dear Claire very much as always. She’d just come back from her yoga class. She told me all about the ceremony in the Abbey [marking the installation of a marker commemorating the poets of the Great War] . . . something of a scandal of thoughtlessness. There are 17 [names] on the stone. Excerpts were read from 15 of the poets, and Blunden was one of the two left out. What a stupid, callous thing to do. But Claire still described it all merrily. They all had to file past the stone, which was flanked by two lighted tapers— one of which her grandson proceeded to blow out.
Rev Joe Brennan and Dr Mary Katherine Tillman 1983
JULY 18, 1987: [A visit to an expanded and upgraded St Edmund’s House in Cambridge] The apotheosis of St Ed’s – now a College – occurred on June 12 when the Duke of Edinburgh came for lunch unveiling a plaque (where a crucifix used to be a I think) near the dining hall – a plaque to referential that it commemorates nothing but itself.
About Thomas Mallon
Thomas Mallon’s work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and other publications. He received his PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard University and taught for a number of years at Vassar College. His honours include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for distinguished prose style. He has been literary editor of Gentlemen’s Quarterly and deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An eight-part dramatic adaptation of his novel Fellow Travelers is now streaming on Showtime/Paramount+, and an opera based on the novel has had a dozen productions throughout the United States. He is Professor Emeritus of English at The George Washington University and lives in Washington, D. C.
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