The end of August in the Vaucluse is, this year, drier than I remember it having been in the years since the property came into my keeping. The figs have come early, in inconvenient quantities. The lavender was cut some weeks ago and the fields have settled, as they always do, into the particular silver-brown of the second half of the season. The members who pass through the region in this period have, by and large, departed for the school year. The house is quieter for it, and quieter than I prefer.
I write only to record that the season has turned, and that the work of the autumn has, by now, accumulated to the extent that I will return to Geneva at the beginning of next week. The arrangements made on behalf of members for the autumn months are, I am pleased to say, in good order. The new commission of which the Marrakech office wrote in July has been concluded, on the terms then agreed, and I have spent some time during these last weeks reading, against the work of the autumn, a long letter from a member I have not seen since the spring. Both — the conclusion of the commission and the letter — have given me a satisfaction the season is, in any case, conducive to.
The autumn essays for the Journal are in preparation. The figs, regrettably, will not last the journey north.
— Élodie Marchand-Auvelle, August 2025