“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ed wanted to find number 92, the old double house that Jane had described to him as being her childhood home. We had crawled halfway along the avenue, between its dim corner streetlights, when my car’s headlights brushed over a shadowy feminine figure walking in our direction. Indeed, I was driving past the lady when Ed, looking back, exclaimed: “Hey, wait, Bob—that’s her! That’s Jane right there now. Pull over—” He was lowering his side window even as he spoke. Yes, it was Jane Zeh, expressing surprise in a clear musical voice at such a “chance” meeting as she came even with the car. I could see only part of her silhouette as Ed introduced us and told her I’d be working for him. Jane didn’t have a license to drive. She said that if she happened to be in Schuylerville during the day she’d stop in at Ed’s studio in town and say hello. (She did, but several weeks later.) Right then, she told us she was on her way to see her bedridden mother, Marie, as she often did at that time of night. She pointed out number 92, a few doors ahead of us. I said something innocuous to the effect that I looked forward to meeting her and her husband next Saturday night.

At the end of the first day of the group’s most interesting visit. Richie and Yvette left to return to Connecticut. Jim and Debbie and Winter and Theresa left for the Holiday Inn in Elmira, New York, 15 miles across the Pennsylvania border. At the Inn in 1997 and 1999 Laurel and I had been guests at well-attended Seth conferences organized by Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski. Our rich memories of those gatherings are nourished each time we drive past the Inn on our way to the hill house. We met our guests at the Inn the next morning, and the six of us drove in our three cars to a nearby country restaurant for breakfast. Then, with Laurel driving and our friends’ cars following, we traveled up a steep and winding hill just outside the city to not only a fine view but to Quarry Farm, an old-fashioned but large and elegant wooden homestead where Mark Twain had done some of his finest writing. No admittance, private property, a sign proclaimed, so we stood in the driveway just off the road to study the farm and its open and peaceful setting. Then back down into the city and to the campus of Elmira College. Jane had lectured to a class in creative writing at the college after the publication of Seth Speaks in 1972.There on the school’s green sward stood the small many-windowed gazebo that Mark Twain had worked in during his summers at the farm; it had been relocated to the college long ago. Not surprisingly it was locked, but still easy to inspect—and also to just accept as the people of Elmira and those in the college went about their daily activities. Mark Twain had been one of Jane’s favorite writers.

Actually, Laurel and I drive past 458 often, without paying much attention to it on our way from Sayre to the hill house. But now we were there on its grounds, focusing upon that precious symbol where Jane and I had lived for 15 years. I hadn’t set foot in 458 since the day we’d moved to the hill house 27 years ago. Incredible! Already, as I pushed open the heavy front door for the six of us, I felt like an intruder, that my footsteps were stirring up the past. We tramped noisily up the narrow and turning stairs to face a fire door guarding the second floor. Past that, we were in the narrow hall that led to a similar door guarding a stairwell at the back of the building. The hall was much shorter and gloomier than I remembered it to be. The sounds of our voices were crowded; the space we stood in seemed to be so confining, with the doors at each end, that I marveled that my dear wife and I had lived in the house for all that time. Apartments 4 and 5, the ones Jane and I had rented (we could afford only Apartment 5 for the first several years) opened off each side of the hall. Apartment 4 was empty; its door was on a short chain that let me push it open a bit to peek into a now-deserted living room that Jane and I had known so well.