ABSTRACT
Edwin Hubble’s long-anticipated arrival was a shock to his excited younger sisters, who expected their brother to look just as they remembered him. Eight-year-old Betsy and fourteen-year-old Helen circled the chair occupied by the tall stranger, their eyes uncomprehending. “He had on knickers,” Betsy recalled, “and men didn’t wear knickers.” Edwin proudly hung his English pipes on the display rack in the library, where he passed much of his leisure time reading. He had become adept at blowing smoke rings, as though, by recalling his father’s presence and reproducing his effects, it were possible to atone for a lifetime of emotional separation and injury. Edwin had kept his promise to Jennie that the family would remain together following his return from England, but a year of teaching high school had convinced him that Louisville was a trap. Edwin was only sixty miles distant, it was his younger brother Bill who, in Betsy’s words, “had all the responsibility for the family.
