ABSTRACT
It was well into August, two months after he was stricken, before Hubble finally came downstairs. His first visitor was Sir Oliver Franks, British Ambassador to the United States. Both men had been made Honorary Fellows of Queen’s College the same day in May 1948; they drank tea together in the living room, Hubble dismissing his brush with death as “nothing, just an accident, and it [is] over now.” After Franks had left, Edwin remarked to Grace, “We had an amusing time, didn’t we, in that little hospital?” She may have smiled at the remark, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Hamlet’s speech to Horatio had suddenly come to mind: “A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards …” For the first time the veil had parted and Grace had looked death squarely in the face. 1
