Nicholas Clifford is a historian of China, now retired after many years of teaching at Middlebury College. He and Deborah have just finished a book on the great Vermont flood of 1927.
Shortly after their marriage in 1928, my parents, Henry and Esther Clifford, bought the Villa Capponi. The house, with its famous gardens and stunning view of Florence from the hills of Arcetri, had earlier been owned by Charles Perkins, a Boston art historian, and later by Lady Scott, grandmother of