This essay is based on a conversation with Frances Schultz, an American artist and writer in her mid-60s who lived in the Hamptons and now owns a house in the Cotswolds. It has been edited for length and clarity. I moved to the Hamptons, in spite of it being the Hamptons, and later to the Cotswolds , in spite of it being the "Hamptons of England." The status-symbol side of these places was never what drew me in. The Hamptons and the Cotswolds are completely different from one another, but there'