Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships / Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields

IV CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE VISITORS

The volumes in which Mrs. Fields brought to light many passages from her journals stand as red and black buoys marking the channel through which the navigator of these pages must steer his course if he is to avoid the rocks and shoals of the previously published. In her books it was but natural that she should deal most freely with those august figures in American letters who so towered above their contemporaries as to attach the longer and more portentous adjective “Augustan” to the circle formed by the joining of their hands. If it has become the fashion to look back upon the American Augustans and the English Victorians with similarly mingled feelings, in which tolerance stands in a growing proportion to the admiration and respect which formerly ruled supreme, it is the unaltered fact that the figures of the American group dominated both the local and the national scene of letters in their day, and that their historic significance is undiminished. But it is rather as human beings than as literary figures that they reveal themselves in the sympathetic records of Mrs. Fields—human beings who typified and embodied a state of thought and society so remote in its characteristic qualities from the prevailing conditions of this later day as to be approaching steadily that “equal date with Andes and with Ararat” of which one of them wrote in words quite unmistakably his own.

Perhaps no single member of the group is represented in Mrs. Fields’s journals so often as Dr. Holmes by illuminating pages which she herself left unprinted. For this reason, and because Concord and Cambridge visitors to Charles Street were in fact so much a “group,” it has seemed wise to assemble in this place passages that relate to one after another of the “Augustan” friends in turn. Sometimes they appear as separate subjects of record, sometimes in company with their fellows. That majestic figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose death in 1864 made the earliest gap in the circle of figures most memorable, shall be first to step forth, like one of his own personages of the Province House, from the shadows in which indeed he lived.

HAWTHORNE IN 1857

The long chapter on Hawthorne in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and that small volume about him which Mrs. Fields contributed in 1899 to the “Beacon Biographies,” constitute the more finished portraits of the man as his host and hostess in Charles Street saw him. His letters to Fields are quoted at length in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and contribute an autobiographic element of much importance to any study of Hawthorne. But there are illuminating passages that were left unpublished. In one of them, for example, Hawthorne, in a letter of September 21, 1860, after lamenting the state of his daughter’s health, exclaimed: “I am continually reminded, nowadays, of a response which I once heard a drunken sailor make to a pious gentleman who asked him how he felt: ‘Pretty d——d miserable, thank God!’ It very well expresses my thorough discomfort and forced acquiescence.” In another, of July 14, 1861, after the calamity that befell Longfellow in the tragic death of his wife through burning, Hawthorne wrote to Fields:—

“How does Longfellow bear this terrible misfortune? How are his own injuries? Do write and tell me all about him. I cannot at all reconcile this calamity to my sense of fitness. One would think that there ought to have been no deep sorrow in the life of a man like him; and now comes this blackest of shadows, which no sunshine hereafter can ever penetrate! I shall be afraid ever to meet him again; he cannot again be the man that I have known.”

In the words, “I shall be afraid ever to meet him again,” the very accent of Hawthorne is clearly heard. Still another manuscript letter, preserved in the Charles Street cabinet, should now be printed to round out the story of Hawthorne’s reluctant omission from his “Atlantic” article—“Chiefly about War Matters”—that personal description of Abraham Lincoln which Fields was unwilling to publish in his magazine in 1862, but afterwards included in his “Yesterdays with Authors.”[7] In that place, however, he used but a few words from the following letter.

Concord, May 23, ’62

Dear Fields:—

I have looked over the article under the influence of a cigar and through the medium (but don’t whisper it) of a glass of arrack and water; and though I think you are wrong, I am going to comply with your request. I am the most good-natured man, and the most amenable to good advice (or bad advice either, for that matter) that you ever knew—so have it your own way. The whole description of the interview with Uncle Abe and his personal appearance must be omitted, since I do not find it possible to alter them, and in so doing, I really think you omit the only part of the article really worth publishing. Upon my honor, it seemed to me to have a historical value—but let it go. I have altered and transferred one of the notes so as to indicate to the unfortunate public that it here loses something very nice. You must mark the omission with dashes, so—x x x x x x x.

I have likewise modified the other passage you allude to; and I cannot now conceive of any objection to it.

What a terrible thing it is to try to get off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world! If I had sent you the article as I first conceived it, I should not so much have wondered.

I want you to send me a proof sheet of the article in its present state before making any alterations; for if ever I collect these sketches into a volume, I shall insert it in all its original beauty.

With the best regards to Mrs. Fields,

Truly yours,

Nath’l Hawthorne

P. S. I shall probably come to Boston next week, to the Saturday Club.

If these unpublished letters add something to the more formal portraits of Hawthorne drawn by Fields and his wife, still other lines may be added by means of the unconscious, fragmentary sketches on which the portraits were based. In Mrs. Fields’s diaries the following glimpses of Hawthorne in the final months of his life are found.

December 4, 1863.—Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Alden passed the night with us; he came to town to attend the funeral of Mrs. Franklin Pierce. He seemed ill and more nervous than usual. He brought the first part of a story which he says he shall never finish.[8] J. T. F. says it is very fine, yet sad. Hawthorne says in it, “pleasure is only pain greatly exaggerated,” which is queer to say the least, if not untrue. I think it must be differently stated from this. He was as courteous and as grand as ever, and as true. He does not lose that all-saddening smile, either.

Sunday, December 6, 1863.—Mr. Hawthorne returned to us. He had found General Pierce overwhelmed with sadness at the death of his wife and greatly needing his companionship, therefore he accompanied him the whole distance to Concord, N. H. He said he could not generally look at such things, but he was obliged to look at the body of Mrs. Pierce. It was like a carven image laid in its richly embossed enclosure and there was a remote expression about it as if it had nothing to do with things present. Harriet Prescott was there. He had some talk with her and liked her. He was more deeply impressed than ever with the exquisite courtesy of his friend. Even at the grave, while overwhelmed with grief, Pierce drew up the collar of Hawthorne’s coat to keep him from the cold.[9]

We went to walk in the morning and left Mr. Hawthorne to read in the library. He found a book called “Dealings with the Dead,” which he liked—indeed he said he liked no house to stay in better than this. He thought the old edition of Boccaccio which belonged to Leigh Hunt a poor translation. He has already written the first chapter of a new romance, but he thought so little of the work himself as to make it impossible for him to continue until Mr. Fields had read it and expressed his sincere admiration for the work. This has given him better heart to go on with it. He talked of the magazine with Mr. F.; told him he thought it was the most ably edited magazine in the world, and was bound to be a success, with this exception: he said, “I fear its politics—beware! What will you do when in a year or two the politics of the country change?” “I will quietly wait for that time to come,” said J. T. F.; “then I can tell you.”

As the sunset deepened Mr. Hawthorne talked of his early life. His grandfather bought a township in Maine and at the early age of eleven years he accompanied his mother and sister down there to live upon the land. From that moment the happiest period of his life began and lasted until he was thirteen, when he was sent to school in Salem. While in Maine he lived like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom he enjoyed. During the moonlight nights of winter he would skate until midnight alone upon the icy face of Sebago Lake, with all its ineffable beauty stretched before him and the deep shadows of the hills on either hand. When he was weary he could take refuge sometimes in a log cabin (there were several in this region), where half a tree would be burning on the broad hearth and he could sit by that and see the stars up through the chimney. All the long summer days he roamed at will, gun in hand, through the woods, and there he learned a nearness to Nature and a love for free life which has never left him and made all other existence in a measure insupportable. His suffering began with that Salem school and his knowledge of his relatives who were all distasteful to him. He said, “How sad middle life looks to people of erratic temperaments. Everything is beautiful in youth—all things are allowed to it.” We gave him “Pet Marjorie” to read in the evening—a little story by John Brown. He thought it so beautiful that he read it carefully twice until every word was grasped by his powerful memory....

Talking of England, Hawthorne said she was not a powerful empire. The extent over which her dominions extended led her to fancy herself powerful. She is much like a squash vine which runs over a whole garden, but once cut at the root and it is gone at once.

We talked and laughed about Boswell, whom he thinks one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, and J. T. F. recalled that story of Johnson who, upon being told of a man who had committed some misdemeanor and was upon the verge of committing suicide in consequence, said, “Why does not the man go somewhere where he is not known, instead of to the devil where he is known?”

Hawthorne was in the same class at college with Longfellow, whom he says he could not appreciate at that time. He was always finely dressed and was a tremendous student. Hawthorne was careless in dress and no student, but always reading desultorily right and left. Now they are deeply appreciative of each other.[10]

Hawthorne says he wants the North to beat now; ’tis the only way to save the country from destruction. He has been strangely inert and remote upon the subject of the war; partly from his deep hatred of everything sad. He seemed to feel as if he could not live and face it.

He was intensely witty, but his wit is of so ethereal a texture that the fine essence has vanished and I can remember nothing now of his witty things!

It would be a pity to truncate the following passage by confining the record of Fields’s day in Concord to his glimpse of Hawthorne, already recorded, with emendations, in the “Biographical Notes.”

From a letter of Hawthorne’s after a visit to Charles Street

Saturday, January 9, 1864.—J. T. F. passed yesterday in Concord. He went first to see Hawthorne, who was sitting alone gazing into the fire, his grey dressing-gown, which became him like a Roman toga, wrapped around his figure. He said he had done nothing for three weeks. Yet we feel his romance must be maturing in his mind. General Barlow and Mrs. Howe had sent word they were coming to call, so Mrs. Hawthorne had gone out to walk (been thrown out on picket-duty, Mrs. Stowe said) and had left word at home that Mr. Hawthorne was ill and could see no one. After his visit there, full of affectionate kindness, J. T. F. proceeded to dinner with the Emersons. Here too the reception was most hearty, but he fancied there were no servants to speak of at either house. Mrs. E. looked deadly pale, but her wit coruscated marvellously; even Mr. Emerson grew silent to listen. She said a committee of three, of which she was one, had been formed to pronounce upon certain essays (unpublished) of Mr. Emerson, which they thought should be printed now. She thought some of them finer than any of his published essays. He laughed a great deal at the fun she poked at the earlier efforts.

From there J. T. F. proceeded to see the Thoreaus. The mother and sister live well, but lonely it should seem, there without Henry. They produced 32 volumes of journal and a few letters. The idea was to print the letters. We hope it may be done. Their house was like a conservatory, it was so filled with plants in beautiful condition. Henry liked to have the doors thrown open that he might look at these during his illness. He was an excellent son, and even when living in his retirement at Walden Pond, would come home every day. He supported himself too from a very early age.

Here follows a passage also used by Fields in “Yesterdays with Authors,” but in a rendering so moderated that the original entry in the journal is quite another thing.

Monday, March 28.—Mr. Hawthorne came down to take this as his first station on his journey for health. He shocked us by his invalid appearance. He has become quite deaf, too. His limbs are shrunken but his great eyes still burn with their lambent fire. He said, “Why does Nature treat us so like children! I think we could bear it if we knew our fate. At least I think it would not make much difference to me now what became of me.” He talked with something of his old wit at times; said, “Why has the good old custom of coming together to get drunk gone out? Think of the delight of drinking in pleasant company and then lying down to sleep a deep strong sleep.” Poor man! He sleeps very little. We heard him walking in his room during a long portion of the night, heavily moving, moving as if indeed waiting, watching for his fate. At breakfast he gave us a most singular account of an interview with Mr. Alcott. He said: “Alcott was one of the most excellent of men. He could never quarrel with anyone.” But the other day he came to make Mr. H. a call, to ask him if there was any difficulty or misunderstanding between the two families. Mr. Hawthorne said no, that would be impossible; “but I proceeded,” he continued, “to tell him it was not possible to live upon amicable terms with Mrs. Alcott.... The old man acknowledged the truth of all that I said (indeed who should know it better), but I comforted him by saying in time of illness or necessity I did not doubt we should be the best of helpers to each other. I clothed all this in velvet phrases, that it might not seem too hard for him to bear, but he took it all like a saint.”

April, 1864.—When Mr. Hawthorne returned after watching at the death-bed of Mr. Ticknor, his mind was in a healthier condition, we thought, than when he left, but the experience had been a terrible one. I can never forget the look of pallid exhaustion he wore the night he returned to us. He said he had scarcely eaten or slept since he left. “Mr. Childs watched me so closely after poor Ticknor died, as if I had lost my protector and friend, and so I had! But he stuck by as if he were afraid to leave me alone. He stayed past the dinner hour, and when I began to wonder if he never ate himself, he departed and sent another man to watch me till he should return!” Nevertheless he liked Mr. Childs and spoke repeatedly of his unwearying kindness. “I never saw anything like it,” he said; yet when he was abstractedly wondering where his slippers were, I overheard him say to himself, “Oh! I remember, that cursed Childs watched me so I forgot everything.”

He spoke of the coldness of somebody and said, “Well, I think he would have felt something if he had been there!” He said he did not think death would be so terrible if it were not for the undertakers. It was dreadful to think of being handled by those men.

He was often wholly overcome by the ludicrous view of something presented to him in the midst of his grief. There was a black servant sleeping in the room that last night, whose name was Peter. Once he snored loudly, when the dying man raised himself with an appreciation of fun still living in him and said, “Well done, Peter!”

In every account of the last week of Hawthorne’s life, the shock he received through the illness and death of his friend and traveling companion, Ticknor, in Philadelphia, is an item of sombre moment. The two men had left Boston together late in March—Hawthorne, sick and broken, writing but once, in a tremulous hand, to his wife during the ill-starred journey; Ticknor, giving himself unstintingly to the restoration of Hawthorne’s health, and stricken unto death before a fortnight was gone. The circumstances are suggested in the entry that has just been quoted from Mrs. Fields’s journal. They stand still more clearly revealed in the last letter written by Hawthorne to Fields, who refers to it in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and adds that the news of Ticknor’s death reached Boston on the very day after this letter was written, all too evidently with a feeble hold upon the pen.

Philadelphia, Continental Hotel

Saturday morning

Dear Fields:—

I am sorry to say that our friend Ticknor is suffering under a severe billious attack since yesterday morning. He had previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an alarming degree. He sent for a physician during the night, and fell into the hands of an allopathist, who, of course, belabored with pills and powders of various kinds, and then proceeded to cup, and poultice, and blister, according to the ancient rule of that tribe of savages. The consequence is that poor Ticknor is already very much reduced, while the disorder flourishes as luxuriantly as if that were the doctor’s sole object. He calls it a billious colic (or bilious, I know not which) and says it is one of the severest cases he ever knew. I think him a man of skill and intelligence, in his way, and doubt not that he will do everything that his views of scientific medicine will permit.

Since I began writing the above, Mr. Bennett of Boston tells me the Doctor, after this morning’s visit, requested the proprietor of the Continental to telegraph to Boston the state of the case. I am glad of it, because it relieves me of the responsibility of either disclosing bad intelligence or withholding it. I will only add that Ticknor, under the influence of a blister and some powders, seems more comfortable than at any time since his attack, and that Mr. Bennett (who is an apothecary, and therefore conversant with these accursed matters) says that he is in a good state. But I can see that it will be not a very few days that will set him upon his legs again. As regards nursing, he shall have the best that can be obtained; and my own room is next to his, so that I can step in at any moment; but that will be of almost as much service as if a hippopotamus were to do him the same kindness. Nevertheless, I have blistered, and powdered, and pilled him and made my observation on medical science and the sad and comic aspects of human misery.

Excuse this illegible scrawl, for I am writing almost in the dark. Remember me to Mrs. Fields. As regards myself, I almost forgot to say that I am perfectly well. If you could find time to write Mrs. Hawthorne and tell her so, it would be doing me a great favor, for I doubt whether I can find an opportunity just now to do it myself. You would be surprised to see how stalwart I have become in this little time.

Your friend,

N. H.

Barely more than a month later, Hawthorne, traveling with another friend, Franklin Pierce, died in New Hampshire. Through the years that followed, the friendship of the Fieldses with his widow and children afforded many occasions for brief affectionate record in the chronicles of Charles Street.[11]

The two entries that follow touch, respectively, upon glimpses of Hawthorne’s immediate family at Concord, in the summer of 1865, and of his surviving sister in the summer of 1866.

Sunday, July 9, 1865.—Passed Friday in Concord. Called at the Emersons, but were disappointed to find them all in town, Jamie particularly, who wished to tell him that his new essay on Character is not suited to the magazine. Ordinary readers would not understand him and would consider it blasphemous. He thinks it would do more good if delivered simply to his own disciples first, in a volume of new essays uniform with the others.

Dined with Sophia Hawthorne and the children, the first real visit since that glorious presence has departed. What an altered household! She feels very lonely and is like a reed. I fear the children find small restraint from her. Poor child! How tired she is! Will God spare her further trial, I wonder, and take her to his rest?... Went to call on Sophia Thoreau.[12] ... We saw a letter from Froude, the historian, to H. T., as warmly appreciative as it was possible for a letter to be; also “long good histories,” as his sister said, from his admirer Cholmondely. His journal is in thirty-two volumes and when J. T. F. spoke of wishing for an editor to condense these, she said there was no hurry and she thought the man would come. We spoke of Sanborn. She said, “He knows a great deal, but I never associate him with my brother.”

She is a woman borne down with ill health. She seemed to possess, as we saw her, something of the self-sustaining power of her brother, the same repose and confidence in her fate, as being always good. Dear S. H. says she has this when she thinks of her brother, but often loses it when the surface of her life becomes irritated and she is disabled for work. Her aged mother, learning we were there, got up and dressed herself and came down, to her daughter’s great surprise. She has an immense care in that old lady evidently.

July 24, 1866.—We left just before eleven for Amesbury, to see Mr. Whittier, driving over to Beverly in an open wagon. It was one of the perfect days. As Keats said once, the sky sat “upon our senses like a sapphire crown.” We turned away after a time from the high road into a wood path, picking our way somewhat slowly to avoid the overhanging bushes and the rainy pools left in the ruts. We soon found ourselves near a place called Mt. Serat where we knew Miss Hawthorne lived, the only surviving sister of Nathaniel, and Mr. Fields determined at once to call upon her. To my surprise, in spite of the fine weather and her woodland life habitually, she was at home, and came down immediately as if she were sincerely glad to see us. She is a small woman, with small fine features, round full face, fresh-looking in spite of years, brilliant eyes, nervous brow, which twists as she speaks, and very nervous fingers. In one respect she differed from her brother—she was exquisitely neat (nor do I mean to convey the idea by this that he was unneat, but he always gave you a sense of disregarded trifles about his person and we frequently recall his reply to me when I offered to brush his coat one morning, “No, no, I never brush my coat, it wears it out!”), and gave you a sense of being particular in little things. I seemed to see in her another difference—a deterioration because of too great solitude—powers rusted—a decaying beauty—while with Hawthorne solitude fed his genius, solitude and the pressure of necessity. Utter solitude lames the native power of a woman even more than that of a man, for her natural growth is through her sympathies. She is a woman of no common mould, however. Lucy Larcom calls her a hamadryad, and says she belongs in the woods and should be seen there. I wish to see her again upon her own ground. She asked us almost immediately if we would not come with her to the woods, but our time was too short. From thence we held our way, and soon came by train to Newburyport and Amesbury. Whittier was at home, ready with an enthusiastic welcome.

To these memorials of Hawthorne must be added yet another, copied from a pencilled sheet preserved by Mrs. Fields in an envelope endorsed in her handwriting, “The original of a precious and extraordinary letter written by Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne while her husband lay dead.” Printed now, I believe for the first time, nearly sixty years after it was written, it rings with a devotion and exaltation which time is powerless to touch:

I wish to speak to you, Annie.

A person of a more uniform majesty never wore mortal form.

In the most retired privacy it was the same as in the presence of men.

The sacred veil of his eyelids he scarcely lifted to himself—such an unviolated sanctuary as was his nature, I, his inmost wife, never conceived nor knew.

So absolute a modesty was not before joined to so lofty a self-respect.

But what must have been that self-respect that he never in the smallest particular dishonored!

A conscience more void of offense never bore witness to GOD within.

It was the innocence of a baby and the grand comprehension of a sage.

To me—himself—even to me who was himself in unity—he was to the last the holy of holies behind the cherubim.

So unerring a judgment that a word from him would settle with me a chaos of doubts and questions that seemed perplexing to ordinary apprehension.

So equal a justice that I often wondered if he were human in this—for this seemed to partake of omniscience both of love and insight.

An impartiality of regard that solved all men and subjects in one alembick.

Truth and right alone he deigned to regard. Far below him was every other consideration.

A tenderness so infinite—so embracing—that GOD’S alone could surpass it. It folded the loathsome leper in as soft a caress as the child of his home affections—was not that divine!

Was it not Christianity in one action! What a bequest to his children—what a new revelation of Christ to the world was that! And for him—whom the sight and touch of unseemliness and uncleanness caused to shudder as an Eolian string shudders in the tempest.

Annie! to the last action in this house he was as lofty, as majestic, as imperial and as gentle—as in the strength of his prime, as on the day he rose upon my eye and soul a King among men by divine right!

When he awoke that early dawn and found himself unawares standing among the “Shining Ones” do you think they did not suppose he had been always with them—one of themselves? Oh, blessed be GOD for so soft a translation—as an infant wakes on its mother’s breast so he woke on the bosom of GOD and can never be weary any more, nor see nor touch an unclean thing. A demand for beauty and perfection that was inexorable. Yet though a flaw or a crack gave him so fine agony, no one, no one was ever so tolerant as he!

Hawthorne’s allusion to Alcott brings the figure of that Concord personage on the scene. The picture of him in Charles Street is so sharpened in outline by certain remarks upon him by the elder Henry James, a somewhat more frequent visitor, that the passages relating to the two men are here joined together. The first recorded glimpses of James occurred in the course of a visit to Newport.

September 23, 1863.—Received a visit at Newport from Henry James. His son was badly wounded in two places at Gettysburg. He spoke of the reviews of his work among other topics. “Who wrote the review in the Examiner?” asked Mr. F. “Oh! that was merely Freeman Clarke,” he replied; “he is a smuggler in theology and feels towards me much as a contraband towards an exciseman.” Speaking of fashion, he said, “there was good in it,” although it appears to be a drawback to the residents here while it lasts. He anticipates a change in European affairs; the age of ignorance is to pass away and strong democratic tendencies will soon pervade Europe. The march of civilization will work its revenge against aristocratic England, he believes.

Mr. James considers that people make a mistake to expect reason from Carlyle. “He is an artist, a wilful artist, and no reasoner. He has only genius.”

October 16, 1863.—Mr. Alcott breakfasted with us. He said all vivid new life was well described by his daughter Louisa. She was happier now that she had made a success. “She was formerly not content to wait, but so soon as she became content, then good fortune came, as she always does.” I told him we enjoyed deeply reading his MSS. of “The Rhapsodist” (Emerson) last night. He said he thought it was finally brought into presentable shape! “When in a more imperfect condition,” he continued, “I read it to Mr. Emerson. The modest man could only keep silent at such a time, but he conveyed to me the idea that he should prefer the paper should not be printed in the ‘Commonwealth.’ Later I again read it, when he said, ‘If I were dead.’ I have reason to believe that in its present shape he would not object to its presentation.”[13] He talked of his own valuable library and asked what he should do with it by and by. J. T. F. suggested it should go to the Union Club, which pleased him much. “That is the place,” said he. “If it were known this was my intention, might I not also be entitled to consideration at the Club?”

Among his books is a copy of Milton’s “World of Words,” owned by Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who early colonized the state of Maine.

He talked of Thoreau. “There will be seven or eight volumes of his works. Next should come the letters, with the commendatory poems prefixed. Come up to Concord and we will talk it over. If you go to see Miss Thoreau, arrange to talk with her in the absence of the mother, who would interrupt and speak again of the whole matter. Make Helen[14] feel that Henry will receive as much for his books as if he had made his own bargain, for he was good at a bargain and they are a little hard—that is, they do not understand all the bearings of many subjects.”

The good old man has come to Boston, being asked to perform funeral ceremonies over the bodies of two children. He asked for my Vaughan. “A beautiful poem which is not known is much at such a time,” he observed inquiringly. To which I heartily responded.

Mr. Emerson came in to see Mr. Fields today. “I shall reconsider my reluctance to have Mr. Alcott’s article published provided he will obtain consideration by it,” was his generous speech. He said he had begun to prepare a new volume of poems, “but I must go down the harbor before I can finish a little poem about the islands. I took steamboat yesterday and went down, but a mist came up and my visit was to no purpose.”

February 19, 1864.—This morning early called upon Mrs. Mott of Pennsylvania. Found Mr. James with her. He observed that circumstances had placed him above want, and inheritance had given him a position in the world which precluded his having any knowledge of the temptations which beset many men. His virtues were the result of his position rather than of character—an affair of temperament. He said society was to blame for much of the crime in it, and as for that poor young man who committed the murder at Malden, it was a mere fact of temperament or inheritance. He soon broke off his talk, saying it was “pretty well to be caught in the middle of such weighty topics in the presence of two ladies at 10 o’clock in the morning.” Then we talked of houses. He wishes a furnished house for a year in Boston until his departure.

July 28.—Still hot, with a russet sun. Mr. and Mrs. Henry James called in the evening. He talked of “Sterling.” “He was not stereotyped, but living, his eye burned; he was very vivacious, although he saw Death approaching. He was one of the choicest of friends.” Afterward he talked of Alcott’s visit to Carlyle. Carlyle told Mr. James he found him a terrible old bore. It was almost impossible to be rid of him, and impossible also to keep him, for he would not eat what was set before him. Carlyle had potatoes for breakfast and sent for strawberries for Mr. Alcott, who, when they arrived, took them with the potatoes upon the same plate, where the two juices ran together and fraternized. This shocked Carlyle, who would eat nothing himself, but stormed up and down the room instead. “Mrs. Carlyle is a naughty woman,” said Mr. J., “she wishes to make a sensation and does not mind sometimes following and imitating her husband’s way.” Mr. J. said Alcott once made him a visit in New York and when he found he could not go to Brooklyn to attend Mr. A.’s “conversation,” the latter said, “Very well; he would talk over the heads with him then before it was time to go.” They got into a great battle about the premises, during which Mr. Alcott talked of the Divine paternity as relating to himself, when Mr. James broke in with, “My dear sir, you have not found your maternity yet. You are an egg half hatched. The shells are yet sticking about your head.” To this Mr. A. replied, “Mr. James, you are damaged goods and will come up damaged goods in eternity.”

We laughed much before they left at a story about a man who called to ask money of John Jacob Astor. The gentleman was ushered into a twilight library, where he fancied himself alone until he heard a grunt from a deep chair, the high back of which was turned towards him; then the gentleman advanced, found Mr. Astor there and saluted him. He opened the business of the subscription to him, and was about to unfold the paper when Mr. Astor suddenly cried out, “Oo—oo—oo—ooooooo!” “What is the matter, my dear sir,” said he, “are you ill? [growing alarmed] Where is the bell? Let me ring the bell.” Then running to the door, he shouted, “Madame, madame.” Then to Mr. Astor, “Pray, sir, what is the matter?” “Oo—oo—oo.” “Have you a pain in your side!!” In a moment the household came running thither, and as the housekeeper bent over him, he cried, “Oo—oo—these horrid wretches sending to me for money!!” As may be believed, our friend of the subscription paper beat a hasty retreat and here ended also our evening.

A few days later there was an evening with Sumner and others, who talked of affairs in Washington. Mr. and Mrs. James were of the company. “These men,” wrote Mrs. Fields, “despond with regard to the civil government. They have more faith that our military affairs are doing well. Chiefly they look to Sherman as the great man. Mr. James was silent; he believes in Lincoln.” And there is the final note: “We must not forget Mr. James’s youth, who was ‘aninted with isle of Patmos.’”

July 10, 1866.—Forceythe Willson came and talked purely, lovingly, and like the pure character he aspires to be. He said Mr. Alcott talked with him of temperaments lately, with much wisdom. He said the blonde was nearest to perfection, that was the heavenly type. “You are not a blonde,” said the seer calmly, and, said Willson to me, “I was much amused and pleased too; for when I regarded the old man more closely I discovered he himself was a blonde.”

October 6, 1867.—Mr. Henry James and his daughter came to call. We chanced to ask him about Dr. G—— of New York, a physician of wide reputation in the diagnosis of disease. He is an old man now, but with so large a practice that he will see no new patients. Mr. James says, however, that he is a humbug, that is, as I understood. He is a man of discernment which he turns to the best account, but not a man of deep insight or unwonted development. Suddenly J. remembered that there was once a Dr. —— of New York who was also famous. The moment his name was mentioned Mr. James became quite a new man. His enthusiasm flamed. Dr. —— died at the early age of 38, and, according to the saying of the world, insane. “Yet he was no more insane than I am at this moment as far as the action of his mind was concerned, which was always perfectly clear. Several years before his death he was pursued by spirits which often kept him awake all night. His wife was a heavenly woman and a Swedenborgian. The spirits did not come to her, but she was persuaded that they did come to him. They so disturbed his life that he used to say he was ready to die, in order to pursue his tormentors and ferret out the occasion of his trouble. At one time they told him that in every age a man had been selected to do the bidding of the Lord God, to be the Lord Christ of the time, and he must fit himself to be that man. They prescribed for him therefore certain fasts and austerities which he religiously fulfilled, only asking in return an interview in which some sign should be given him. They promised faithfully, but when the time arrived it was postponed; and this occurred repeatedly, until he felt sure of the deceit of the parties concerned.”

Through the medium of these spirits Dr. —— became at length estranged from his wife. He went West to obtain a divorce, and while on this strange errand occurred a breach between himself and Mr. James. The latter wrote him a letter urging him away from the dead, which the doctor took as interference. The poor man returned to New York and at length shot himself. His wife never harbored the least animosity against him for his undeserved treatment. (Mr. J. looked like an invalid, but was full of spirit and kindness. He not infrequently speaks severely of men and things. Analysis is his second nature.)

March 5, 1869.—Jamie had an unusually turbulent and exciting day, and was thoroughly weary when night came. Henry James came first, and had gone so far as to abuse Emerson pretty well when the latter came in. “How do you do, Emer-son,” he said, with his peculiar intonation and voice, as if he had expected him on the heels of what had gone before. Mr. James calls his new book, “The Secret of Swedenborg.” Jamie thinks his article on Carlyle too abusive, especially as he stayed in his house, or was there long and familiarly. But his love of country was bitterly stung by Carlyle in “Shooting Niagara and After.”

Saturday, March 13, 1869.—Mr. Emerson read in the afternoon. The subject was Wordsworth in chief, but the time was far too short to do justice to the notes he had made. In the evening we went to Cambridge to hear Mr. James read his paper on “Woman.” We took tea first with the family and afterward listened to the lecture. He took the highest, the most natural, and the most religious point of view from which I have heard the subject discussed. He dealt metaphysically with it, after his own fashion, showing the subtle inherent counterparts of man to woman, showing to what extremes either would be led without the other. He spoke with unmingled disgust of the idea of woman, except for union in behalf of some charity for the time, forsaking the sanctity and privacy of her home to battle and unsex herself in the hot and dusty arena of the world.

(The members of the Woman’s Club asked him to write this lecture for them. He did not wish to spare the time, but promised to do so if they would invite him afterward to deliver it in public. They disliked the lecture so much that, although they did send him a public invitation, there were but twenty people present.)

Nothing could be holier or more inspiring than his ideal of womanhood. She is the embodied social idea, the genius of home, the light of life—“ever desiring novelty her life without man would be a long chase from one field to another, accompanied by soft gospel truth.”

He didn’t fail to whip the “pusillanimous” clergy, and as the room was overstocked with them, it was odd to watch the effect. Mr. James is perfectly brave, almost inapprehensive, of the storm of opinion he raises, and he is quite right. Nothing could be more clearly his own and inherent, than his views in this lecture, nothing which the times need more. He helps to lay that dreadful phantom of yourself which appears now and then conjured up by the right people, haranguing the crowd and endeavoring to be something for which you were clearly never intended by Heaven. I think I shall never forget a pretty little niece of Mrs. Dale Owen, who was with her at the first Club meeting in New York. Her face was full of softness and Madonna-like beauty, but she was learning to contract her brow over ideas and become “strong” in her manner of expressing them. It was a kind of nightmare.

Summer, 1871.—Mr. Alcott, Mr. Howison, Mr. Harris, the latter two lovers of philosophy, have been here this week. Channing is still writing poems in Concord, says Alcott. The latter smiles blandly at his own former absurdities, but he does not eat meat, and continues his ancient manner of living among books. The old gentleman gave me this wild rose as he went away. He quoted Vaughan, talked of a book of selections he would wish to see made, “a honey-pot into which one might dip at leisure,” also an almanac suitable for a lady, of the choicest things among the ancient writers. He was full of good sayings and most witty and attractive. He is somewhat deaf, but he bears this infirmity as he has borne all the ills of life with a mild sweet heroism most marked and worthy of love and to be copied.

Sunday, April 20, 1873.—Last night Mr. and Mrs. Henry James, Alice, and Mr. DeNormandie dined here. Mr. James looked very venerable, but was at heart very young and amused us much. He gave a description of Mr. George Bradford being run over by the horse-car, because of his own inadvertence in part, and of the good-natured crowd who insisted upon his having restitution for what he considered, in part, at least, his own fault. “Ain’t you dead?” said one. “267 Highland Ave. is the number, don’t forget,” said another; “you can prosecute.” “Where’s my hat?” he asked meekly. “Better ask if ye’re not dead, and not be looking for your hat,” said another.

He also told us of a visit of Elizabeth Peabody to the Alcotts. He said: “In Mr. A. the moral sense was wholly dead, and the Æsthetic sense had never yet been born!”

It may well have been after a visit to the Fieldses at the seashore town of Manchester that Henry James wrote this undated characteristic note which embodies the feeling of many another guest:—

My dear Fields:—

Pride ever goes before a fall. I scorned my wife’s solicitude about her umbrella as unworthy of an immortal mind, and now I am reduced to pleading with you to preserve my lost implement in that line, and when you next come to town to bring it with you and leave it for me at Williams’ book store, corner of School Street, where I will reclaim it.

Alas! The difference between now and then! Such an atmosphere as we are having this morning! And yet we did not need the contrast to impress us with a lively sense of the lovely house, the lovely scenes, and the lovely people we had left. We came home fragrant with the sweetest memories, and the way we have been making the house resound with the fame of our enjoyment would amuse you. Alice and her aunt came home just after us, and we have done nothing but talk since we arrived. Good bye; give my love to that angelic woman, whom I shall remember in my last visions, and believe me, faithfully,

Yours also,

H. J.

Henry James’s letters to Mr. and Mrs. Fields, of which a number are preserved by the present generation of the James family, abound in characteristic felicities. In one of them—they are nearly all undated—he regrets his inability to read a lecture of his own at Mrs. Fields’s invitation, on the ground that his unpublished writings are “all too grave and serious, not for you individually indeed, but for those ‘slumberers in Zion’ who are apt, you know, to constitute the bulk of a parlour audience.” In another he is evidently declining an invitation to hear a reading of Emerson’s in Charles Street:—

Swampscott, May 11

My dear Mrs. Fields:—

My wife—who has just received your kind note in rapid route to the Dedham Profane Asylum, or something of that sort—begs leave to say, through me as a willing and sensitive medium, that you are one of those arva beata, renowned in poetry, which, visit them never so often, one is always glad to revisit, which are attractive in all seasons by their own absolute light, and without any Emersonian pansies and buttercups to make them so. This enthusiastic Dedhamite says further, in effect, that while one is deeply grateful for your courteous offer of a seat upon your sofa to hear the Concord sage, she yet prefers the material banquet you summon us to in your dining-room, since there we should be out of the mist and able to discern between nature and cookery, between what eats and what is eaten at all events, and feel a thankful mind that we were in solid comfortable Charles Street, instead of the vague, wide, weltering galaxy, and should be sure to deem Annie and Jamie (I am sure of Annie, I think my wife feels equally sure of Jamie) lovelier fireflies than ever sparkled in the cold empyrean. But alas, who shall control his destiny? Not my wife, whom multitudinous cares enthrall; nor yet myself, whom a couple of months’ enforced illness now constrains to a preternatural activity, lest the world fail of salvation....

P. S. Who did contrive the comical title for his lecture—“Philosophy of the People”? I suspect it was a joke of J. T. F. It would be no less absurd for Emerson himself to think of philosophizing than it would be for the rose to think of botanizing. Emerson is the Divinely pompous rose of the philosophic garden, gorgeous with colour and fragrance. What a sad lookout there would be for tulip and violet and lily and the humble grape, if the rose should turn out philosophic gardener as well! Philosophy of the people, too! But that was Fields, or else it was only R. W. E. after dining with F. at the Union Club and becoming demoralized.

The final paragraph of a single other note suggests in sum the relation between James and his Charles Street friends:—

Speaking of Mr. Fields always reminds me of various things so richly endowed in the creature in all good gifts; but the dominant consideration in my mind associated with him is his beautiful home and there chiefly that atmosphere and faultless womanly worth and dignity which fills it with light and warmth and makes it a real blessing to one’s heart every time he falls within its precincts. Please felicitate the wretch for me, and believe me, my dear Mrs. Fields,

Your true friend and servant,

H. J.

July 8.

Though not related either to Alcott or to Henry James, the following entry, on October 16, 1863, should be preserved—and as well in this place as in another. It refers to the second of the three Josiah Quincys who were mayors of Boston in the course of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Josiah Quincy dropped in to see J. T. F. He had lately been traveling in the West, he said. People complimented him upon his youthful appearance and his last letter to the President. “I am glad you liked the letter,” he said, “but my father wrote it.” At the next town people pressed his hand, and thanked him for his staunch adherence to the Anti-slavery cause as expressed in the “Liberator.” “Oh,” his reply was, “that was my brother Edmund Quincy”; a little farther on a friend complimented his brilliant story in the last “Atlantic” magazine. “That was by my son J. P. Quincy,” he was obliged to answer. Finally, when his exploits in the late wars at the head of the 20th Regiment were recounted, he grew impatient, said it was his son Colonel Quincy, but he thought it high time he came home, instead of travelling about to receive the compliments of others.

In giving the title, “Glimpses of Emerson,” to one of the chapters in her “Authors and Friends,” Mrs. Fields described accurately the use she made of her records and remembrances of that serene Olympian who glided in and out of Boston to the awe and delight of those with whom he came into personal contact. “Olympian” must be the word, since “Augustan” connotes something quite too mundane to suggest the effect produced by Emerson upon his sympathetic contemporaries. Did they realize, I wonder, how fitting it was that this prophet of the harmonies of life should live in a place the name of which is spoken by all but New Englanders as if it signified not a despairing VÆ victis, but the very bond of peace? All the adjectives of benignity have been bestowed upon Emerson. Mrs. Fields’s “Glimpses” of him suggest that atmosphere, as of mountain solitudes, in which he moved; that air of the heights which those who moved beside him were fain to breathe. His “Conversations” in public and private places, a form of intellectual refreshment suggested by Mrs. Fields and conducted, to Emerson’s large material advantage, by her husband, appear to-day as highly characteristic of their time,—the sixties and seventies,—and the light thrown upon them by her journal illuminates not only him and her, but the whole society of “superior persons” in which Emerson was so dominating a figure. By no means all of that light escaped from her manuscript journals to the printed page of “Authors and Friends.” In the hitherto unprinted passages now given there are further shafts of it, sometimes slender in themselves, but joining to show the very Emerson that came and went in Charles Street.

EMERSON

From the marble statue by Daniel Chester French in the Concord Public Library

There was a furtive humor in Emerson, which expressed itself more accurately in his own words than in anything written about him. A pleasant trace of it is found in a note to Fields addressed, “My dear Editor,” dated “Concord, October 5, 1866,” and containing these words: “I have the more delight in your marked overestimate of my poem, that I had been vexed with a belief that what skill I had in whistling was nearly or quite gone, and that I must henceforth content myself with guttural consonants or dissonants, and not attempt warbling.”

There is a clear application of the Emersonian philosophy to domestic matters in a letter written by Mrs. Emerson to Mrs. Fields, a week after the fire which drove the poet’s family from his house at Concord, in the summer of 1872. Mrs. Fields—as if in fulfillment of Emerson’s words on the proffer of some previous hospitality: “Indeed we think that your house should have that name inscribed upon it—‘Hospitality’”—had invited the dislodged Emersons to take refuge under her roof. Mrs. Emerson, replying, wrote:—

We are most happily settled in the “Old Manse,” where our cousin, Miss Ripley, assures us we can be accommodated—to her satisfaction as well as our own—until our house is rebuilt. Only the upper half is destroyed and we shall, I trust, so well restore it that you will not know—when we shall have the pleasure of welcoming you there—except for its fresh appearance, that anything has happened. I should not use such a word as “calamity,” for truly the whole event is a blessing rather than a misfortune. We have received such warm expressions of kindness from our friends, and have witnessed such disinterested action and brave daring in our town’s people, that we feel—in addition to our happiness in the sympathy of friends in other places—as if Concord was a large family of personal friends and well-wishers. They command not only our gratitude but our deep respect, for their loving and personal self-forgetfulness.

Mr. Emerson and Ellen join me in affectionate and grateful acknowledgments to yourself and to Mr. Fields.

Ever your friend,

Lilian Emerson

Concord, July 31, 1872.

It is in the atmosphere of the mutual relation revealed in many letters from Emerson and his household to Mr. and Mrs. Fields that the following reports of encounters with him—a few out of many similar passages in her journals—should be read.

December 3, 1863.—Last Tuesday Mr. Emerson lectured in town. Mrs. E. and Edith came to tea. She was troubled because she was a little late. She is a woman of proud integrity and real sweetness. She has an awe of words. They mean so much to her that her lips do not unlock save for truth or kindliness or beauty or wisdom. The lecture was for today—there was much of Carlyle, chastisement, and soul. After the lecture they came home with us and about 20 friends. Wendell Phillips was in his sweetest mood. He spoke of Beecher and Luther and of the vigorous, healthy hearts of these men who swayed this world. He said Hallam speaks disparagingly of Luther. I could not but think of Sydney Smith’s friend who spoke “disparagingly of the Equator.” Alden too came in wearied after his lecture. Senator Boutwell spoke in praise of life in Washington, the first man. Sunshiny Edith passed the night with us.

January 5, 1864.—Mr. Emerson came today to see J. T. F. He says Mr. Blake, who holds the letters of Thoreau in his hands, is a terribly conscientious man, “a man who would even return a borrowed umbrella.” He became acquainted with Blake when he was connected with theological matters, “and he believed wholly in me at that time, but one day he met Thoreau and he never came to my house afterwards. His conscientiousness is equalled perhaps by that of George Bradford, who accompanied us once to hear Mr. Webster speak. There was an immense crowd, Mr. Bradford became separated from the party, and was swept into a capital place within the lines. When he found himself well ensconced in front of the speaker, he turned about and saw us, and with a look of great concern said: ‘I have no ticket for this place and I can’t stay.’ We besought him not to be so foolish as to give up the place, but nothing would tempt him to keep it.”

He was in fine mood.

Wednesday, September 6.—Mr. Emerson went to see Mr. Fields. “There are fine lines in Lowell’s Ode,” he said. “Yes,” answered J. T. F., “it is a fine poem.” “I have found fine lines in it,” replied the seer. “I told Lowell once,” he continued, “that his humorous poems gave me great pleasure; they were worth all his serious poetry. He did not take it very well, but muttered, ‘The Washers of the Shroud,’ and walked away.”

J. T. F. found Emerson sitting by the window in his new office, highly delighted with it.

September 30, 1865.—Jamie went to dine with the Saturday Club. Professor Nichol was his guest. Sam. Ward (Julia’s brother) was Longfellow’s. Lowell, Holmes, Hoar, Emerson and a few others only were present. Judge Hoar related an amusing anecdote of having sent a beautiful basket of pears to the Concord exhibition this year. He said Mr. Emerson was one of the judges, and he thought he would be pleased with the pears because a few years ago he was in the garden one day and, observing that very tree, which was not then very flourishing, had told Judge Hoar that more iron and more animal matter were needed in the soil. “Forthwith,” said the Judge, “I planted all my old iron kettles and a cat and a dog at the foot of the tree and these pears were the result. I have kept two favorite terriers ready to plant if necessary beside, but the fruit for the present seems well enough without them.”

Judge Hoar said also that he knew a man once with a prodigious memory; before dinner he could recall General Washington, after dinner he remembered Christopher Columbus!

Saturday, October 7, 1865.—Tuesday, 3, Edith Emerson was married to William Forbes. The old house threw wide its hospitable doors and the stairway and rooms were covered with leaves and flowers and the whole place was as beautiful as earthly radiance and joy can make a home. Poor Mrs. Hawthorne, laden with her many sorrows, threw off her black robe for that day that she might rejoice with others. Edith made her own marriage wreath, and even Mr. Emerson wore white gloves. Old Mrs. Ripley and many aged and many beautiful persons were there.

In 1866 Emerson, long exiled from the good graces of his Alma Mater, was restored to them by the bestowal of an honorary degree. In 1867 the restoration was completed by his election as an Overseer of Harvard College and his appearance, after an interval of thirty years, as the Phi Beta Kappa orator. In this capacity he read his address on the “Progress of Culture” on July 18, 1867. Of the manner in which he did it, and of the effect he produced on his hearers, Lowell wrote immediately to Norton, in a letter often quoted, “He boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses; but it was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was our fault, not his.” “Phi Beta Day” was still a local festival of much brilliance, which was thus reflected in 1867 on the pages of Mrs. Fields’s journal.

Thursday, July 18, 1867.—Arose at five and worked in my garden until breakfast. Then it was time to dress for Phi Beta at Cambridge. We drove out, leaving home at nine o’clock. We expected Professor Andrew D. White to go with us, but he called still earlier to say he had been summoned to a business meeting by President Hill. The day was soft and pleasant with a clouded sky. We were among the first on the ground, but we had the pleasure of waiting a few moments to see our friends arrive before we were admitted to the church. Only ladies went in. I went with Mrs. Quincy, the poet’s[15] wife (poet for the day, for he is apt to disclaim this title usually), and we found good places in the gallery; by and by, however, Mrs. Dana beckoned to me to come and sit with them, so I changed my seat to a place on the lower floor. It was an impressive sight to see those men come in (though they kept us waiting until twelve o’clock)—Lowell, Emerson, Dana, Hale, and all the good brave men we have with few exceptions. First came Quincy’s poem, then Mr. Emerson’s address—both excellent after the manner of the men. Poor Mr. E.’s MSS. was in inextricable confusion, and in spite of the chivalry of E. E. Hale, who hunted up a cushion that he might see better, the whole matter seemed at first out of joint in the reader’s eyes. However that may have been, it was far from out of joint in our eyes, being noble in aim and influence, magnetic, imaginative. I felt grateful that I had lived till that moment and as if I might come home to live and work better. Thank Heaven for such a master! He was evidently put out and angry with himself for his disorder and, taking Mr. Fields’s arm as he came from the assembly, had to be somewhat reassured that it was not an utter failure.

Mrs. Dana tried to carry me to lunch, most kindly. I could not make up my mind to go anywhere after what I had heard, but for a moment to see if the good Jameses were well, and thence homeward. It seemed, if I could ever work, it must be then.

At half-past six Jamie returned from the dinner, where J. R. Lowell presided in the most elegant and brilliant manner. In calling out Agassiz he told the story of the sailor who was swallowed by a whale and finding time rather heavy on his hands thought he would inscribe his name on the bridge of bone above his head; but looking for a place, jack-knife in hand, he found that Jonah was before him—so he said Agassiz, etc. And of Holmes he said that the Professor and himself were like two buckets in a well: when one of them presided at a dinner, the other made it a point to bring a poem; when one bucket came up full, the other went down empty. And so on through all. Phillips Brooks, the distinguished preacher of Philadelphia, was there, and many other men of note.

Out of the many notes relating to Emerson’s lectures, a few passages may be taken as typical. Perhaps the best unpublished pages are those on which the philosopher is seen, with his wife and daughter, against the social background of the time and place.

October 19, 1868.—The weeks spin away so fast I have no time for records, and yet last Sunday and Monday we had two pleasant parties, especially Monday, after Mr. Emerson’s first lecture. We were 14 at supper. Mrs. Putnam and Miss Oakey among the guests, but the Emersons, who are always pleased and always full of kindliness, enjoyment, and Christianity, I believe give more pleasure than they receive wherever they are entertained. Edward is full of his grape-culture in Milton, Ellen full of good works, Mrs. Emerson very hot against her brother’s opponents, Morton and those who take sides with him now that Morton himself is in the earth-mould first.[16] Mr. Emerson, alive and alert on all topics, talked openly of the untruthfulness of the Peabodys, of the beauty of “Charles Auchester,” of Mr. Alcott’s school, of Dana’s politics as superior perhaps to Butler and yet not altogether sound and worthy, conservatism being so deep in his blood.

Thursday we drove our friends to Milton Blue Hill after the Emersons had gone, returned to dine and Selwyn’s theatre in the evening. Herman Merivale was of the party—son of Thackeray’s friend. The Stephens went on Wednesday. Thursday we dined in Milton with Mrs. Silsbee; it was a wet nasty day. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were quietly enough here, Jamie with a fearful cold. Surely all this is unimportant enough as regards ourselves; but I like to remember when Mr. Emerson came and what he said and how he looked, for it is a pure benediction to see him and I honor and love him.

February 20, 1869.—Heard Emerson again, and Laura was with me; we drank up every word eagerly. He read Donne, Daniel, and especially Herbert; also vers de sociÉtÉ; the facility of these old divines giving them a power akin to what has produced these familiar rhymes.

He said Herbert was full of holy quips; fond of using a kind of irony towards God, and quoted appropriately. Beautiful things of Herrick, too, he read, but treated Vaughan rather unjustly, we thought.

Lowell sat just behind; I could imagine his running commentary on many of Mr. Emerson’s remarks, which were often more Emersonian than universal, or true. The facility of the old poets seemed to impress him with almost undue reverence. He is extremely natural and easy in manner and speech during these readings. He bent his brows and shut his eyes, endeavoring to recall a passage from Ben Jonson as if we were at his own dinner-table, and at last when he gave it up said, “It is all the more provoking as I do not doubt many a friend here might help me out with it.”

His respect for literature, often in these degenerate days smiled upon from some imaginary hills by surrounding multitudes, is absolute and regnant. It is religion and life, and he reiterating them in every form.

The first and second of the “Conversations” arranged for Emerson by Fields are duly described in the journal. In the evening that followed the second, Emerson and his daughter dined at Charles Street, in company with Longfellow and his daughter Alice, William Morris Hunt and his wife, Dr. Holmes, and the Fieldses. The scene and talk were recorded by the hostess.

... Coming home, Ellen’s trunk had not arrived, so she came, like a good child, most difficult in a woman grown, to dinner in her travelling dress. Alice Longfellow looked very pretty in a polonaise of lovely olive brown over black; a little feather of the same color in her hair. Rooshue [Mrs. Hunt] and her husband came in their everydays too. I wore a lilac polonaise with a yellow rose—I speak of the latter because it seemed to please W. M. Hunt to see the dash of color....

Hunt convulsed us with a story of seeing a man run through by an iron bolt, when a distinguished physician is called in; the physician asks if he can sleep well, and a thousand and one questions of like relevancy, to all of which the patient only replies by gasps of agony. Hunt acted the whole scene famously. The sunset too delighted him as it gilded the old sheds back of the house and made them “like Solomon’s temple.” Longfellow has written to Miss Rossetti, the author of the “Shadow of Dante,” to thank her for her pleasant book. He asks her the difficult question why Dante puts Venus nearest the sun. Also he points out her fault of saying the spirits of the blest inhabited the planets, whereas Dante clearly states that they all lived in one heaven but visited the planets.

The truth of Hawthorne’s tale of the minister with the black veil was hunted up. His name was Moody and he was one of the Emerson family. It seems the poor man in his youth shot a boy by accident, and as he grew older a morbid temper settled upon him and he did not think himself fit to preach; so he withdrew from the ministry but taught a small school, always wore a black veil, literally a handkerchief. Ellen said her aunt was taught by him and she appeared anxious to set the matter right. Rose Hawthorne and her husband have been to see Mr. Emerson, and he likes them both well; thinks Rose looks happy and the young man promising, which is much. There is hope of Una’s recovery and return.

After dinner, we ladies looked over manuscripts for a time until Longfellow went—when Mrs. Hunt went to the piano and played and sang. Finally he came, and they sang their little duets together and afterward she sang a song with words by Channing about a pine tree, set to a scrap of a sonata by Helen Bell, and after that a touching German song with English words—then she read Celia’s [Mrs. Thaxter’s] new poem to Mr. Emerson, called “The Tryst.” She read it only pretty well, which disgusted her; and she said it reminded her of William’s reading, which was the worst she ever knew; he could literally stop in the middle of a sentence because it happened to be the bottom of a page, and ask her what it meant. At that he took Celia’s poem and read it through word for word like a school-boy, looking up at her to see if he was right and should go on. She laughed immoderately, and as for Mr. Emerson, J. said his eyes left their wonted sockets and went to laugh far back in his brain.

Putting down his book, Hunt launched off into his own life as a painter. His lonely position here without anyone to look up to in his art—his idea of art being entirely misunderstood, his determination not to paint cloth and cheeks, but to paint the glory of age and the light of truth. He became almost too excited to find words, but when he did grasp a phrase, it was such a fine one that it went a great way. His wife sat by making running comments, but when he said, “If any man who was talking could not be heard, he would naturally try to talk so that he could be heard,” we tried to urge him to stand firm and to assure him that his efforts were neither lost nor in vain. “If the books you wrote were left all dusty and untouched upon the shelves, don’t you think you would try to write so that people should want them? I am sure you would.” His wife tried to say he must stand in the way he knew was right—as did we all—but he seemed to think it too hard, too Sisyphus-like a labor. The portrait of little Paul is still unsold. After keeping the carriage waiting one hour and a half, they went—a most interesting pair.

A CORNER OF THE CHARLES STREET LIBRARY

Tuesday, April 23.—Shakespeare’s birthday. Emerson and his daughter passed the night with us and Edith Davidson, Ellen’s “daughter,” came to breakfast. We talked over again the pleasure of the night before. Emerson had never heard Hunt talk before and had seldom found Longfellow so expansive. Holmes met J. in the course of the day, and told him he had a real good time, though he did have a thumping headache—he was much pleased with Alice Longfellow.

From a note of Emerson’s to Mrs. Fields

Tuesday, May 21.—Call from Mr. Emerson, Mrs. E. and Ellen. They came in a body to thank me, which Mrs. Emerson did in a little set speech after her own fashion, at which we all laughed heartily—especially at the “profit” clause. Indeed we had a very merry time altogether. Mr. Emerson gave “Queenie” permission to look all about the room, “for indeed there was not such another in all Boston—no indeed [half soliloquizing], not such another.” Then he looked about and told them the wrong names of the painters, and would have been entirely satisfied if he had not referred to me, when I was obliged to tell the truth and so from that time he made me speaker. He said he should do his very best for the university class for women for next December to make up for having served them so badly this winter. He said I had very gently reminded him of his entire forgetfulness to fulfil an engagement or half-engagement to come to speak to them this winter. “Queenie” told me she was one of the few persons who had read Miss Mitford’s poems, “Blanche” and all the rest, and liked them very much. So the various portraits of the old lady interested her much.

They came down to Boston, Mrs. E. said, on purpose to make this call. I had just returned home from a long drive about town on business, so it was the best possible moment for me.

Our first thought this morning (J’s. and mine) was, how could Mr. Emerson finish his course of “Conversations,” which had been so brilliant until the last, in so unsatisfactory a manner. His matter was for the most part old, and he finished with reading well-known hymns of Dr. Watts and Mrs. Barbauld. I fear we were all disappointed. Some of the lectures (especially the one on “Love”) have been so fine that we were bitterly disappointed.

A later reference to Emerson shows him in Philadelphia, and through the eyes of a qualified observer there. The passage was written at Manchester-by-the-Sea, to which Mr. and Mrs. Fields had begun to pay summer visits even before 1872, and where they soon acquired that cottage of their own on “Thunderbolt Hill,” which belied its name in serving as the most peaceful of retreats for Mrs. Fields and the friends she was constantly summoning to her side through all the remainder of her life.

Tuesday, August 25, 1872.—Miss A. Whitney came Saturday and remained until Monday morning. Sunday evening we passed at Mrs. Towne’s. Mrs. Annis Wister[17] of Pennsylvania had just arrived, a dramatic creature, who tells and tells again at request, with as much amiability as talent, her wonderful story of Father Donne, the Irish priest, who performed the marriage ceremony for one of her servants. Mrs. Wister, in spite of a lisp, has a thoroughly clear enunciation. She never leaves a sentence unfinished nor suffers the imagination to complete any corner of her picture. She is exceedingly lively and witty, and Miss Whitney, whose mind is quite different and altogether introverted, busied over her artistic conceptions, could not help a feeling of envy. The gift of narration, so rare in this country, has been carefully cultivated by Mrs. Wister, and poor Miss Whitney could only wonder and admire. I could see her fine large eyes glow with pleasure and desire as she listened to her. Mrs. Wister told me an odd thing, which shows her as an individual. She asked me how the testimonial to Mr. Emerson was progressing, as her father was much interested and thought nothing he possessed too good to be given at once to Mr. Emerson, nor indeed worthy of his acceptance, and she would like to write him. I told her I believed the sum had reached $10,000, and had already been presented. This led her to say the friendship of her father for Mr. Emerson, and indeed their mutual friendship, as she then believed it to be, dated back to their youth, when Mr. Emerson was first writing his poems and delighting over the illustrations her father would make for them. As she grew up, she became dissatisfied at the relation between them. She thought Mr. Furness, her father, gave much more to Mr. Emerson in the way of friendship than Mr. Emerson ever appreciated. This went on until she became about eighteen years of age, when Mr. Emerson chanced to be visiting them in Pennsylvania. One day she was standing upon the stairs near the front door, and Mr. Emerson was ready to go out and waiting there for her father, who had withdrawn for a moment. Her heart was full, and suddenly she turned upon Mr. Emerson, and said, “Mr. Emerson, I think you cannot know what a treasure you have in this friendship of my father. He loves you dearly and I fear you cannot appreciate what it is to have the love of such a man as my father.” She says to this day she grows “pank,” as the Scotchman said, all over at such presumption, but she could not help it.

I asked what Mr. Emerson replied. He looked surprised, she said, and cast his eyes down, and then said earnestly that he knew and felt deeply how unworthy he was to enjoy the riches of such a friendship.

This incident presented Mrs. Wister as well as Mr. Emerson under a keen light. They could never understand each other.

From October, 1872, until the following May, Emerson and his daughter Ellen were traveling abroad. On their return Mrs. Fields wrote in her journal:—

Thursday, May 27, 1873.—The Nortons came home with the Emersons day before yesterday. Emerson came to pass an hour with J. T. F. before going to Concord. His son Edward had come down to meet him and was full of excitement over the reception his father was to receive and of which he was altogether ignorant. He was overjoyed to be on the old ground again and comes back to value the old friends even more than ever. He must have been much pleased by the joy testified in Concord, but we have only the newspaper account of that. He has been fÊted more than ever in England, and Ellen was rather worn out by the ovations; but her general health is much improved. The Nortons, who returned in the same steamer, tell me Miss Emerson was fÊted for her own sake and was his rival! Her “American manners” became all the rage in that world of novelty. One night a gentleman sitting next her at dinner introduced the word “Æsthetic.” She said she did not understand what he meant by that word!

On the voyage Emerson was devoted to his daughter and full of fun in all his talk with her. He would tuck her up in blanket shawls and go up and down, hither and yon, to make her comfortable—then he would laugh at her for being such an exacting young lady and would be very ironical about the manner in which she would allow him to wait on her. “And yet,” he said, turning to the Nortons, “Ellen is the torch of religion at home.”

Throughout the journals Mrs. Fields’s references to meetings of the Saturday Club, and the records of conversation reported by her husband after these lively gatherings, are frequent. In one brief entry Parkman, Lowell, and Emerson appear in a conjunction that could hardly have been happy at the moment, but the concluding words of the passage may well stand, for their appreciation of Emerson, at the end of these pages concerned chiefly with him.

August 26, 1874.— ... Parkman said to Lowell, and a more strange evidence of lapse of tact could hardly be discovered, “Lowell, what did you mean by ‘the land of broken promise’?” Emerson, catching at this last, said, “What is this about the land of broken promise?” clearly showing he had never read Lowell’s Ode upon the death of Agassiz—whereat Lowell answered not at all, but dropped his eyes and silence succeeded, although Parkman made some kind of futile attempt to struggle out of it. Emerson said, “We have met two great losses in our Club since you were last here—Agassiz and Sumner.” “Yes,” said Lowell, “but a greater than either was that of a man I could never make you believe in as I did—Hawthorne.” This ungracious speech silenced even Emerson, whose warm hospitality to the thought and speech of others is usually unending.

Facsimile of autograph inscription on a photograph of Rowse’s crayon portrait of Lowell given to Fields

In “Authors and Friends” Mrs. Fields concerned herself with Longfellow and Whittier at even greater length than with Holmes and Emerson. The Whittier paper, besides, was printed as a small separate volume; and in Samuel T. Pickard’s “Life of Whittier,” as in Samuel Longfellow’s biography of his brother, the letters from Whittier, as from Longfellow, to Mrs. Fields, and to her husband, bear witness to valued intimacies. Neither to Whittier nor to Longfellow, therefore, does it seem desirable to devote a special section of these papers; nor yet to Lowell, who never became the subject of published reminiscences by Mrs. Fields, perhaps for the very reason that he figures somewhat less frequently than the others in her journal. Yet there are many allusions to him, and in addition to the letters to Fields which Norton selected for his “Letters of James Russell Lowell,” and Scudder for his biography of Lowell, a surprising number of unprinted, characteristic communications, both to Fields and to his wife, testify to their friendship. The remainder of this chapter cannot be more profitably employed than by drawing from Mrs. Fields’s journal passages relating to these and other local guests of the Charles Street house, and supplementing the diary especially with a few of Lowell’s sprightly letters to his successor in the editorship of the “Atlantic Monthly.” It may be remarked, as fairly indicative of the relations between Lowell and the Fieldses through many years, that when they visited England in 1869 their traveling companion was Lowell’s daughter Mabel.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

From the crayon portrait by Rowse in the Harvard College Library

Here, to begin with, is a note written to accompany one of Lowell’s most familiar poems, “After the Burial,” when he sent the manuscript to the editor of the “Atlantic.” Lowell’s practice of shunning capitals at the beginning of his letters, except for the first personal pronoun, is observed in the quotations that follow:—

Elmwood, 8th March, 1868

My dear Fields:—

when I am in a financial crisis, which is on an average once in six weeks, I look first to my portfolio and then to you. The verses I send you are most of them more than of age, but Professors don’t write poems, and I even begin to doubt if poets do—always. But I suppose you will pay me for my name as you do others, and so I send the verses hoping you may also find something in them that is worth praise if not coin. Consolation and commonplace are twin sisters and I doubt not one sat at each ear of Eve after Cain’s misunderstanding with his brother. In some folks they cause resentment, and this little burst relieved mine under some desperate solacings after the death of our first child, twenty-one years ago. I trust there is nothing too immediately personal to myself in the poem to make the publishing of it a breach of that confidence which a man should keep sacred with himself.

With kind regards to Mrs. Fields, I remain always yours,

J. R. Lowell

Another typical letter, dated “Elmwood, 12th July, 1868, ¼ to 9 AM wind W. by N. Therm 88°,” begins:—

My dear Fields:—

as I swelter here, it is some consolation for me that you are roasting in that Yankee-baker which we call the W?? M??. That repercussion of the sun’s heat from so many angles at once (the focus being the tourist) always struck me as one of the sublimest examples of the unvarying operation of natural laws. I wish you and Mrs. Fields might be made exceptions, but it can hardly be hoped.

Before the end of the month Fields had escaped the perils of New Hampshire heat, and paid a visit to Elmwood, thus chronicled by Mrs. Fields:—

July 25, 1868.—J. went out to see Lowell last night. As he passed Longfellow’s door, “Trap,” the dog, was half-asleep apparently on the lawn, but hearing a foot-step he leaped up and, seeing who it was, became overjoyed, leaped upon him and covered his hands with caresses. He stayed some time playing with him. Lowell was alone in his library, looking into an empty fire-place and smoking a pipe. He has been in Newport for a week, but was delighted to return to find his “own sponge hanging on its nail” and to his books. He had become quite morbid because, while J. was away, a smaller sum than usual was sent him for his last poem. He thought it a delicate way of saying they wished to drop him. He was annoyed at the thought of having left out of his article on Dryden one of the finest points, he thought, that was making Dryden to appear the “Rubens” of literature, which he appears to him to be.

Lowell is a man deeply pervaded with fine discontents. I do not believe the most favorable circumstances would improve him. Success, of which he has a very small share considering his deserts (for his books have a narrow circulation), would make him gayer and happier; whether so wise a man, I cannot but doubt.

He wears a chivalric, tender manner to his wife.

In the following autumn, Bayard Taylor and his wife were paying a visit in Charles Street, and Lowell appears in Mrs. Fields’s journal as one of the friends summoned in their honor.

Thursday morning, November 19, 1868.—Mr. Parton came to breakfast and Dr. Holmes came in before we had quite done. O. W. H. was delighted to see Mr. P., because of his papers on “Smoking and Drinking.” He believes smoking paralyzes the will. Taylor, on the contrary, feels himself better for smoking; it subdues his physical energy so he can write; otherwise he is nervous to be up and away and his mind will not work.

At dinner we had Lowell, Parton, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Scott-Siddons and, later, Aldrich. Lowell talked most interestingly, head and shoulders beyond everybody else. The Siddonses left early, the gentlemen all smitten by her beauty and loveliness. A kind of childish grace pervaded her and she was beautiful as a picture. I could not wonder at their delight. Lowell’s talk after their departure was of literature, of course. He has been reading Calderon for the last six months, in the original. He finds him inexhaustible almost. Speaking of novels, he said Fielding was the master, although he considers there are but two perfect creations of individual character in all literature; these are Falstaff and Don Quixote; all the rest fell infinitely below—are imperfect and unworthy to stand by their side. Tom Jones he thought might come in, in the second rank, with many others, but far below. He said he could not tell his boys at Cambridge to read Tom Jones, for it might do them harm; but Fielding painted his own experience and the result was unrivalled. Thackeray and the rest were pleasant reading, very pleasant, and yet how could he tell his class that he read Tom Jones once a year![18] He scouted the idea of Pickwick or anybody else approaching his two great characters. They stood alone for all time. Rip Van Winkle was suggested, but he said in the first place that was not original. Few persons knew the story perhaps in the old Latin (he gave the name, but unhappily I have forgotten it) but it was only a remade dish after all.

Friday.—Bayard Taylor and his wife left for New York. Mr. Parton dined out and we had a quiet evening at home and went to bed early. (Parton thinks it would be possible to make the “Atlantic Monthly” far more popular. He suggests a writer named Mark Twain be engaged, and more articles connected with life than with literature.)

It is easy to believe that Lowell’s talk must have sounded much like his letters, which so often sound like talk. Witness the following sentences from a letter of December 21, 1868, in reply, apparently, to an appeal for a new essay for the “Atlantic”:—

Well, well, I am always astonished at the good nature of folks, and how much boring they will stand from authors. As I told Howells once, the day will come when a wiser generation will drive all its literary men into a corner and make a battue of the whole lot. However, “after me, the deluge,” as Nero said, and I suppose they’ll stand another essay or two yet, if I can divine, or rather if I have absorbed enough of the general feeling about something to put a point on it.

It’s a mercy I’m not conceited! I should like to be, and try to be, and have fizzes of it now and then, but they soon go out and leave a fogo behind them I don’t like. But if I only were for a continuance I should be as grand a bore as ever lived—as grand as Wordsworth, by Jove! I would come into town once a week to read you over one of my old poems (selecting the longest, of course), and point out its beauties to you. You would flee to Tierra del Fuego (ominous name!) to escape me. You would give up publishing. You would write an epic and read a book just to me every time I came. But no, it is too bright a dream. Let me [be] satisfied with my class, who have to hear me once a week, and with just enough conceit to read my lectures as if I had not stolen ’em, as I am apt to do now. Look out for an essay that shall [make] Montaigne and Bacon cross as the devil—when they come to read it! It will come ere you think.

Yours ever,

Fabius C. Lowell

A few weeks later Lowell was writing again to Fields, on January 12, 1869, about a fiftieth birthday party at Elmwood:—

I am going to celebrate my golden wedding with Life, on the 22nd of next month, by a dinner or a supper or something of the kind, and I want you to jine. I shall get together a dozen or so of old friends, and it will be a great satisfaction for you and me to see how much grayer the rest of ’em are than we. I shall fit my invitations to this end, and the bald and hoary will have the chance of the lame, the halt, and the blind in the parable. If it should be a dinner, it won’t matter, but if a supper, be sure and forget your night-key and then you won’t have any anxiety, nor Mrs. Fields either. Of course, I shall have an account of the affair in the papers with a list of the gifts (especially in money) and the names of all who donate. You will understand by what I have said that it is to be one of those delightful things they call a “surprise party,” and I expect to live on it for a year—one friend for every month.

A week later, in the course of a letter accepting the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Fields for Lowell’s daughter to accompany them to Europe, he wrote: “Do you see that —— is to commence his autobiography in ‘Putnam’s Magazine’? At least, I take it for granted from the title—The Ass in Life and Literature? If sincerely done, it will be interesting.”

For all the transcendentalism of the circle to which Mrs. Fields bore so intimate a relation, there emanated from Lowell and others an atmosphere of sincerity which helped to preserve the equilibrium of the more easily swayed. Mrs. Fields herself was not immune to the appeal of some of the “isms” of the time and place, but an entry in her journal for January 18, 1870, shows her in no great peril of being swept away by them:—

Attended yesterday a meeting of what is called the Radical Club. Mr. Channing spoke, Mr. Higginson, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mr. Bartol, Wasson, J. F. Clarke, Edna Cheney. Mr. Whittier was present and a room full of “come-outers.” Mr. Channing and Mr. Phillips were reverent, though I think Mr. Phillips more definite, and perhaps consequently more conservative, in what he said. Certainly Mr. Phillips’s speech was highly satisfactory. On the whole there was much vague talk and restless expression of self without any high end being furthered. I thought much of Mr. Higginson’s talk and Mr. Wasson’s irreverent answer were untrue. Perhaps I am wrong in saying no good end is attained by such a meeting. Perhaps a closer understanding of what we do believe is the result. But there is much unpleasant in the unnatural and excited view of the inside ring.[19]

There was, moreover, a constant corrective at hand in the persons of the local wits, among whom Longfellow’s brother-in-law, Thomas Gold (“Tom”) Appleton, was of the most clear-sighted. His definition of Nahant as “cold roast Boston,” and his prescription for tempering the gales on a particularly windy Boston corner by tethering a shorn lamb there, have secured him something more than a local survival. He frequently left his mark on the pages of Mrs. Fields’s diary—once venturing seriously into prophecy on the spiritual future of Boston, in terms which will seem, at least, in partibus infidelium, to have received a certain confirmation at the hands of time. In the diary the following entry is found:—

Sunday, November 6, 1870.—Appleton (Tom, as the world calls him) came in soon after breakfast Sunday morning. He talked very wisely and brilliantly upon Art, its value and purpose to the state, the necessity for the Museum. He said our people were far more literary than artistic. The sensuous side of their nature was undeveloped. The richness of color, the glory of form, was less to them than something which could set the sharp edge of their intellect in motion. “Besides, what is Boston going to do,” he said, “when these fellows die who give it its honor now, Longfellow, Holmes, and the rest? They can’t live forever, and with them its glory will depart without it is sustained by a foundation for art in other directions. Harvard University will do something to keep it up, but not much, and unless a distinct effort be made now, Boston will lose its place and go behind.” He became much excited by the lack of appreciation for William Story in Boston, and the abuse of the Everett statue, which he considers good in its way and as marking the highest point in Everett’s oratorical fame, that is, when he lifted his hand to indicate the stars in his address at Albany, and set his fame some points nearer the luminaries which inspired him, by his fine eloquence.

He said a merchant told him one day that he didn’t like Story’s portrait statues, but his ideal work he was delighted with. “You lie!” I said to him. “The beautiful Shepherd-Boy which I helped to buy and bring to Boston you know nothing of—you can’t tell me now in which corner of the Public Library it is hidden away. I tell you, you lie!”

He spoke of the Saturday Club, and said that, although he sometimes smiled at Holmes’s enthusiasm over it, he believed in the main he was quite right, and it would be remembered in future as Johnson’s Club has been, and recorded and talked of in the same way.

Unfortunately I don’t see their Boswell. I wish I could believe there was a single chiel amang them takin’ notes.[20]

On December 14, 1870, the diary recorded a dinner at which Longfellow, Osgood, Aldrich, Holmes, Dana, Howells, Lowell, and Bayard Taylor were the guests. It celebrated the completion of Taylor’s translation of “Faust.” Of the talk of Lowell and Longfellow, Mrs. Fields wrote:—

Before dinner I found opportunity for a short talk with Lowell upon literature. He thinks the chief value of Bret Harte is his local color and it would be a fatal mistake for him to come East, in spite of Taylor’s representation of the aridity of intellectual life now in California. Taylor finds the same reason for leaving his native place. He regrets his large house, and frankly says he is tired of living there, tired of living alone, there being really no one in the vicinity with whom he can associate as on equal grounds. There is no culture, not even a love for it, in the neighborhood.

But I have not said half enough of Longfellow. He scintillated all the evening, was filled with the spirit of the time and the scene, sweetly reprimanded Taylor for not having time to give him a visit also, darted his jeux d’esprit rapidly right and left, often setting the table in a roar, a most unusual thing with him. Holmes at the other end was talking about the natural philosophers who “invented facts.” Lowell took exception, said it was an impossible juxtaposition of ideas and words. Holmes defended himself by quoting (I think the name was Carius; whoever it was, Lowell said at once and rather warningly, he is a very distinguished name) a series of created facts by which he said a woman was not articulated or not as a man is (perhaps I have not his exact ideas); whereat Longfellow at once held up the inarticulate woman to the amusement of the table. Then they began to talk of the singular persons this world contains, “quite as strange as Dickens,” as they always say; and Taylor, who introduced the subject, proceeded to relate an incident which happened to him in a cheap coffee house in New York. It was near a railway station, so he dropped in, finding it convenient so to do, at an hour not usually popular with the frequenters of such establishments. It was empty save for an extraordinary figure with long arms, short legs and misshapen body, who, hearing a glass of ale ordered, came forward and said if he pleased he would like to have his ale at the same table for the sake of company. There was nothing to do but to comply, which Taylor of course did, whereupon the strange creature, never asking who Taylor was, went on to relate that he was the great man-monkey of the world who could hang from a tree and eat nuts and make the true noise in the throat better than any other; he had no competitor except one of the Ravel brothers, but he (Ravel) was not the real thing; he himself alone could make the noise perfectly....

They all drank the exquisite Ehrbacher Rhine wine from tall green German glasses of antique form, which delighted them greatly. Jamie was much entertained by Holmes’s finding them “good conversational aperient, but ugly. I should always have them on the table, but they are not handsome.” Longfellow was delighted with my Venetian lace bodice; it seemed to have a flavor of Venice about it in his eyes. It was a real pleasure to me to see his appreciation of a thing Jamie and I really enjoy so much.

I have not reported all, by any means, but time fails me now. A thought of Dickens was continually present, as it must be forever at a company dinner-table. How many beautiful feasts have I enjoyed by his side! There is none like him, none.

Taylor wrote a friendly German inscription in his book and presented me after dinner.

There were amusing traits of Elizabeth Peabody given. Longfellow remembered that the first time he met her was in a carriage. She was taken up in the dark. Hearing his name mentioned, she leaned forward and said, “Mr. Longfellow, can you tell me which is the best Chinese Grammar?”

A midsummer entry of the same year suggests the part that an editor’s wife may play in the successful conduct of a magazine, if only through sharing the enthusiasm that attends the first reading of a manuscript of distinguished merit.

Saturday, July 16, 1870.—A perfect summer day. Jamie did not go to town, but with a bag full of letters and MSS. concluded to remain here. He fell first upon a MS. by Henry James, Jr., a short story called “Compagnons de Voyage,” and after tasting of it in our room and finding the quality good (though the handwriting was execrable), I invited my dear boy to a favorite nook in the pasture where we could hear the sea and catch a distant gleam of its blue face while we were still in shadow and fanned by oak leaves. It was one of those delicious seasons which summer can bring to the dullest heart, I believe and hope. We lay down with our feet plunged into the cool delicious grass, while I read the pleasant tale of Italy to the close. I do not know why success in work should affect us so powerfully, but I could have wept as I finished reading, not from the sweet low pathos of the tale, which was not tearful, but from the knowledge of the writer’s success. It is so difficult to do anything well in this mysterious world.

On the very next day Lowell wrote Fields a letter which must have been read with delight by such friends of Dickens as the Fieldses. The decorated sonnet which filled its third sheet is reproduced herewith in facsimile: the plainness of Lowell’s script renders type superfluous. The mere fact that the death of Dickens could have called forth clerical expressions provoking Lowell to such scorn is in itself a measure of the distance we have travelled since 1870. The verses are not included in Lowell’s “Poetical Works,” nor are they listed in the “Bibliography of James Russell Lowell,” compiled by George Willis Cooke. With two slight changes they may be found, however, over Lowell’s signature, in “Every Saturday,” for August 6, 1870.

Facsimile of Lowell’s “Bulldog and Terrier” sonnet

Elmwood, 17th July, 1870

My dear Fields:—

I can stand it no longer! If Dickens is to be banned, the rest of us might as well fling up our hands. This hot weather, too, gives a foretaste that raises well-founded apprehension. It is a good primary school for the Institution of which the Rev’ds Fulton and Dunn seem to be ushers. Instead of going to Church today, where I might have heard something not wholly to my advantage, as the advertisements for lost people say, I have written a sermon. It is not a proper sonnet, but a cross between that and epigram—a kind of bull-terrier, in short, with the size of the one and the prick-ears and docked tail of the other, nor without his special talent for rats. Is there any grip in his jaw or no? He is good-natured and scarce shows his teeth.

The thing is an improvisation and the weather awfully hot!

Sweltered your servant sits and sweats and swears: (for alliteration only) but if you would like it for the “Atlantic,” why here it is on the next leaf. Or, if too late, why not “Every Saturday”? I could not even think of it sooner, for I have been wrestling with a bad head and an article on Chaucer, and I fear they have thrown me. I want rest, and a bath of poetry, but where may the wicked hope for either? My sonnet (if Leigh Hunt would let me call it so) hit me like a stray shot from nowhere that I could divine, and five minutes saw it finished. So why may it not be good? It came, anyhow, as a poem comes—though it isn’t just that. But my dog isn’t bad? He is from the life at any rate.

I shall make use of my first leisure to get into Boston. But I have got bedevilled with the text of Chaucer and am working on it with my usual phrenzy—thirteen hours, for example, yesterday, collating texts and writing into margins. I comfort myself that my Chaucer will bring a handsome price at my vandoo! I shall be easier in my coffin if it run up handsomely for Fanny and Mabel.

Do you want an essay for your “Almanac” if one should come, which is doubtful? I need one or two more to make a little volume, and I need a little volume for nameless reasons. O, if I could sell my land! I would transmute that gold into poetry. Or if only poems would come when you whistle for ’em!

Give my kindest regards to Mrs Fields.

Yours always,

J. R. L.

From my study, this first day for three weeks without a drowsy pain in my knowledge box, I really feel a little lively, and wonder at myself. But don’t be alarmed—it won’t last, any more than money does, or principle in a politician, or hair, or popular favor—or paper.

Lowell and Longfellow continue to make their appearances in Mrs. Fields’s diary.

December 7, 1871.—Last Sunday Charlotte Cushman dined here. Our guests asked to meet her were Mr. and Mrs. Lowell and Mr. Longfellow; Miss Stebbins and Miss Chapman, her guests, also came. We had a lovely social time, Lowell making himself especially interesting, as he always does when he can once work himself up to the pitch of going out at all. He talked a while with me about poetry and his own topics after dinner. He said he was one of the few people who believed in absolute truth; that he always looked for certain qualities in writers, which if he could not discover, they no longer interested him and he did not care to read them. He discovered, for instance, in the writers who had survived the centuries the same kindred points, those points he studied until he discovered what the adamant was and where it was founded; then he would look into the writers of our own age to see if he could find the same stuff; there was little enough of it unfortunately. He does not like Reynolds’s portrait of Johnson, thought it untrue, far too handsome, yet highly characteristic in the management of the hands, which portray the man as he was when talking better probably than anything ever did. Mrs. Lowell appeared to enjoy herself. J. says L. is always more himself if Mrs. L. is happy and talkative. They are thinking of Europe. Mabel is to be married in April, and afterward they probably go at once to Europe.

A small party of friends assembled in the evening. Longfellow was the beloved and observed and worshipped among all.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

From a photograph taken in middle life

April 11, 1872.—Last night Jamie dined with Longfellow. John Field of Pennsylvania and Lowell were the two other guests. J. was there twenty minutes before the rest arrived, and Longfellow gave him an account of the wedding of a school-mate of mine, —— ——, an excellent generous-hearted, generously built woman, with a little limping old clergyman who has already had three wives and whose first name is ——. Longfellow said, in memory of what had gone before, the organist, as if driven by some evil spirit, played “Auld Lang Syne,” as the wedding procession came in, consisting of the bride and her brother, two very well-made large persons and the elderly bridegroom limping on behind all alone. The organist suddenly stopped at this point, breaking off with a queer little quirk and shiver as if he only then discovered what he was doing. Indeed the whole wedding appeared to have points to affect the risibles of the poet. He could hardly speak of it without laughter. He said, moreover, that it was, he thought, disgusting and outrageous for old men to get married.

Tuesday, September 23, 1872.—Longfellow came to town to see Jamie, in one of his loveliest moods. The day was so warm and fine, such a day of dreams, that he proposed to him every kind of excursion. “Come,” he said, “let us go to the tea stores and smell the tea; the warm atmosphere will bring out all the odors and we can get samples!” And again, “Come, let us go to the wharves and see the vessels just in from Italy or Spain. It will be a lovely sight in this soft sky, and we can hear the men speak in their native tongues.” Unhappily all these seductions were in vain, for Jamie was busy and was to lecture in Grantville in the evening. L. said: “At half-past eight I shall think of you doing thus and thus” (sawing the air with his arms). L. continued: “You know I have very strange people come to me—a man came a day or two ago by the name of Hyers, who has just published a book describing his own career. He believes that he is fed by the Lord! ‘How do you mean?’ asked I, with the knowledge that we were all fed in the same way. ‘Why,’ said H., ‘He leaves pies and peanuts on the sidewalks for me.’” Longfellow could hardly contain himself—but “after all,” he said, “that is very like Greene: when Greene comes to me, he always takes his money to come and go, just like my own sons and without so much as a thank you. But I like to have Greene come because he enjoys it so much and it is so strange. He amuses me. Then Appleton too, with his odd fancies, it would be hard to find a stranger man than he. He amused me immensely the other day by fancying an Indian, ‘Great Fire,’ or ‘Hole in the Wall,’ or some such fellow, coming to Boston for the first time. Passing a perruquier’s, he sees the window filled with masses of false hair; taking them to be scalps and the window to be an exhibition of these tokens of prowess, he rushes in, embraces the little perruquier behind the counter, treats him like a brother, and almost frightens the small hairdresser out of his senses!!”

L. likes Joaquin [Miller] much. Of course, he said, there are some things about him not altogether agreeable, such as flinging a quid of tobacco out of his mouth under the table; “but I don’t mind those things; perhaps,” he added, “perhaps I might have done the same as a youth of 20!!!”

Thursday, June 12, 1873.—Dined last night with the Aldriches and Mr. Bugbee at Mr. Lowell’s beautiful old Elmwood.[21] It was a perfect night, cool, fresh, moon-lighted, after a muggy day of heat. After dinner I went into the fine old study with Aldrich, where he showed me two or three little poems he has lately written. He was all ready to talk on literary topics and much in earnest about his own satisfaction over “Miss Mehitable’s Son” (which is indeed a very good story), and was full of disgust over the “Nation’s” cool dismissal of it. It was too bad; but that Dennet of the “Nation” is beneath contempt because of the slights he throws upon good literary work. Aldrich says he found “Asphodel” all worn to pieces, read and reread in the upstairs study. He finds Mr. Lowell’s library in curious disorder with respect to modern books. He is an easy lender and an easy borrower. The result is, everything is at loose ends. Only two volumes of Hawthorne can be found, for instance....

Such wonderful colors overspread our bay this evening, the wide heavens, and all that lay between, it seemed an unreal and magic glory, and I recall dimly Hawthorne’s disgust when he endeavored to describe a landscape. The Lord, he says, expressed himself in this glory; how shall we therefore interpret into language when he himself has taken this form of speech as the only adequate expression to convey his meaning to us? Who does not feel this in looking at the glories of Nature in this perfect season?

And here is a final glimpse of Longfellow, at Manchester-by-the-Sea, shortly after Don Pedro of Brazil had visited him in Cambridge:—

Thursday, July 6, 1876.—A fine rushing wind—no rain, but a wind that seemed to tear everything up by the roots. I dared not venture out in the morning. To our surprise and delight Mr. Longfellow came to dine. He was pleased to find Anna here, and fell to talking of Heidelberg in German with her and quoting the poets most delightfully. We sat in the front hall and rejoiced over his presence as he talked, for he was in a fine talking mood. He told us of the Emperor’s visit and of his soldierly though most simple bearing; how he came to call upon him after his dinner, and when, as he rose to go, Longfellow said, “Your Majesty, I thank you for the honor you have done me.” He said, “Ah! no, Longfellow, none of your nonsense, let us be friends together. I hope you will write to me. I will write you first and you must promise to answer.” As they walked down the garden path together, Longfellow raised his hat and stepped one side as he was about to get into his carriage. “No, no,” he said laughingly, “there you are at it again.” In short, he has left a pleasant memory behind.

Longfellow told us his maids broke everything he possessed; at last they had broken a very beautiful Japanese vase or bowl which Charley brought home—so he had made a Latin epitaph for the maid. Unhappily I recall only the last line:—

Nihil tetigit quod non fregit.

He described Blumenbach very amusingly, whose lectures on Natural History he attended as a youth in Heidelberg. He descended from his desk one day and came and rested his hand on the rail just before which L. was seated. He had been speaking of Platonic love. “Und die Platonische Liebe ist nach Amerika gegangen,” he said, looking at Longfellow. The whole student audience roared and applauded.

He was in the loveliest spirits and manners. His friendly ways to my three friendless girls were not only such as to excite them profoundly, but there was sincere feeling in his invitation to them to call upon him and in his questions in their behalf.

The wind subsided as we sat together; the two young Bigelows sang “Maid of Athens” and one or two other songs, and then he departed. How sorry we were as we watched his retreating figure, as he and dear J. wound down the hill in the little phaeton.

Mrs. Fields’s gallery of friends would be incomplete without a single sketch of Whittier’s familiar outline. Out of many which the diaries contain, one may best be taken, for it shows him in company with that other friend, Celia Thaxter, whom also Mrs. Fields counted among the few to whose memory she devoted special chapters in her “Authors and Friends”; and it brings the three together at Mrs. Thaxter’s native Isles of Shoals, so long a mecca of the “like-minded.”

From a note of “Dear Whittier” to Mrs. Fields

July 12, 1873.—I shall not soon forget our talk one afternoon in the parlor at “The Shoals.” Whittier, as if inspired by that spirit residing in us which is the very ground-work of the Quaker belief, began to speak of Emerson’s faith and of the pain it gave him to see the name of Jesus placed in his writings as but one among many. When he discoursed with Emerson of these things, he could have no satisfaction. Celia, on the other hand, said she did not understand these things; she never prayed. “I am sure thee does without knowing it,” said W.; “else what do thy poems mean? Thee has not set prayer perhaps, but some kind of a prayer thee must have. No human being can exist without it. But what troubles me also in Emerson is that I can find no real faith in immortality.” Here I took up the question. I had heard Mr. Emerson at Thoreau’s grave, afterward speaking expressly on immortality, and in both discourses I felt deeply his faith in our future progress and enduring life. Whittier was inclined to think me mistaken. I think too that his use of Jesus’ name is to prevent the worship of him instead of the One God. Whittier asked Celia to read a discourse of Emerson’s, which she did aloud; and again he spoke of the beauty of childlike worship, the necessity for it in our natures, and quoted some lovely hymns. His whole heart was alive and poured out toward us as if he longed tenderly like the prophet of old to breathe a new life into us. I could seem to see that he reproached himself that so many days had passed without his trying to speak more seriously. He was not perfectly well after this—a headache overtook him before our talk was over and did not leave him until he found himself in Amesbury again. I trust it did so there....

Whittier said one day, when we were talking of the “Life of Charlotte BrontË” by Mrs. Gaskell, and I was saying how sad it was she should have made the old man, her father, suffer unto death, as she did, by telling the tale of his bad son’s life, and “still worse,” I said, “she came out in the AthenÆum and declared that her story was false, when she knew it was true, hoping to comfort the old man,”—“I don’t know,” said Whittier; “I am inclined to think that was the best part of it, if her lie would have done the old man any good!”

After we had our long afternoon session of talk over Emerson and future existence and the unknowable, Celia stood up and stretched herself and said, “How good it has been with the little song-sparrow putting in his oar above it all!”

And what of Mrs. Fields herself, a woman of nearly forty when this last passage was written? For the most part the diary reveals her but indirectly. Yet in the midst of all her pictures of her friends, a fragment of self-portraiture is occasionally found; and to one of them the reader of these pages is entitled.

Proposed Dedication of Whittier’s “Among the Hills” to Mrs. Fields. In a letter to Mrs. Fields, Whittier wrote: “I would like thy judgment about it. Would this do?” In altered form it appears in the book.

December 18, 1873.—Have been looking over “Wilhelm Meister”! I struck upon that marvellous passage, “I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances; who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. How far his object may be great or little is the next consideration with me”; and much more quite as good to the same end. It prompts me to say what I wish to do in life.

Aristotle writes: “Virtue is concerned with action, art with production.” The problem of life is how to harmonize the two—either career must become prominent according to the nature of the individual. I discern in myself: 1st, the desire to serve others unselfishly according to the example of our dear Lord; 2nd, the desire to cultivate my powers in order to achieve the highest life possible to me as an individual existence by stimulating thought to its finest issues through reflection, observation, and by profound and ceaseless study of the written thoughts of the wisest in every age and every clime.

To fulfil these aims we must be able to answer the simple question promptly to ourselves: “What then shall I do tomorrow and today?” Then, the decision being made, the thing alone must have all the earnestness put into it of a creature who knows that the next moment he may be called to his account.

As a woman and a wife my first duty lies at home; to make that beautiful,—to stimulate the lives of others by exchange of ideas, and the repose of domestic life; to educate children and servants.

2nd, To be conversant with the very poor; to visit their homes; to be keenly alive to their sufferings; never allowing the thought of their necessities to sleep in our hearts.

3rd, By day and night, morning and evening, in all times and seasons when strength is left to us, to study, study, study.

Because I have put this last, it does not stand last in importance; but to put it first and write out the plan for study which my mind naturally selects would be to ignore that example of perfect life in which I humbly believe, and to return to the lives of the ancients, so fine in their results to the few, so costly to the many. But in the removed periods of existence, when solitude may be our blessed portion, what a joy to fly to communion with the sages and live and love with them!

I have written this out for the pleasure of seeing if “I distinctly understand what I wish.” It is a wide plan, too wide, I fear, for much performance, but therefore perhaps more conducive to a constant faith.

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