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MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS




_By the Same Author_


BIOGRAPHICAL

    American Bookmen (1898)
    Phillips Brooks (in “Beacon Biographies,” 1899)
    Life and Letters of George Bancroft (1908)
    Life and Labors of Bishop Hare (1911)
    Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (with Sara Norton, 1913)
    George von Lengerke Meyer: His Life and Public Services (1919)
    Memoirs of the Harvard Dead (1920, 1921, ——)

HISTORICAL

    Boston, the Place and the People (1903)
    Boston Common: Scenes from Four Centuries (1910)
    The Boston Symphony Orchestra (1914)
    The Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1918)
    The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (1919)

VERSE

    Shadows (1897)
    Harmonies (1909)

EDITED

    The Beacon Biographies (31 volumes, 1899-1910)
    The Memory of Lincoln (1899)
    Home Letters of General Sherman (1909)
    Lines of Battle, by Henry Howard Brownell (1912)
    The Harvard Volunteers in Europe (1916)
    A Scholar’s Letters to a Young Lady (1920)




[Illustration: MRS. FIELDS]




                       MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS

                          A CHRONICLE OF
                        EMINENT FRIENDSHIPS

                 DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM THE DIARIES OF
                       MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS

                                BY
                        M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE

            “_I stay a little longer, as one stays_
             _To cover up the embers that still burn_”

                          [Illustration]

                       _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

                    THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
                              BOSTON

                        COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
                        M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE

                  First Impression, October, 1922
                 Second Impression, December, 1922

                          PRINTED IN THE
                     UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS


      I. PRELIMINARY                                  3

     II. THE HOUSE AND THE HOSTESS                    6

    III. DR. HOLMES, THE FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR         17

     IV. CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE VISITORS              53

      V. WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA                    135

     VI. STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS                      196

    VII. SARAH ORNE JEWETT                          281




ILLUSTRATIONS


    MRS. FIELDS                                              _Frontispiece_
      From an early photograph

    A NOTE OF ACCEPTANCE                                                 9
      Autograph of Julia Ward Howe

    THE OFFENDING DEDICATION                                            15
      From First Edition of Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home”

    AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF DR. HOLMES                                   18

    REDUCED FACSIMILE OF DR. HOLMES’S 1863 ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI OF
      HARVARD                                                           23

    FROM THE PLAY-BILL OF THE NIGHT OF DR. HOLMES’S “GREAT ROUND FAT
      TEAR”                                                             24
      (Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library)

    FACSIMILE OF THE CONCLUSION OF ULTIMUS SMITH’S DECLARATION          26

    MRS. FIELDS                                                         32
      From a crayon portrait made by Rowse in 1863

    FIELDS, THE MAN OF BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIPS                            34

    LOUIS AGASSIZ                                                       48

    HAWTHORNE IN 1857                                                   54

    FROM A LETTER OF HAWTHORNE’S AFTER A VISIT TO CHARLES STREET        61

    EMERSON                                                             86
      From the Marble Statue by Daniel Chester French in the
      Concord Public Library

    A CORNER OF THE CHARLES STREET LIBRARY                              98

    FROM A NOTE OF EMERSON’S TO MRS. FIELDS                            100

    FACSIMILE OF AUTOGRAPH INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH OF ROWSE’S
      CRAYON PORTRAIT OF LOWELL GIVEN TO FIELDS                        106

    JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL                                               106
      From the Crayon Portrait by Rowse in the Harvard College
      Library

    FACSIMILE OF LOWELL’S “BULLDOG AND TERRIER” SONNET                 121

    HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW                                         124
      From a Photograph taken in middle life

    FROM A NOTE OF “DEAR WHITTIER” TO MRS. FIELDS                      130

    PROPOSED DEDICATION OF WHITTIER’S “AMONG THE HILLS” TO MRS.
      FIELDS                                                           132

    CHARLES DICKENS                                                    136
      From a portrait by Francis Alexander, for many years in the
      Fields house, and now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

    “THE TWO CHARLES’S,” DICKENS AND FECHTER                           140
      (Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library)

    REDUCED FACSIMILE OF DICKENS’S DIRECTIONS, PRESERVED AMONG THE
      FIELDS PAPERS, FOR THE BREWING OF PLEASANT BEVERAGES             147

    FACSIMILE PLAY-BILL OF “THE FROZEN DEEP,” WITH DICKENS AS
        ACTOR-MANAGER                                                  188
      (Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library)

    FACSIMILE NOTE FROM DICKENS TO FIELDS                              192

    JAMES T. FIELDS AT FIFTEEN                                         196
      From a drawing by a French Painter

    FACSIMILE NOTE FROM BOOTH TO MRS. FIELDS                           201

    BOOTH AS HAMLET                                                    202

    JEFFERSON IN THE BETROTHAL SCENE OF “RIP VAN WINKLE”               208

    A NAST CARTOON OF DICKENS AND FECHTER                              210
      (Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library)

    JAMES E. MURDOCK AND WILLIAM WARREN                                218

    CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: FROM A CRAYON PORTRAIT                          220
      (Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library)

    RISTORI AND FANNY KEMBLE                                           222
      The photograph of Fanny Kemble was taken in Philadelphia
      in 1863

    CHRISTINE NILSSON AS OPHELIA                                       226

    FACSIMILE LETTER FROM WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT TO FIELDS                231

    FACSIMILE PAGE FROM AN EARLY LETTER OF BRET HARTE’S                235

    BRET HARTE AND MARK TWAIN                                          242
      From early photographs

    FACSIMILE VERSES AND LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN TO FIELDS            248-9

    CHARLES SUMNER                                                     258

    FROM A LETTER OF EDWARD LEAR’S TO FIELDS                           279

    SARAH ORNE JEWETT                                                  282

    THE LIBRARY IN CHARLES STREET                                      284
      Mrs. Fields at the Window, Miss Jewett at the right

    AN AUTOGRAPH COPY OF MRS. FIELDS’S “FLAMMANTIS MŒNIA MUNDI”
      BEFORE ITS FINAL REVISION                                        287

    MRS. FIELDS ON HER MANCHESTER PIAZZA                               288

    MISTRAL, MASTER OF “BOUFFLO BEEL”                                  294

    REDUCED FACSIMILE FROM LETTER OF HENRY JAMES                       299

(_Most of the photographs reproduced are in the collections of the
Boston Athenæum and the Harvard College Library, to which grateful
acknowledgments are made._)




MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS




I

PRELIMINARY


In the years immediately before the death of Mrs. James T. Fields, on
January 5, 1915, she spoke to me more than once of her intention to
place in my possession a cabinet of old papers—journals of her own,
letters from a host of correspondents, odds and ends of manuscript and
print—which stood in a dark corner of a small reception-room near the
front door of her house in Charles Street, Boston. On her death this
intention was found to have been confirmed in writing. It was also made
clear that Mrs. Fields had no desire that her own life should be made a
subject of record—“unless,” she wrote, “for some reason not altogether
connected with myself.” Such a reason is abundantly suggested in her
records of the friends she was constantly seeing through the years
covered by the journals. These friends were men and women whose books
have made them the friends of the English-speaking world, and a better
knowledge of them would justify any amplification of the records of
their lives. In this process the figure of their friend and hostess in
Charles Street must inevitably reveal itself—not as the subject of a
biography, but as a central animating presence, a focus of sympathy and
understanding, which seemed to make a single phenomenon out of a long
series and wide variety of friendships and hospitalities.

The “blue books”—more than fifty in number—which Mrs. Fields used for
the journals have already yielded many pages of valuable record to her
own books, especially “James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal
Sketches” (1881), and “Authors and Friends” (1896); also even, here and
there, to Mr. Fields’s “Yesterdays with Authors” (1871). Yet she left
unprinted much that is both picturesque and illuminating: so many of the
persons mentioned in the journal were still living or had but recently
died when her books were written. There are, besides, many passages used
in a fragmentary way, which may now with propriety be given complete.

Into these manuscript journals, then, I propose to dip afresh—not
with the purpose of passing in a miscellaneous review all the friends
who crossed the threshold of the Charles Street house in a fixed
period of time, but rather in pursuit of what seems a more promising
quest—namely, to consider separate friends and groups of friends in
turn; to assemble from the journals passages that have to do with
them; to supplement these by drawing now and then upon the old cabinet
for a letter from this or that friend to Mr. or Mrs. Fields, and thus
to step back across the years into a time and scene of refreshing
remembrance. Many a friend, many a friendship, must be left untouched.
In the processes of selection, figures of more than local significance
will receive the chief consideration. In passages relating to one
person, allusions to many others, sometimes treated separately in other
passages, will often be found, for the friendships with one and another
were constantly overlapping and interlocking. Bits of record of no
obviously great importance will be included, not because they or the
subjects of them are taken with undue seriousness, but merely that a
vanished society, interesting in itself to those who care for the past
and doubly interesting as material for a study in contrasts with the
present, may have again its “day in court.” When Fields was publishing
his reminiscences of Hawthorne, Lowell wrote to him: “Be sure and don’t
leave anything out because it seems trifling, for it is out of these
trifles only that it is possible to reconstruct character sometimes, if
not always”; and he commended especially the hitting of “the true channel
between the Charybdis of reticence, and the Scylla of gossip.” Under
sailing orders of this nature, self-imposed, I hope to proceed.

“Another added to my cloud of witnesses,” wrote Mrs. Fields in her
journal, on hearing, in 1867, that Forceythe Willson had died. Nearly
fifty years of life then remained to the diarist, though she continued to
keep her diary with regularity for hardly ten. Before her own death the
cloud of witnesses was infinitely extended. Yet new friends constantly
stood ready to fill, as best they might, the gaps that were left by the
old. It is not the new who will appear in the following pages, but those
with whom Mrs. Fields herself must now be numbered.




II

THE HOUSE AND THE HOSTESS


The fact that Henry James, in “The American Scene,” published in 1907,
and again in an article which appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly” and the
“Cornhill Magazine” in July, 1915, has set down in his own ultimate words
his memories of Mrs. Fields and her Boston abode would be the despair
of anyone attempting a similar task—were it not that quotation remains
an unprohibited practice. In “The American Scene” he evokes from the
past “the Charles Street ghosts,” and gives them their local habitation:
“Here, behind the effaced anonymous door”—a more literal-minded realist
might have noted that a vestibule-door contributed the only effacement
and anonymity—“was the little ark of the modern deluge, here still the
long drawing-room that looks over the water and towards the sunset, with
a seat for every visiting shade, from far-away Thackeray down, and relics
and tokens so thick on its walls as to make it positively, in all the
town, the votive temple to memory.” In his “Atlantic” and “Cornhill”
article he refers to the house, in a phrase at which Mrs. Fields would
have smiled, as “the waterside museum of the Fieldses,” and to them as
“addicted to every hospitality and every benevolence, addicted to the
cultivation of talk and wit and to the ingenious multiplication of such
ties as could link the upper half of the title-page with the lower”;
he pays tribute to “their vivacity, their curiosity, their mobility,
the felicity of their instinct for any manner of gathered relic,
remnant, or tribute”; and in Mrs. Fields herself, surviving her husband
for many years, he notes “the personal beauty of her younger years,
long retained and not even at the end of such a stretch of life quite
lost; the exquisite native tone and mode of appeal, which anciently we
perhaps thought a little ‘precious,’ but from which the distinctive and
the preservative were in time to be snatched, a greater extravagance
supervening; the signal sweetness of temper and lightness of tact.”

There is one more of Henry James’s remarks about Mrs. Fields that must
be quoted, “All her implications,” he says, “were gay, since no one so
finely sentimental could be noted as so humorous; just as no feminine
humor was perhaps ever so unmistakingly directed, and no state of
amusement, amid quantities of reminiscence, perhaps ever so merciful.”
Mirth and mercy do not always, like righteousness and peace, kiss each
other. In Mrs. Fields the capacity for incapacitating laughter was such
that I cannot help recalling one occasion, near the end of her life,
when an attempt to tell a certain story—of which I remember nothing but
that it had to do with a horse—involved her in such merriment that after
repeated efforts to reach its “point,” she was forced to abandon the
endeavor. What I cannot recall in a single instance, in the excellent
telling of innumerable anecdotes, is unkindness, in word or suggestion,
toward the persons involved in them. Mr. James did well to include this
item in his enumeration of Mrs. Fields’s qualities.

Through all his lenses of memory and phrase he brought so vividly to
one’s own vision the Mrs. Fields a younger generation had known that,
on reading what he had written, I wrote to him in England, then nearly
ending its first year in the war, and must have said that his pages would
help me, at some future day, to deal with these of my own, now at last
taking form. Thus, in part, he replied:—

                                                        _July 20th, 1915_

    Your appreciation reached me, alas, but through the most
    muffling and deadening thickness of our unspeakable actuality
    here. It was to try and get out of that a little that I wrote
    my paper—in the most difficult and defeating conditions, which
    seemed to me to make it, with my heart so utterly elsewhere,
    a deplorably make-believe attempt. Therefore if it _had_ any
    virtue, there must still be some in my poor old stump of a pen.
    Yes, the pipe of peace is a thing one has, amid our storm and
    stress, to listen very hard for when it twitters, from afar,
    outside; and when you shall pipe it over your exhibition of
    dear Mrs. Fields’s relics and documents I shall respond to your
    doing so with whatever attention may then be possible to me. We
    are not detached here, in your enviable way—but just exactly so
    must we therefore make some small effort to escape, even into
    whatever fatuity of illusion, to keep our heads above water at
    all. That in short is the history of my “Cornhill” scrap.

[Illustration: _A Note of Acceptance_]

The time into which Henry James escaped by “piping” of Mrs. Fields has
now grown far more remote than the added span of the last seven years,
merely as years, could have made it. Remote enough it seemed to him
when, at the end of his reminiscences of the Fieldses, he recalled a
small “feast” in the Charles Street dining-room at which Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe—it must have been about 1906—rose and declaimed, “a little
quaveringly, but ever so gallantly, that ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’
which she caused to be chanted half a century before and still could
accompany with a real breadth of gesture, her great clap of hands and
indication of the complementary step, on the triumphant line, ‘Be swift
my hands to welcome him, be jubilant my feet!’”

Now it fell to my lot that night, as perhaps the youngest of the party,
to convoy Mrs. Howe across two wintry bits of sidewalk into the carriage
which bore her to and from the memorable dinner-party, and to accompany
her on each of the little journeys. Quite as clear in my memory as her
recitation of the “Battle Hymn” was the note of finality in her voice,
quite free from unkindness, as she settled down for the return drive to
her house in Beacon Street, far from a towering figure, and announced
in the darkness: “Annie Fields has shrunk.” The hostess we were leaving
and the guest some fifteen years her senior, and nearing ninety with
what seemed an immortally youthful spirit, appear, when those words
are recalled, as they must have been before either was touched by the
diminishing hand of age; and the house whose door had just closed upon
us—a house more recently obliterated to make room for a monstrous
garage—came back as the scene of many a gathering of which the little
feast described by Henry James was but a type.

Early in January of 1915 this door, which through a period of sixty
years had opened upon extraordinary hospitality, was finally closed.
Since 1866 it had borne the number 148. Ten years earlier, in 1856, when
the house was first occupied by James T. Fields, afterwards identified
with the publishing firms of Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood and
Company, it was numbered 37, Charles Street. This Boston man of books
and friendships, who before his death in 1881 was to become widely known
as publisher, editor, lecturer, and writer, had married, in 1850, Eliza
Josephine Willard, a daughter of Simon Willard, Jr., of the name still
honorably associated with the even passage of time. She died within a
few months, and in November of 1854 he married her cousin, Annie Adams,
not yet twenty years old, the beautiful daughter of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston
Adams. For those who knew Mrs. Fields toward the end of her four score
and more years, it was far easier to see in her charming face and
presence the exquisite, eager young woman of the mid-nineteenth century
than to detect in the Charles Street of 1915, of which she was the last
inhabitant of her own kind, any resemblance to the delightful street of
family dwellings, many of them looking out over the then unfilled “Back
Bay,” to which she had come about sixty years before. The Fieldses had
lived here but a few years when, in 1859, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes—with
the “Autocrat” a year behind him and the “Professor” a year ahead—became
their neighbor at 21, subsequently 164, Charles Street. On the other side
of them, nearer Beacon Street, John A. Andrew, the great war governor of
Massachusetts, was a friend and neighbor. Across the way, for a time,
lived Thomas Bailey Aldrich. In hillside streets near by dwelt many
persons of congenial tastes, whose work and character contributed greatly
to making Boston what it was through the second half of the last century.

The distinctive flavor of the neighborhood derived nothing more from
any of its households than from that of Mr. and Mrs. Fields. Their
dining—room and drawing-room[1]—that green assembling-place of books,
pictures, music, persons, associations, all to be treasured—were the
natural resort, not only of the whole notable local company of writers
whose publisher was also their true and valued friend, but, besides, of
many of the eminent visitors to Boston, of the type represented most
conspicuously by Charles Dickens. After the death of Mr. Fields there was
far more than a tradition carried on in the Charles Street house. Not
merely for what it had meant, but for all that the gracious personality
of Mrs. Fields caused it to go on meaning, it continued through her
lifetime—extending beyond that of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, for so many
years of Mrs. Fields’s widowhood her delightful sister-hostess—the
resort of older and younger friends, whose present thus drew a constant
enrichment from the past.

It was not till 1863, nearly ten years after her marriage, that Mrs.
Fields, who had kept a diary during a visit to Europe in 1859-60 with
her husband, and for other brief periods, applied herself regularly
to this practice, maintained through 1876, and thereafter renewed but
intermittently. She wrote on the cover of the first slender volume: “No.
1. Journal of Literary Events and Glimpses of Interesting People.” A
few of its earliest pages, revealing its general purpose and character,
may well precede the passages relating, in accordance with the plan
already indicated, to individual friends and groups of friends. In the
first pages of all, on which Mrs. Fields built a few sentences for her
“Biographical Notes,” I find:—

    _July 26, 1863._—What a strange history this literary life in
    America at the present day would make. An editor and publisher
    at once, and at this date, stands at a confluence of tides
    where all humanity seems to surge up in little waves; some
    larger than the rest (every seventh it may be) dashes up in
    music to which the others love to listen; or some springing
    to a great height retire to tell the story of their flight to
    those who stay below.

    Mr. Longfellow is quietly at Nahant. His translation of Dante
    is finished, but will not be completely published until the
    Year 1865, that being the 600th anniversary since the death of
    the great Italian. Dr. Holmes was never in healthier mood than
    at present. His oration delivered before a large audience upon
    the Fourth of July this year places him high in the rank of
    native orators. It is a little doubtful how soon he will feel
    like writing again. He has contributed much during the last two
    years to the “Atlantic” magazine. He may well take a temporary
    rest.

    Mr. Lowell is not well. He is now travelling. Mr. Hawthorne
    is in Concord. He has just completed a volume of English
    Sketches of which a few have been printed in the “Atlantic
    Monthly.” He will dedicate the volume to Franklin Pierce, the
    Democrat—a most unpopular thing just now, but friendship of the
    purest stimulates him, and the ruin in prospect for his book
    because of this resolve does not move him from his purpose.
    Such adherence is indeed noble. Hawthorne requires all that
    popularity can give him in a pecuniary way for the support of
    his family.

    The “Atlantic Monthly” is at present an interesting feature of
    America. Purely literary, it has nevertheless a subscription
    list, daily increasing, of 32,000. Of course the editor’s
    labors are not slight. We have been waiting for Mr. Emerson
    to publish his new volume containing his address upon Henry
    Thoreau; but he is careful of words and finds many to be
    considered again and again, until it is almost impossible to
    extort a manuscript from his hands. He has written but little,
    of late.

    _July 28._—George William Curtis has done at least one great
    good work. He has by a gentle but continuously brave pressure
    transformed the “Harper’s Weekly,” which was semi-Secession,
    into an anti-slavery and Republican journal. The last issue is
    covered with pictures as well as words which tend to ameliorate
    the condition of the colored race. Mr. Curtis’s own house
    at Staten Island has been threatened by the mob; therefore
    his wife and children came last week to New England. I fear
    the death of Colonel Shaw, her brother, commanding the 54th
    Massachusetts (colored infantry), will induce them to return
    home. His death is one of our severest strokes.

    _July 31, 1863._—We have been in Concord this week, making
    a short visit at the Hawthornes’. He has just finished his
    volume of English Sketches, about to be dedicated to Franklin
    Pierce. It is a beautiful incident in Hawthorne’s life, the
    determination at all hazards to dedicate this book to his
    friend. Mr. P.’s politics at present shut him away from the
    faith of patriots, but Hawthorne has loved him since college
    days and he will not relent.[2] Mrs. Hawthorne is the stay of
    the house.

    The wood-work, the tables and chairs and pedestals, are all
    ornamented by her artistic hand or what she has prompted her
    children to do. Una is full of exquisite maidenhood. Julian was
    away, but his beautiful illuminations lay upon the table. The
    one illustrating a portion of King Arthur’s address to Queen
    Guinevere (Tennyson) was remarkably fine.

[Illustration: _The Offending Dedication_]

All this takes one back into a past sufficiently remote. The 1859-60
diary of travel achieves the more remarkable spectacle of Mrs. Fields
in conversation with Leigh Hunt less than two months before he died,
and reporting the very words of Shelley to this friend of his. They may
be found in the “Biographical Notes” published by Mrs. Fields after
her husband’s death. Shelley says, “Hunt, we write _love_-songs; why
shouldn’t we write hate-songs?” And Hunt, recalling the remark, adds,
“He said he meant to some day, poor fellow.” Perhaps one of his subjects
would have been the second Mrs. Godwin, for, according to Hunt, he
disliked her particularly, believing her untrue, and used to say that
when he was obliged to dine with her “he would lean back in his chair
and languish into hate.” Then, wrote Mrs. Fields, “he said no one could
describe Shelley. He always was to him as if he came from the planet
Mercury, bearing a winged wand tipped with flame.” It is now an even
century since the death of Shelley, and here we find one of the older
generation of our own time talking, as it were, with him at but a single
remove. Almost the reader is persuaded to ask of Mrs. Fields herself,
“Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?”

Thus from the records of bygone years many remembered figures might be
summoned; but the evocations already made will suffice to indicate the
point of vantage at which Mrs. Fields stood as a diarist, and to set the
scene for the display of separate friendships.




III

DR. HOLMES, THE FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR[3]


If any familiar face should appear at the front of the procession that
constantly crossed the threshold of 148, Charles Street, it should be
that of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for many years a near neighbor, and
to the end of his life a devoted visitor and friend. Here, then, is an
unpublished letter written from his summer retreat while Fields was still
actively associated with the “Old Corner Bookstore” of Ticknor, Reed, and
Fields, and in the year before his marriage with Annie Adams:—

                                            PITTSFIELD, _Sept. 6th, 1853_

    MY DEAR MR. FIELDS:—

    Thank you for the four volumes, and the authors of three of
    them through you. You did not remember that I patronized you to
    the extent of Aleck before I came up; never mind, I can shove
    it round among the young farmeresses and perhaps help to work
    off the eleventh thousand of the most illustrious of all the
    Smiths.

    I shall write to Hillard soon. I have been reading his book
    half the time today and with very great pleasure. I am
    delighted with the plan of it—practical information such as
    the traveller that is to be or that has been wishes for, with
    poetical description enough to keep the imagination alive,
    and sound American thought to give it manly substance. It is
    anything but a _flash_ book, but I have not the slightest doubt
    that it will have a permanent and very high place in travelling
    literature. Many things have pleased me exceedingly,—when I
    have read a little more I shall try to tell him what pleases me
    _most_,—as I suppose like most authors he likes as many points
    for his critical self-triangulation as will come unasked for.

    Hawthorne’s book has been not devoured, but _bolted_ by my
    children. I have not yet had a chance at it, but I don’t doubt
    I shall read it with as much gusto as they, when my turn comes.
    When you write to him, thank him if you please for me, for I
    suppose he will hardly expect any formal acknowledgment.

    I bloomed out into a large smile of calm delight on opening
    the delicate little “Epistle Dedicatory” wherein your name is
    embalmed. I cannot remember that our friend has tried that pace
    before; he wrote some pleasing lines I remember to Longfellow
    on the ship in which he was to sail when he went to Europe some
    years—a good many—ago.

    Don’t be too proud! Wait until you get a prose dedication from
    a poet,—if you have not got one already,—and then consider
    yourself immortal.

                         Yours most truly,

                                                       O. W. HOLMES

[Illustration: AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF DR. HOLMES]

This letter contains several provocations to curiosity. “Aleck, ... the
most illustrious of all the Smiths,” was obviously Alexander Smith,
the Scottish poet of enormous but strictly contemporaneous vogue, in
whom the English reviewers of the time detected a kinship to Tennyson,
Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare. George S. Hillard’s new book was “Six
Months in Italy,” and Hawthorne’s, “not devoured, but bolted” by the
Holmes children, was “Tanglewood Tales.” The “delicate little ‘Epistle
Dedicatory’” has been found elusive.

From this early letter of Dr. Holmes a seven-league step may be taken
to a passage in a diary Mrs. Fields was writing in 1860,—the year
following the removal of the Holmes household from Montgomery Place to
Charles Street,—before her long unbroken series of journals began. The
occasion described was one of those frequent breakfasts in the Fields
dining-room, which bespoke, in the term of a later poet, the “wide
unhaste” of the period. Of the guests, N. P. Willis was then at the top
of his distinction as a New York editor; George T. Davis, a lawyer of
Greenfield, Massachusetts, afterwards of Portland, Maine, a classmate
of Dr. Holmes, was reputed one of the most charming table-companions
and wits of his day: the tributes to his memory at a meeting of the
Massachusetts Historical Society after his death in 1877 stir one’s envy
of his contemporaries; George Washington Greene of Rhode Island was
perhaps equally known as the friend of Longfellow and as the grandson and
biographer of General Nathanael Greene; Whipple was, of course, Edwin P.
Whipple, essayist and lecturer; the household of three was completed by
Mrs. Fields’s sister, Miss Lizzie Adams.

    _Thursday, September 21, 1860._—Equinoctial clearing after a
    stormy night and morning. Willis came to breakfast, and Holmes
    and George T. Davis, G. W. Greene, Whipple, and our little
    household of three. Holmes talked better than all, as usual.
    Willis played the part of appreciative listener. G. T. Davis
    told wonderful stories, and Mr. Whipple talked more than usual.
    Holmes described the line of beauty which is made by any two
    persons who talk together congenially thus 〰, whereas, when an
    adverse element comes in, it proceeds thus Ʌ; and by and by
    one which has a frightful retrograde movement, thus ∕. Then
    blank despair settles down upon the original talker. He said
    people should dovetail together like properly built mahogany
    furniture. Much of all this congeniality had to do with the
    physical, he said. “Now there is big Dr. ——; he and I do very
    well together; I have just two intellectual heart-beats to his
    one.” Willis said he thought there should be an essay written
    upon the necessity that literary men should live on a more
    concentrated diet than is their custom. “Impossible,” said the
    Professor, “there is something behind the man which drives him
    on to his fate; he goes as the steam-engine goes and one might
    as well say to the engine going at the rate of sixty miles,
    ‘you had better stop now,’ and so make it stop, as to say it
    to a man driven on by a vital preordained energy for work.”
    Each man has a philosophical coat fitted to his shoulders, and
    he did not expect to find it fitting anybody else.

At another breakfast, in 1861, we find, besides the favorite humorist of
the day, Dr. Holmes’s son and namesake, then a young officer in the Union
army, now Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

    _Sunday, December 8, 1861._—Yesterday morning “Artemus Ward,”
    Mr. Browne, breakfasted with us, also Dr. Holmes and the
    lieutenant, his son. We had a merry time because Jamie was in
    grand humor and represented people and incidents in the most
    incomparable manner. “Why,” said Dr. Holmes to him afterward,
    “you must excuse me that I did not talk, but the truth is there
    is nothing I enjoy so much as your anecdotes, and whenever I
    get a chance I can’t help listening to them.” The Professor
    complimented Artemus upon his great success and told him the
    pleasure he had received. Artemus twinkled all over, but said
    little after the Professor arrived. He was evidently immensely
    possessed by him. The young lieutenant has mostly recovered
    from his wound and speaks as if duty would recall him soon to
    camp. He will go when the time comes, but home evidently never
    looked half so pleasant before. Poor fellows! Heaven send us
    peace before long!

The finely bound copy of Dr. Holmes’s Fourth of July Oration at the
Boston City Celebration of 1863, to which the following passage refers,
is one of the rarities sought by American book-collectors. It was a
practice of Dr. Holmes at this time to have his public speeches set up
in large, legible type for his own reading at their delivery. One of
these, an address to the alumni of Harvard on July 16, 1863, with the
inscription, “Oliver Wendell Holmes to his friend James T. Fields. One
of six copies printed,” is found among the Charles Street papers, and
contributes, like the passage that follows, to the sense of pleasant
intimacy between the neighboring houses.

    _August 3, 1863._—Dr. Holmes dropped in last night about his
    oration which the City Council have had printed and superbly
    bound. He has addressed it to the “Common Council” instead of
    the “City Council,” and he is much disturbed. J. T. F. told
    him it made but small consequence, and he went off comforted.
    One of the members of the Council told Mr. F. it was amusing
    to see “the Professor” while this address was passing through
    the press. He was so afraid something would be wrong that he
    would come in to see about it half a dozen times a day, until
    it seemed as if he considered this small oration of more
    consequence than the affairs of the state. Yet laugh as they
    may about these little peculiarities of “our Professor,” he is
    a most wonderful man.

[Illustration: _Reduced facsimile of first page of Dr. Holmes’ 1863
Address to the Alumni of Harvard_]

In explanation of the ensuing bit, it need only be said that in October
of 1863 Señorita Isabella Cubas was appearing at the Boston Theatre
in “The Wizard Skiff, or the Massacre of Scio,” and other pantomimes.
“The Wizard Skiff,” according to the “Advertiser,” was given on the
fourteenth. On the sixteenth, a characteristic announcement read: “At ¼
past 8 Señorita Cubas will dance La Madrilena.” The tear of Dr. Holmes at
the spectacle may be remembered with the “poetry and religion” anecdote
of Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Fanny Ellsler.

    _October 16, 1863._—Mr. F. went in two evenings since to find
    Professor Holmes. His wife said he was out. “I don’t know where
    he is gone, I am sure, Mr. Fields,” she said in her eager way,
    “but he said he had finished his work and asked if he might go,
    and I told him he might, though he would not tell where he was
    going.”

    Yesterday the “where” transpired. “By the way,” said the
    Professor, “have you seen that little poem by Mrs. Waterston
    upon the death of Colonel Shaw, ‘Together’? It made me cry.
    However, I don’t know how much that means, for I went to see
    the ‘beautiful Cubas’ in a pantomime the other night, and the
    first thing I knew down came a great round fat tear and went
    splosh on the ground. Wasn’t I provoked!”

[Illustration: FROM THE PLAY-BILL OF THE NIGHT OF DR. HOLMES’S “GREAT
ROUND FAT TEAR”]

The next fragment is neither a letter nor a passage from the diary, but a
bit of excellent fooling, in Dr. Holmes’s handwriting, on a sheet of note
paper. The meteorological records of 1864 would probably show that there
were heavy rains in the course of the year. From Dr. Holmes’s interest
in the tracing of Dr. Johnson’s footsteps an even century before his
own, it is easy to imagine his fancy playing about the rainfall of the
century ahead. I cannot find that this _jeu d’esprit_, with its entirely
characteristic flavor of the “Breakfast Table,” was ever printed by its
author.

    _Letter from the last man left by the Deluge of the year 1964
    to the last woman left by the same_

    MY DEAR SOLE SURVIVORESS:—

    Love is natural to the human breast. The passion has seized me,
    and you, fortunately, cannot doubt as to its object.

    Adored one, fairest, and indeed only individual of your sex,
    can you, could you doubt that if the world still possessed its
    full complement of inhabitants, 823,060,413 according to the
    most recent estimate, I should hesitate in selecting you from
    the 411,530,206½ females in existence previous to the late
    accident? Believe it not! Trust not the deceivers who—but I
    forget the late melancholy occurrence for the moment!

    It is still damp in our—I beg your pardon—in my neighborhood.
    I hope you are careful of your precious health—so much depends
    upon it! The dodo is extinct—what if Man—but pardon me. Let me
    recommend long india-rubber boots—they will excite no remark,
    for reasons too obvious to mention.

    May I hope for a favorable answer to my suit by the bearer of
    this message, the carrier-goose, who was with me during the
    rainy season in the top of the gigantic pine?

    If any more favored suitor—What am I saying? If any
    recollection of the past is to come between me and happiness,
    break it gently to me, for my nerves have been a good deal
    tried by the loss of the human species (with the exception of
    ourselves) and there is something painful in the thought of
    shedding tears in a world so thoroughly saturated with liquid.

    I am (by the force of circumstances)

                    Your Only lover and admirer

                                                      ULTIMUS SMITH

    _O. W. H. Fixit._

[Illustration: _Facsimile of the Conclusion of Ultimus Smith’s
Declaration_]

A few brief items of May of 1864 bring back a time of sadness for all the
friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

    _May 11, 1864._—J. T. F. went to see Dr. Holmes about
    Hawthorne’s health. The latter came to town looking very very
    ill. O. W. H. thinks the shark’s tooth is upon him, but would
    not have this known. Walked and talked with him; then carried
    him to “Metcalf’s and treated him to simple medicine as we
    treat each other to ice cream.”

    O. W. H. picked up a New York pamphlet full of sneers against
    Boston “Mutual Admiration Society.” “These whipper-snappers of
    New York will do well to take care,” he says; “the noble race
    of men now so famous here is passing down the valley—then who
    will take their places! I am ashamed to know the names of these
    blackguards. There is ——, a stick of sugar-candy —— and, ——,
    who is not even a gum-drop, and plenty like them.”

    _Sunday. May 14._—Terrible days of war and change....

    _May 19._—Hawthorne is dead.

Less than a year later came the record of another death—unique in that
every survivor of the war-time seems to have remembered the very moment
and circumstances of learning the overwhelming fact.

    _April 15, 1865._—Last night when I shut this book I wondered a
    little what event or person would come next, powerful enough to
    compel me to write a few words; and before I was dressed this
    morning the news of the assassination of the President became
    our only thought. The President, Seward, and his son!

    Mrs. Andrew came in before nine o’clock to ask if we thought it
    would be expected of her to receive “the Club” on Monday. We
    decided “No,” immediately, which chimed with her desire.

    The city is weighed down by sadness. But Dr. Holmes expresses
    his philosophy for the consolation of all. “It will unite the
    North,” he says. “It is more than likely that Lincoln was not
    the best man for the work of re-construction,” etc. His faith
    keeps him from the shadows which surround many.

    But it is a black day for us all. J. Wilkes Booth is in
    custody. Poor Edwin is in Boston.

    _April 22._—False report. Up to this date J. Wilkes Booth has
    not been taken. A reward of nearly $200,000 is set upon his
    head, but we believe him to have fled into Maryland or farther
    south, with some marauding party.

Henry Howard Brownell, the author of “War Lyrics,” appears in the
following extract, with Dr. Holmes, whose high opinion of this singer of
naval battle was set forth in print of no uncertain tone. Of Forceythe
Willson, a poet, not yet thirty years old, of whom great things were
expected, Mrs. Fields wrote later in the same volume of the journal: “He
affects me like a wild Tennyson.... He is an indigenous growth of our
middle states. He was a pupil of Horace Mann, and appreciated him.”

    _April 29, 1865._—Club dinner for J. T. F. Mr. Brownell was
    present, author of “The Bay Fight,” as Dr. Holmes’s guest. Dr.
    H. said privately to us, “Well, ’tain’t much for some folks
    to do what I’m doing for this man, but it’s a good deal for
    me. I don’t like that kind of thing, you know. I find myself
    unawares in something the position of a lion-hunter, which
    is unpleasant!!!” He has lately discovered that Forceythe
    Willson, the author of a noble poem called the “Color Sergeant”
    [“The Old Sergeant”], has been living two years in Cambridge.
    He wrote to him and told him how much he liked his poem and
    said he would like to make his acquaintance. “I will be at
    home,” the young poet replied to the elder, “at any time you
    may appoint to call upon me.” This was a little strange to O.
    W. H., who rather expected, as the elder who was extending
    the right hand, to be called upon, I suppose, although he did
    not say so. He found a fortress of a man, “shy as Hawthorne,”
    and “one who had not learned that the eagle’s wings should
    sometimes be kept down, as we people who live in the world
    must,” said the Professor to me afterward. “In State” by F. W.
    is a great poem.

More than a year later is found this characteristic glimpse of Dr. Holmes
in the elation of finishing one of his books.

    _Wednesday, September 12, 1866._—After an hour J. went in to
    see Dr. Holmes. This was important. He had promised a week ago
    to hear him read his new romance, and he did not wish to show
    anything but the lively interest he really feels....

    Jamie returned in two hours perfectly enchanted. The novel
    exceeded his hopes. No diminishing of power is to be seen; on
    the contrary it seems the perfect fruit of a life. It is to be
    called “The Guardian Angel.” Four parts are already completed
    and large books of notes stand ready for use and reference.
    Mrs. Holmes came in to tell Mr. Fields she wished Wendell would
    not publish anything more. He would only call down newspaper
    criticism, and where was the use. “Well, Amelia, I have written
    something now which the critics won’t complain of. You see
    it’s better than anything I have ever done.” “Oh, that’s what
    you always say, Wendell, but I wish you’d let it alone!” “But
    don’t you see, Amelia, I shall make money by it, and that won’t
    come amiss.” “No indeed, Mr. Fields, not in these times with
    our family, you know.” “But there’s one thing,” said the little
    Professor, suddenly looking up to Mr. Fields; “if anything
    should happen to me before I get the story done, you wouldn’t
    come down upon the widder for the money, would you now?” Then
    they had a grand laugh all round. He is very nervous indeed
    about his work and read it with great reluctance, yet desired
    to do so. He had read it to no one as yet until Mr. Fields
    should hear it.

    Wendell, his son, had just returned from England, bringing
    a young English Captain of Artillery home with him for the
    night, the hotels being crowded. The captain’s luggage was
    in the entry. The Professor drew J. aside to show him how
    the straps of the luggage were arranged in order to slip in
    the address-card. “D’ye see that—good, ain’t it? I’ve made a
    drawing of that and am going to have some made like it.”

Near the end of 1866, Mrs. Fields, after a few words of realization that
something lies beyond the age of thirty, pictures “the Autocrat” at her
own breakfast-table, with General John Meredith Read, afterwards minister
to Greece, and already, before that age of thirty which the diarist was
just completing, an important figure in the military and political life
of New York. A few sentences from the following passage are found in Mrs.
Fields’s article on Dr. Holmes, which appeared first in the “Century
Magazine,” and then in “Authors and Friends.”

    It comes over me to put down here and now the fact that this
    year for the first time others perceived, as well as myself,
    that I have passed the freshness and lustre of youth—but I
    do not feel the change as I once thought I must—life is even
    sweeter than ever and richer though I can still remember the
    time when thirty years seemed the desirable limit of life—now
    it opens before me full of uncompleted labor, full of riches
    and plans—the wealth of love, the plans of eternity.

    _Friday morning._—Professor Holmes and Adjutant General Read
    of New York (a young man despite his title) breakfasted here
    at eight o’clock. They were both here punctually at quarter
    past eight, which was early for the season, especially as the
    General was late out, at a ball, last night. He was only too
    glad of the chance, however, to meet Dr. Holmes, and would
    have made a far greater effort to accomplish it. The talk at
    one time turned upon Dickens. Dr. Holmes said he thought him
    a greater genius than Thackeray and was never satisfied with
    admiring his wondrous powers of observation and fertility
    of reproduction; his queer knack at making scenes, too, was
    noticeable, but especially the power of beginning from the
    smallest externals and describing a man to the life though
    he might get no farther than the shirt-button, for he always
    failed in profound analysis. Hawthorne, beginning from within,
    was his contrast and counterpart. But the two qualities which
    Dickens possesses and which the world seems to take small
    account of, but which mark his peculiar greatness, are the
    minuteness of his observations and his endless variety.
    Thackeray had sharp corners in him, something which led you
    to see he could turn round short upon you some day, although
    sadness was an impressive element in his character—perhaps a
    sadness belonging to genius. Hawthorne’s sadness was a part of
    his genius—tenderness and sadness.

[Illustration: MRS. FIELDS

_From a crayon portrait made by Rowse in 1863_]

On Monday, February 25, 1867, Mrs. Fields made note of the Saturday
Club dinner of two days before, at which the guests were George William
Curtis, “Petroleum V. Nasby,” and Dr. Hayes of Arctic fame, of whom
Mrs. Fields had written a few days before: “He wears a corrugated face,
and his slender spirited figure shows him the man for such resolves and
expeditions. We were carried away like the hearers of an Arabian tale
with his vivid pictures of Arctic life.” But apparently he was not the
chief talker at the Saturday Club meeting, for Mrs. Fields wrote of it:
“Dr. Holmes was in great mood for talk, but Lowell was critical and
interrupted him frequently. ‘Now, James, let me talk and don’t interrupt
me,’ he once said, a little ruffled by the continual strictures on his
conversation.” But by the time that Longfellow’s sixtieth birthday came
round on the following Wednesday, Dr. Holmes was ready for it with the
verses, “In gentle bosoms tried and true,” recorded in Longfellow’s
diary, and for another encounter with Lowell, who also celebrated the day
with a poem, beginning “I need not praise the sweetness of his song.”
Mrs. Fields’s diary records her husband’s account of the evening:—

    _February 28, 1867._—Thursday morning. Jamie had a most
    brilliant evening at Longfellow’s. A note came in from O. W.
    H. towards night, saying he was full of business and full of
    his story, but he _must_ go to L.’s. Lowell’s poem in the
    morning had helped to stir him. J. reached his door punctually
    at eight. There stood the little wonder with hat and coat on
    and door ajar, his wife beside him. “I wouldn’t let him go
    with anybody else,” she said. “Mr. Fields, he ought not to
    go out tonight; hear him, how he wheezes with the asthma.
    Now, Wendell, _when_ will you get home?” “Oh,” said he, “I
    don’t know. I put myself into Mr. Fields’s hands.” “Well, Mr.
    Fields, how early can you get him home?” “About twelve,” was
    the answer. “Now that’s pretty well,” said the Doctor. “Amelia,
    go in and shut the door. Mr. Fields will take care of me.”
    So between fun and anxiety they chatted away until they were
    fairly into the street and in the car. “I’ve been doing too
    much lately between my lectures and my story, and the fine
    dinners I have been to, and I ought not to go out tonight. Why,
    it’s one of the greatest compliments one man ever paid another,
    my going out to Longfellow’s tonight. By the way, Mr. Fields,
    do you appreciate the position you hold in our time? There
    never was anything like it. Why, I was nothing but a roaring
    kangaroo when you took me in hand, and I thought it was the
    right thing to stand up on my hind legs, but you combed me down
    and put me in proper shape. Now I want you to promise me one
    thing. We’re all growing old, I’m near sixty myself; by and by
    the brain will begin to soften. Now you must tell me when the
    egg begins to look addled. People don’t know of themselves.”

    He had been to two large dinners lately, one at G. W. Wales’s,
    which he said was the finest dinner he had ever seen, the most
    perfect in all its appointments, decorated with the largest
    profusion of flowers, in as perfect taste as he had ever seen.
    “Why, even the chair you sat in was so delicately padded as
    to give pleasure to that weak spot in the back which we all
    inherit from the fall of Adam.” The other was at Mrs. Charles
    Dorr’s, where there were sixteen at table and the room “for
    heat was like the black hole at Calcutta,” but the company
    was very brilliant. Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Parkman, Dr.
    Hayes, etc. He sat next Mrs. ——; says she is a thorough-bred
    woman of society, the daughter of a politician, the wife, first
    of a millionaire and now of a man of society. “I like such a
    woman now and then; she never makes a mistake.” Mrs. —— was
    thoroughly canvassed at the table, “picked clean as any duck
    for the spit and then roasted over a slow fire,” as O. W. H.
    afterward remarked to Mrs. Parkman, who is a very just woman
    and who weighed her well in the balances.

    When they arrived at L.’s, my basket of flowers stood,
    surrounded by other gifts, and Longfellow himself sat crowned
    with all the natural loveliness of his rare nature. The day
    must have been a happy one for him.... O. W. H. had three
    perfect verses of a little poem in his hand which he read, and
    then Lowell talked, and they had great merriment and delight
    together.

[Illustration: FIELDS, THE MAN OF BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIPS]

The two following passages from the diary for 1868 seem to indicate that
Dr. Holmes made a double use of his poem, “Bill and Joe,” written in this
year, included in his “Poems of the Class of ’29,” and according to the
entry of July 17, read at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner of 1868:—

    _January 16, 1868._—We had just finished dinner when Professor
    Holmes came in with his poem, one of the annual he contributes
    to the class-supper of the “Boys of ’29.” He read it through
    to us with feeling, his voice growing tremulous and husky at
    times. It was pleasant to see how he enjoyed our pleasure in
    it. The talk turned naturally after a little upon the question
    of Chief Justice, when he took occasion to run over in his
    mind the character and qualifications of some of our chief
    barristers. “As for Bigelow[4] (who has just gone out of office
    and it is his successor over whom they are struggling), as for
    Bigelow, it is astonishing to see how every bit of that man’s
    talent has been brought into use; all he has is made the most
    of. Why, he’s like some cooks, give ’em a horse and they will
    use every part of him except the shoes.”

    _Friday, July 17, 1868._—Last evening Dr. Holmes came in
    fresh from the Phi Beta dinner at Cambridge.[5] He said, “I
    can’t stop and I only came to read you my verses I read at
    the dinner, they made such a queer impression. I didn’t mean
    to go, but James Lowell was to preside and sent me word that
    I really must be there, so I just wrote these off, and here
    they are—I don’t know that I should have brought them in to
    read to you, but Hoar declares they are the best I have ever
    done.” At length, in the exquisite orange of sunset, he read
    those delightful verses, full, full of feeling, “Bill and Joe.”
    We did not wonder the Phi Beta boys liked them. I shall be
    surprised if every boy, especially those who find the almond
    blossoms in the hair, as W. says, does not like them, and if
    they do _not_ win for him a more universal reputation than he
    has yet won....

    I was impressed last night with the nervous energy of O. W.
    H. His leg by a slight quiver kept time to the reading of his
    verses, and his talk fell before and after like swift rain.
    He does not go away from town but sways between Boston and
    Cambridge all these perfect summer days; receiving yesterday,
    the hottest day of this or many years, Motley at dinner, and
    going perpetually, and writing verses and letters not a few.
    His activity is wonderful; think of writing letters these warm
    delicious evenings by gaslight in a small front study on the
    street! It hurts him less than his wife, partly because the
    intellectual vivacity and excitement keeps him up, partly
    because he is physically fitted to bear almost everything but
    cold. How fortunate for the world that while he lives he should
    continue his work so faithfully. He will have no successor, at
    least for many a long year, after we have all gone to sleep
    under our green counterpanes and Nature has tucked us up well
    in yearly violets.

Earlier in the year Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Stowe met in Charles Street.

    _Wednesday morning, January 29, 1868._—Last night Professor
    Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, her daughter Georgie, and the Howellses,
    took tea here. The Professor came early and was in good talking
    trim—presently in came Mrs. Stowe, and they fell shortly into
    talk upon Homeopathy and Allopathy. He grew very warm, declared
    that cases cited of cures proved nothing, and we were all
    “incompetent” to judge! We could not but be amused at his heat,
    for we were more or less believers in Homeopathy against his
    one argument for Allopathy. In vain Mrs. Stowe and I tried to
    turn and stem the fiery tide: Georgie or Mrs. Howells would
    be sure to sweep us back into it again. However, there were
    many brilliant things said, and sweet and good and interesting
    things too. The Professor told us one curious fact, that
    chemists had in vain analyzed the poison of rattlesnakes and
    could not discover the elements of destruction it undoubtedly
    possesses. Also that, when Indians poison their arrows with
    it, they hang up the liver of a white wolf and make one snake
    after another bite it until the liver is entirely impregnated;
    they then leave it to dry until disintegrated, when they
    moisten and apply round the necks of the arrows—_not on the
    point_. He had a long quiet chat with Mrs. Stowe before the
    evening ended. They compared their early Calvinistic education
    and the effect produced upon their characters by such training.

    _Tuesday, April 13, 1869._—Dr. Holmes and his wife and Mr.
    Whittier dined here. The talk was free, totally free from all
    feeling of constraint, as it could not have been had another
    person been present. Whittier says he is afraid of strangers,
    and Dr. Holmes is never more delightful than under just such
    auspices. Dr. Holmes asked Whittier’s undisguised opinion
    of Longfellow’s “New England Tragedies”—“honest opinion
    now,” said he. “Well, I liked them,” said Whittier, half
    reluctantly—evidently he had found much that was beautiful and
    in keeping with the spirit of the times of which Longfellow
    wrote, and their passionless character did not trouble him as
    it had O. W. H. Presently, he added that he was surprised to
    find how he had preserved almost literally the old text of the
    old books he had lent Longfellow twelve years ago, and had
    measured it off into verse. “Ah,” said O. W. H., “you have
    said the severest thing after all—‘measured off’; that’s just
    what he has done. It is one of the easiest, the very commonest
    tricks of the rhymster to be able to do this. I am surprised to
    see the ease with which I can do it myself.” They spoke then
    of “Evangeline,” which both agreed in awarding unqualified
    praise. “Only,” said Whittier, “I always wondered there was
    no terrible outburst of indignation over the outrage done to
    that poor colony. The tide of the story runs as smoothly as if
    nothing had occurred. I long thought of working up that story
    myself, but I am glad I did not, only I can’t understand its
    being so calm.” They talked on religious questions of course,
    the Professor holding that sin being finite, and of such a
    nature that we could both outgrow it and root it up, Whittier
    still returning to the ground that sin was a “very real thing.”

    It is impossible to represent the clearness and swiftness
    of Dr. Holmes’s talk. The purity of heart and strength of
    endeavor evident in the two poets makes their atmosphere a very
    elevating one and they evidently naturally rejoiced in each
    other’s society.

    Mrs. Holmes had not been out to dine before this winter.
    Jamie sent us a pot of strawberries growing, which delighted
    everybody.

Before the following passage was written, in 1871, Dr. Holmes had moved
from Charles Street to Beacon Street; Mr. Fields, in impaired health,
had retired from active business as a publisher and was devoting himself
chiefly to writing and lecturing; and Mrs. Fields, already interested
in the establishment of Coffee Houses for the poor in the North End and
elsewhere, had begun the notable work in public charities to which her
energies were so largely given for the remaining forty-four years of her
life. In the Coöperative Workrooms, still rendering their beneficent
services, and in the larger organization of the Associated Charities,
embodying a principle now widely adopted throughout the land, the labors
of this generous spirit, never content to give all it had to the gracious
life within its own four walls, have borne enduring fruits.

    1871.—Thursday afternoon last (June 22) went to Cambridge for
    a few visits, and coming home stopped at Dr. Holmes’s, at
    his new house on Beacon St. Found them both at home, sitting
    lonely in the oriel window looking out upon a glorious sunset.
    They were thinking of the children who have flown out of their
    nest. Dr. Holmes was very friendly and sweet. He talked most
    affectionately with J., told him he no longer felt a spur to
    write since he had gone out of business; he needed just the
    little touch of praise and encouragement he used to administer
    to make him do it; now he did not think he should ever write
    any more worth mentioning. He had been in to see the Coffee
    House and entertained us much by saying he met President
    Eliot near the door one day just as he was going in, but he
    was ashamed of doing so until they had parted company. There
    was something so childlike in this confession that we all
    laughed heartily over it. However he got in at last, and “tears
    as big as onions stood in my eyes when I saw what had been
    accomplished.” “You must be a very happy woman,” he went on
    to say. I told him of the new one in Eliot Street about to be
    opened this coming week.

At the end of the summer of 1871, when Mr. and Mrs. Fields were beginning
to learn the charms of the North Shore town of Manchester, where they
established the “Gambrel Cottage” on “Thunderbolt Hill” which gave a
summer synonym to the hospitality of Charles Street, they journeyed one
day to Nahant for a midday dinner with Longfellow. Here Mrs. Fields’s
sister, Louisa, Mrs. James H. Beal, was a neighbor of the poet. Another
neighbor was the late George Abbot James, and in Longfellow’s diary for
September 4, 1871, is the entry: “Call on Dr. Holmes at Mr. James’s.
Sumner still there. We discuss the new poets.” Mrs. Fields reports a
continuation of the talk with the same friends.

    _Wednesday, September 6, 1871._—Dined with Mr. Longfellow at
    Nahant. The day was warm with a soft south wind blowing, and as
    we crossed the beach white waves were curling up the sands....
    The dear poet saw us coming from afar and walked to his little
    gate to meet us with such a sweet cordial welcome that it was
    worth going many a mile to have that alone. The three little
    ladies, his daughters, and Ernest’s wife, were within, but
    they came warmly forward to give us greeting; also Mr. Sam.
    Longfellow was of the party. A few moments’ chat in the little
    parlor, when Longfellow saw Holmes coming in the distance (he
    had an opera-glass, being short-sighted, and was sitting on
    the piazza with J.). “Hullo!” said he, “here comes Holmes,
    and all dressed up too, with flowers in his button-hole.”
    Sure enough, here was _the_ Professor to have dinner with
    us also. He was full of talk as ever and looking remarkably
    well. Longfellow asked with much interest about Balaustion and
    Joaquin Miller, neither of which he had read. Holmes criticized
    as if unbearable and beyond the pale of decency Browning’s
    cutting of words, “Flower o’ the pine,” and such characteristic
    passages. Longfellow spoke of a volume of poems he had received
    of late from England in which “saw” was made to rhyme with
    “more.” Holmes said Keats often did that. “Not exactly, I
    think,” said L., “‘dawn’ and ‘forlorn,’ perhaps.” “Well,”
    said H., “when I was in college” (I think he said college,
    certainly while at Cambridge) “and my first volume was about
    to appear, Mrs. Folsom saw the sheets and fortunately at the
    very last moment for correction discovered I had made ‘forlorn’
    rhyme with ‘gone,’ and out of her own head and without having
    time to consult with me she substituted ‘sad and wan.’”[6]
    The Professor went on to say that he must confess to a tender
    feeling of regret for his “so forlorn” to this very day, but he
    supposed every writer of poems must have his keen regrets for
    the numerous verses he could recall where he had wrestled with
    the English language and had lost something of his thought in
    his struggle with the necessities of art. We shortly after went
    to dinner, where the talk still continued to turn on art and
    artists, chiefly musical, the divorcement of music and thought;
    a thinker or man of intellect in listening to music comes to a
    comprehension of it, Holmes said, mediately, but a musician
    feels it directly through some gift of which the thinker knows
    nothing. Longfellow always recalls with intense delight hearing
    Gounod sing his own music in Rome—his voice was hardly to be
    mentioned among the fine voices of the world, indeed it was
    small, but his rendering was exquisite. Canvassing T. B. Read’s
    poems and speaking of “Sheridan’s Ride,” which has been so
    highly praised, “Yes,” said Holmes, “but there are very poor
    lines in it, but how often, to use Scripture phrase, there
    is a fly in the ointment.” The talk went bowling off to Père
    Hyacinthe. “He was very pleasant,” said Holmes, “it was most
    agreeable to meet him, but you could only go a short distance.
    His desire was to be a good Catholic, and ours is of course
    quite different. It was like speaking through a knot-hole after
    all.”

    The dumb waiter bounced up. “We cannot call that a _dumb_
    waiter,” said L., “but I had an odd dream the other night.
    I thought Greene (G. W.) came bouncing up on the waiter in
    that manner and stepped off in a most dignified fashion with
    a crushed white hat on his head. He said he had just been to
    drive with a Spanish lady.”

    Sumner (Charles) came up to the piazza. He had dined elsewhere
    and came over as soon as possible for a little talk. Holmes
    talked on, although we all said, “Mr. Sumner—here is Mr.
    Sumner,” without perceiving that the noble Senator was sitting
    just outside the cottage window waiting for us to rise, and
    began to converse about him. Longfellow grew nervous and rose
    to speak with Sumner—still Holmes did not perceive, and went
    on until Jamie relieved us from a tendency to convulsions by
    voting that we should join the Senator. Then Sumner related the
    substance of an amusing letter of Cicero’s he had just been
    reading in which Cicero gives an account to his friend of a
    visit he had just received from the Emperor Julius Cæsar. He
    had invited Julius to pass a few days with him, but he came
    quite unexpectedly with a thousand men! Cicero, seeing them
    from afar, debated with another friend what he should do with
    them, but at length managed to encamp them. To feed them was
    a less easy matter. The emperor took everything quite easily,
    however, and was very pleasant, “but,” adds Cicero, “he is not
    the man to whom I should say a second time, ‘if you are passing
    this way, give me a call.’”

Again, in 1873, Longfellow, Holmes, and Sumner are found together at
the dinner-table with Mrs. Fields, this time in Charles Street. When
she made use of her diary at this point, for her article on Dr. Holmes
which appeared first in the “Century Magazine” (1895), it was with many
omissions. The passage is now given almost entire. It should be said that
the Misses Towne, mentioned at the beginning of it, were friends and
summer neighbors at Manchester.

    _Saturday, October 11, 1873._—Helen and Alice Towne have come
    to pass Sunday with us. Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Greene, Dr.
    Holmes came to dine. Mr. Sumner seemed less strong than of late
    and I fancied he suffered somewhat while at table during the
    evening, but he told me he was working at his desk or reading
    during fourteen consecutive hours not infrequently at present,
    as he was in the habit of doing when uninterrupted by friendly
    visits. He said he was very fond of the passive exercise of
    reading; the active exercise of composition was of course
    agreeable in certain moods, but reading was a never-ending
    delight. He spoke of Lord Brougham, and Mrs. Norton and her two
    beautiful sisters. Both he and Mr. Longfellow recalled them in
    their youthful loveliness, but Mr. Sumner said when he was in
    England the last time he saw the Duchess of Somerset, who was a
    most poetic looking creature in her youth and (I believe) the
    youngest of the three sisters, so changed he should never have
    guessed who it might be. She was grown a huge red-faced woman.
    (Longfellow laughed, referring to her second marriage and
    said, “Yes, she had turned a Somerset!”) Dr. Holmes sparkled
    and coruscated as I have seldom heard him before. We are more
    than ever convinced that no one since Sydney Smith was ever so
    brilliant, so witty, spontaneous, naïf, and unfailing as Dr.
    Holmes. He talked much about his class in College: “There never
    was such vigor in any class before, it seems to me—almost every
    member turns out sooner or later distinguished for something.
    We have had every grade of moral status from a criminal to a
    Chief Justice, and we never let any one of them drop. We keep
    hold of their hands year after year and lift up the weak and
    failing ones till they are at last redeemed. Ah, there was
    one exception—years ago we voted to cast a man out who had
    been a defaulter or who had committed some offense of that
    nature. The poor fellow sank down, and before the next year,
    when we repented of this decision, he had gone too far down and
    presently died. But we have kept all the rest. Every fourth man
    in our class is a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our class, who
    wrote ‘My Country, ’tis of Thee.’ Sam. Smith will live when
    Longfellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into
    oblivion—and yet what is there in those verses to make them
    live? Do you remember the line ‘Like _that_ above’? I asked
    Sam. what ‘that’ referred to—he said ‘that rapture’!!—(The
    expression of the rapid talker’s face of contempt as he said
    this was one of the most amusing possible.)—Even the odds and
    ends of our class have turned out something.... Longfellow, I
    wish I could make you talk about yourself.”—“But I never do,”
    said L. quietly. “I know you never do, but you confessed to me
    once.”—“No, I don’t think I ever did,” said L. laughing

    Greene was for the most part utterly speechless. He attended
    with great assiduity to his dinner, which was a good one, and
    Longfellow was watchful and kind enough to send him little
    choice things to eat which he thought he would enjoy.

    Holmes was abstemious and never ceased talking—“Most men write
    too much. I would rather risk my future fame upon one lyric
    than upon ten volumes. But I have said Boston is the hub of the
    universe. I will rest upon that.”

    All this report is singularly dry compared with the wit and
    humor which radiated about the table. We laughed till the tears
    ran down our cheeks. Longfellow was intensely amused. I have
    not seen him laugh so much for many a long day. We ladies sat
    at the table long after coffee and cigars in order to hear the
    talk....

    Sumner said he had been much displeased by a remark Professor
    Henry Hunt made to him a few days ago. He said Mr. Agassiz was
    an _impediment_ in the path of science. What did such men as
    Hunt and John Fiske mean by underrating a man who has given
    such books to the world as Agassiz has done, not to speak of
    his untiring efforts in the other avenues of influence! “It
    means just this,” said Holmes: “Agassiz will not listen to the
    Darwinian theory; his whole effort is on the other side. Now
    Agassiz is no longer young, and I was reading the other day
    in a book on the Sandwich Islands of an old Fejee man who had
    been carried away among strangers, but who prayed he might be
    carried home, that his brains might be beaten out in peace by
    his son according to the custom of those lands. It flashed over
    me then that our sons beat out our brains in the same way. They
    do not walk in our ruts of thoughts or begin exactly where we
    leave off, but they have a new standpoint of their own. At
    present the Darwinian theory can be nothing but an hypothesis;
    the important links of proof are missing and cannot be
    supplied; but in the myriad ages there may be new developments.”

    I thought the young ladies looked a little tired sitting, so
    about nine o’clock we left the table—still the talk went on
    for about four hours when they broke up.

[Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ]

With two letters from Dr. Holmes this rambling chronicle of his
friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Fields must end. The first of the
communications is a mere fragment of his everyday humor:

                                         BEVERLY-FARMS-BY-THE-DEPOT

                                                  _July 18th, 1878_

    DEAR MR. FIELDS:—

    The Corner sends me a book directed to me here, but on opening
    the outside wrapper I read “James T. Fields, Esq., Jamaica
    Plain, Boston, Mass.” The book, which is sealed up (or stuck
    up, like many authors), measures 7 × 5, nearly, and is
    presumably idiotic, like most books which are sent us without
    being ordered.

    Perhaps you have received a similar package which on opening
    you found directed to O. W. Holmes, Esq., Peak of Teneriffe,
    Boston. If so, when the weather grows cool again and we can
    make up our minds to face the title page of the dreaded volume,
    we will make an exchange.

                        Always truly yours,

                                                       O. W. HOLMES

The second letter, written ten years after Dr. Holmes, in moving
from Charles to Beacon Street, had made the last of his “justifiable
domicides,” strikes a more serious note, revealing that quality of true
sympathy so closely joined in abundant natures with true humor. Mr.
Fields had died in April of 1881, and Mrs. Fields had applied herself
at once to the preparation of her volume, “James T. Fields: Biographical
Notes and Personal Sketches,” drawing freely upon the diaries from
which many of the foregoing pages, then passed over, are now taken. The
performance of this loving labor must have done much towards the first
filling of a life so grievously emptied. Already the intimate and beloved
companionship of Miss Jewett had come into it.

                                294 BEACON ST., _November 16, 1881_

    MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS:—

    I feel sure there will be but one voice with regard to your
    beautiful memorial volume. If I had any misgivings that you
    might find the delicate task too difficult—that you might be
    discouraged between the wish to draw a life-like picture and
    the fear of saying more than the public had a right to, these
    misgivings have all vanished, and I am sure your finished task
    leaves nothing to be regretted. As he was in life, he is in
    your loving but not overwrought story. I do not see how a life
    so full of wholesome activity and genuine human feeling could
    have been better pictured than it is in your pages. Long before
    I had finished reading your memoir in the proofs I had learned
    to trust you entirely as to the whole management of the work
    on which you had entered. All I feared was that your feelings
    might be overtasked, and that the dread of coming before the
    public when your whole heart was in the pages opened to its
    calm judgment might be more than you could bear.

    And now, my dear Mrs. Fields, there must come a period of
    depression, almost of collapse, after the labor and the solace
    of this tender, tearful, yet blessed occupation. I think you
    need the kind thoughts and soothing words—if words have any
    virtue in them—of those who love you more than while each day
    had its busy hours in which the memory of so much that was
    delightful to recall kept the ever-returning pangs of grief
    a little while in abeyance. It must be so. But before long,
    quietly, almost imperceptibly, there will, I hope and trust,
    return to you the quieting sense of all that you have done and
    all that you have been for that life which for so many happy
    years you were privileged to share. How few women have so
    perfectly fulfilled, not only every duty, but every ideal that
    a husband could think of as going to make a happy home! This
    must be and will be an ever-growing source of consolation.

    Forgive me for saying what many others must have said to you,
    but none more sincerely than myself.

    I do not know how to express to you the feeling with which
    Mrs. Holmes looks upon you in your bereavement. I should do
    it injustice if I attempted to give it expression, for she
    lives so largely in her sympathies and her endeavors to help
    others that she could not but sorrow deeply with you in your
    affliction and wish there were any word of consolation she
    could add to the love she sends you.

    Believe me, dear Mrs. Fields,

                       Affectionately yours,

                                                     O. W. HOLMES

For thirteen years longer, till his death in 1894 at the age of
eighty-five, Dr. Holmes was a prolific writer of notes, more often than
letters, to Mrs. Fields. The sympathy of tried and ripened friendship
runs through them all. In the Charles Street house the younger friends
might see from time to time this oldest friend of their hostess. When he
came no more, it was well for those of a later day that his memory was so
securely held in the retrospect and the record of Mrs. 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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: 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 Wᵗᵉ Mᵗˢ. 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.

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: _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.

[Illustration: _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.




V

WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA[22]


When Mrs. Fields wrote the “Personal Recollections” of Oliver Wendell
Holmes which appear in her “Authors and Friends,” she quoted, with a few
changes prompted by modesty, this passage from a letter received from him
at Christmas, 1881: “Except a few of my immediate family connections, no
friends have seen me so often as a guest as did you and your husband.
Under your roof I have met more visitors to be remembered than under any
other. But for your hospitality I should never have had the privilege
of personal acquaintance with famous writers and artists whom I can now
recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard them in that pleasant
library, that most lively and agreeable dining-room. How could it be
otherwise with such guests as he entertained with his own unflagging
vivacity and his admirable social gifts?”

One of the visitors thus encountered by Dr. Holmes was Charles Dickens.
Here was a guest after the host’s own heart—and the hostess’s. The host
stood alone among publishers as a friend of the authors with whom it was
his business to deal. Out of them all there was none with whom he came to
stand on terms of closer sympathy and friendship than with Dickens. They
had first met when Dickens came to America in 1842, and Fields was by no
means the conspicuous figure he was to become. When he visited Europe in
1859-60, with his young wife, whose personality was to contribute its own
beauty and charm to the hospitality of 148 Charles Street for many years
to come, they dined with Dickens in London, visited him at Gad’s Hill,
and had much discussion of a plan, which Fields had been urging upon
him in correspondence, for Dickens to come to America for a course of
readings. As early as in one of the letters of this time, Dickens wrote
to Fields: “Here I forever renounce ‘Mr.’ as having anything whatever to
do with our communication, and as being a mere preposterous interloper.”
From such beginnings grew the intimacy which caused Dickens, when he drew
up the humorous terms of a walking-match between Dolby, his manager,
and Osgood, Fields’s partner, while the Boston readings of 1868 were in
progress, to define Fields as “Massachusetts Jemmy” and himself as the
“Gad’s Hill Gasper” by virtue of his “surprising performances (without
the least variation) on that true national instrument, the American
catarrh.”

The visits of Dickens to America, first in 1842, then in the winter of
1867-68, have been the subject of abundant chronicle. For the first
of them there is the direct record of his “American Notes,” besides
those indirect reflections in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” which wrought an
effect described by Carlyle in the characteristic saying that “all
Yankee-doodledom blazed up like one universal soda bottle.” Many
memorials of the second visit are preserved in Fields’s “Yesterdays
with Authors,” and in John Forster’s “Life” both visits are of course
recorded.

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS

_From a portrait by Francis Alexander, for many years in the Fields
house, and now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts_]

There is, besides, one source of intimate record of Dickens in America
which hitherto has remained almost untouched.[23] This is found in the
diaries of Mrs. Fields, filled, as the preceding pages have shown, not
merely with her own sympathetic observations, but with many things
reported to her by her husband. To him it was largely due that Dickens
crossed the Atlantic near the end of 1867. Landing in Boston, and soon
beginning his extraordinarily popular readings, he found in the Charles
Street house of the Fieldses a second home. “Steadily refusing all
invitations to go out during the weeks he was reading,” wrote Fields
in his “Yesterdays with Authors,” “he went only into one other house
besides the Parker, habitually, during his stay in Boston.” In that
house Mrs. Fields wrote the diaries from which the following passages
are taken. There Dickens was not merely a warmly welcomed friend and
guest at dinner, but for a time an inmate. Henry James, summoning after
Mrs. Fields’s death his remembrances of her and of her abode, found in
it “certain fine vibrations and dying echoes” of all the episode of
Dickens’s second visit. “I liked to think of the house,” he wrote, “I
couldn’t do without thinking of it, as the great man’s safest harborage
through the tremendous gale of those even more leave-taking appearances,
as fate was to appoint, than we then understood.”

In Dickens’s state of physical health while the Fieldses were thus seeing
him, lay the only token of an end not far off. All else was gayety and
delight. The uncontrollable laughter—where does one hear quite parallel
notes to-day?—the simplicities of game and anecdote, the enthusiastic
yielding of complete admiration, the glimpses of august figures of an
earlier time—all these serve equally to take one back over more than
half a century, into a state of society about which an element of myth
begins to form, and to bring out of that past the living, human figure of
Dickens himself.

For the most part these extracts from the diaries call for no
explanations.

Several months before the great visitor’s arrival his coming was heralded
by his business agent, of whom Mrs. Fields wrote:—

    _August 14, 1867._—Mr. Dolby arrived today from England (Mr.
    Dickens’s agent), a good, healthy, kindly natured man of
    whom Dickens seems really fond, having followed him to the
    steamer in Liverpool from London to see that all things were
    comfortably arranged for him. He says Dickens has lamed one of
    his feet with too much walking of late. He is here to arrange
    for 100 nights, for which he hears he may receive $200,000; the
    readings to begin the first of December and to be chiefly given
    in New York City.

    _August 15, 1867._—Our day was quiet enough, but when J.
    came down, he held us quite spellbound and magnetized all the
    evening with his account of Dickens, which Mr. Dolby had given
    him. He says Dolby himself is a queer creature when he talks.
    He has a stutter which leads him to become suddenly stately in
    the middle of a homely phrase and to give a queer intonation to
    his voice, so that he did not dare look at Osgood (who was a
    listener also) lest they should both explode with laughter.

    Dickens now has five dogs; for these the cook prepares daily
    five plates of dinner. One day the plates were all ready when a
    small pup stole in and polished off the five plates. He fainted
    away immediately, and in this condition was discovered by the
    cook, who put him under the pump and revived him; but he had
    been going about looking like the figure 8 ever since.

    Dickens is a warm friend of Fechter. One day, returning from
    a reading tour, his man met him at the station saying, “The
    fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “What?” said Mr. Dickens.
    “The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “I know nothing of
    fifty-eight boxes,” said the other. “Well, sir,” said the man,
    “they are all piled up outside the gate and we shall soon see,
    sir.” They proved to be a Swiss chalet complete, handles,
    blinds, not a bit wanting, which Fechter had sent him. It is
    put up in a grove near the house, where it presents a very
    picturesque effect.

    Dickens allows nothing to escape his attention and gives
    “one small corner of the white of one eye” to his household
    concerns, though he seems not to observe. His daughter Mary
    has the governance of the servants, Miss Hogarth of the cellar
    and provisions. There is a system in everything with which he
    has to do. When he gives a reading, he is present in the hall
    at half-past six, although the reading does not begin until
    eight; for Dickens cannot go about as other people do, he must
    go when the people do not press upon him. On reaching the
    private room, his servant brings his evening dress, reading
    desk, screen, lamps, when he arranges the hall, examines the
    copper gas-tubes to see if in order, dresses himself and is
    ready to begin. In Liverpool the other night he had advertised
    to read “Sergeant Buzfuz,” instead of which by accident he
    read “Bleak House.” Mr. Dolby spoke to him as soon as he had
    finished, telling him the mistake he had made. He at once
    returned to the desk, and said, “My friends, it is half-past
    ten o’clock and you see how tired I am, but I will still read
    Sergeant Buzfuz’s speech if you expect it.” “No, no,” the crowd
    shouted; “you’re tired. No, no, this ought to do for tonight.”
    One tall man raised himself up in the gallery and said, “Look
    here, we came to hear Pickwick and we ought to hef it.” “Very
    well, my friend,” replied Dickens, immediately, “I will read
    Sergeant Buzfuz for your accommodation solely”; and thereat he
    did read it to a breathless and delighted audience.

[Illustration: “THE TWO CHARLES’S” (CHARLES DICKENS AND CHARLES FECHTER).

_From a Humorous Drawing by_ ALFRED BRYAN, 1879.

DICKENS AND FECHTER]

At length came Dickens himself, and the diary takes up the tale:—

    _November 18, 1867._—Today the steamer is telegraphed with
    Dickens on board, and the tickets for his readings have been
    sold. Such a rush! A long queue of people have been standing
    all day in the street—a good-humored crowd, but a weary
    one.[24] The weather is clear but really cold, with winter’s
    pinch in it.

    _November 19._— ... Yesterday I adorned Mr. Dickens’s room with
    flowers, which seemed to please him. He was in the best of good
    spirits with everything.

    _Thursday, November 21._—Mr. Dickens dined here. Agassiz,
    Emerson, Judge Hoar, Professor Holmes, Norton, Greene, dear
    Longfellow, last not least, came to welcome. Dickens sat on
    my right, Agassiz at my left. I never saw Agassiz so full of
    fun....

    Dickens bubbled over with fun, and I could not help fancying
    that Holmes bored him a little by talking at him. I was sorry
    for this, because Holmes is so simple and lovely, but Dickens
    is sensitive, very. He is fond of Carlyle, seems to love nobody
    better, and gave the most irresistible imitation of him. His
    queer turns of expression often convulsed us with laughter, and
    yet it is difficult to catch them, as when, in speaking of the
    writer of books, always putting himself, his real self, in,
    “which is always the case,” he said; “but you must be careful
    of not taking him for his next-door neighbor.”

    He spoke of the fineness of his Parisian audience:—“the most
    delicately appreciative of all audiences.” He also gave a
    most ludicrous account of a seasick curate trying to read the
    service on board ship last Sunday. He tells us Browning is
    really about to marry Miss Ingelow, and of Carlyle, that he is
    deeply saddened, irretrievably, by the death of his wife. Just
    as we were in a tempest of laughter over some witticism of his,
    he jumped up, seized me by the hand, and said good-night. He
    neither smoked nor drank. “I never do either from the time my
    readings ‘set in,’” he said, as if it were a rainy season....

    Among other interesting personal facts Dickens told us that
    he had last year burned all his private letters. An appeal
    from the daughter of Sydney Smith for some of his letters set
    him thinking on the subject, and one day when there was a big
    fire—[sentence unfinished].

    Mr. Dickens left the table just as we were in a tempest of
    laughter. Dr. Holmes ... was telling how inappreciative he had
    found some country audiences—one he remembered in especial
    when his landlady accompanied him to the lecture and her face,
    he observed, was the only one which relaxed its grimness!
    “Probably because she saw money enough in the house to cover
    your expenses,” rejoined Dickens. That was enough; the laughter
    was prodigious....

    _Wednesday, November 27._—What a pity that these days have
    flown while I have been unable to make any record of them.
    J. has been to walk each day with Dickens, and has come home
    full of wonderful things he has said.[25] His variety is so
    inexhaustible that one can only listen in wonder.

    _Thursday, 28._—Thanksgiving Day. J. took Dickens to see the
    Aldriches’ house. He was very much amused by what he saw there
    and has written out a full account to his daughter, Mrs.
    Collins....

    I have made no record of our supper party of Wednesday evening.
    We had Alfred to wait, and a pretty supper and more important
    by far (tho’ the first a consequent of the last) a pretty
    company. There were Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Helen Bell and
    Mrs. Silsbee, Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Hillard and Louisa and
    Mr. Beal. Mrs. Bell sang a little before supper (“Douglas”
    for one) very gracefully with real feeling. At nine o’clock
    oysters and fun began; finally Mr. Dickens told several ghost
    stories, but none of them more interesting than a little bit
    of clairvoyance or what-you-will, which he let drop concerning
    himself. He said a story was sent to him for “All the Year
    Round,” which he liked and accepted; just after the matter had
    been put in type, he received a letter from another person
    altogether from the one who had forwarded it in the first
    place, saying that _he_ and not the first man was the author,
    and in proof of his position he supplied a date which was
    wanting in the first paper. Curiously enough, Mr. Dickens,
    seeing the story hinged upon a date and the date being but a
    blank in the MS., had supplied one, as it were by chance, and,
    behold! _it was the same date which the new man had sent_.

    _Sunday._—Dined with Mr. Dickens at six o’clock. Mr. and Mrs.
    Bigelow, Mr. Dolby and ourselves were the only guests.

    After dinner we played two or three games which I will set down
    lest they should be forgotten.

Descriptions of “Buzz,” “Russian Scandal,” and another wholly innocent
amusement may be omitted.

    _Monday night, December 2, 1867._—The first great reading! How
    we listened till we seemed turned into one eyeball! How we all
    loved him! How we longed to tell him all kinds of confidences!
    How Jamie and he did hug in the anteroom afterward! What a
    teacher he seemed to us of humanity as he read out his own
    words which have enchanted us from childhood! And what a house
    it was! Longfellow, Dana, Norton (Mrs. Dana, Jr., and the three
    little Andrews went with us), and a world of lovely faces and
    ardent admirers.

    Tuesday came Miss Dodge and Mrs. Hawthorne, Julian, and Rose.
    The reading was quite as remarkable, tho’ more quiet than that
    of the night before. As usual, we went to speak to him at his
    request after it was over. Found him in the best of spirits,
    but very tired. “You can’t think,” he said, “what resolution it
    requires to dress again after it is over!”

    _Monday, December 9._—Left home at 8 A.M. for New York. The
    day was clear and cold, the journey somewhat long, but on the
    whole extremely agreeable. We only had each other to plague
    or amuse, as the case might be, and we had the new Christmas
    story of Dickens and Wilkie Collins (called “No Thoroughfare”)
    to read, and so by sufficient attention to the peculiarities
    or follies or troubles of our neighbors and some forgetfulness
    of our own, we came to the Westminster Hotel at night, in
    capital spirits but _rather_ frozen physically. We had scant
    time to dress and dine and to go to the Dickens reading. We
    accomplished it, nevertheless. Saw the rapturous enthusiasm,
    heard the “Carol” far better read than in Boston, because the
    applause was more ready and he felt stimulated by it. Afterward
    Mr. D. sent for us to come to his room. He was fatigued, of
    course, but we sat at table with him and after a while he began
    to feel warmer as vigor returned. He brought out his jewels for
    us to see—a pearl Count D’Orsay once wore, set with diamonds,
    etc.—laughed and talked about the way we dress and other bits
    of nonsense suggested by the time, all turned towards the fine
    light of Charles Dickens’s lovely soul and returning with a
    fresh gleam of beauty. We left early lest we should overfatigue
    him.

    _Wednesday, December 11._—At four Dickens came to dinner in
    our room with Eythinge and Anthony, his American designer and
    engraver. Afterward we went to the “Black Crook” together, and
    then home to the hotel, where we sat talking until one o’clock.
    There is nothing I should like so much to do as to set down
    every word he said in that time, but much must go down to
    oblivion....

    He talked of actors and acting—said if a man’s Hamlet was a
    sustained conception, it was not to be quarrelled with; the
    only question was, what a man of melancholy temperament would
    do under such circumstances. Talked of Charles Reade and the
    greatness of “Griffith Gaunt,” and the pity of it that he did
    not stand on his own bottom instead of getting in with Dion
    Boucicault, etc., etc. But after dinner he unbent, and while we
    were in the box at the theatre showed how true his sympathies
    were with the actors, was especially careful to make no sound
    which could hurt their feelings by apparent want of attention.
    The play was very dull, so we sat and talked. He told me that
    no ballet dancer could have pretty feet, and one dreadful thing
    was they could never wash them, as water renders the feet
    tender and they must become horny. He asked about Longfellow’s
    sorrow again and expressed the deepest sympathy, but said he
    was like a man purified by suffering.

    We had punch in our room after the play, when he laughed till
    the tears ran down his cheeks over Bob Sawyer’s party and
    the remembrance of the laughter he had seen depicted on the
    faces of people the night before. Jack Hopkins was such a
    favorite with J. that D. made up the face again and went over
    the necklace story until we roared aloud. At length he began
    to talk of Fechter and to describe the sensitive character of
    the man. He saw him first quite by accident in Paris, having
    strolled into a little theatre there one night. He was making
    love to a woman, and so elevated her as well as himself by the
    sentiment in which he enveloped her that they trod into purer
    ether and in another sphere quite lifted out of the present.
    “‘By heavens!’ I said, ‘a man who can do this can do anything!’
    I never saw two people more purely and instantly elevated by
    the power of love. The manner in which he presses the hem of
    the dress of Lucy in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’ is something
    surpassing speech and simply wonderful. The man has a thread
    of genius in him which is unmistakable, yet I should not call
    him a man of genius exactly, either.” Mr. Dickens described him
    as a man full of plans for plays, one who had lost much money
    as a manager, too. He was apt to come down to Gad’s Hill with
    his head full of plans about a play which he wished Mr. Dickens
    to write out and which Fechter would act in the writing-room,
    using Mr. Dickens’s small pillow for a baby in a manner to make
    the latter feel, if Fechter were but a writer, how marvellous
    his powers of representation would be. “I, who for so many
    years have been studying the best way of putting things, felt
    utterly amazed and distanced by this man.”

    Before the end of our talk Mr. Dickens became penetrated by
    the memory of his friend and brought him before us in all the
    warmth of ardent sympathy. Fechter is sure to come to this
    country: we are sure to have the happiness of knowing him (if
    we all live), and in that event I shall consider last night as
    the beginning of a new friendship.

[Illustration: _Reduced facsimile of Dickens’s directions, preserved
among the Fields papers, for the brewing of pleasant beverages_]

    _Sunday, December 22._—Another week has gone. We are again at
    home in our dear little nook by the Charles, and tonight the
    lover of Christmas comes to have dinner with us. We had a merry
    time last Sunday, and after we had separated the hotel must
    needs take fire—to be sure, I had been packing and was in my
    first sleep and knew nothing distinctly of it; but it was an
    escape all the same and Mr. Dickens rushed out to help, as he
    always seems to do....

    At night came Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Mr. Lowell and Mabel,
    Mr. and Mrs. Dorr, to dinner. It was really a beautiful
    Christmas festival, as we intended it should be for the love of
    this new apostle of Christmas. Mr. Dickens talked all the time,
    as he always will do, generously, when the moment comes that he
    sees it is expected, of Sir Sam. Baker, of Froude, of Fechter
    again, this time as if he did not know the man, but spoke
    critically as if he were a stranger, seeing Lowell’s face when
    his name was mentioned, which inclined itself sneeringly.

    We played games at table afterward, which turned out so queerly
    that we had storms of laughter.

    What a shame it is to write down anything respecting one’s
    contact with Charles Dickens and have it so slight as my
    accounts are; but the subtle turns of conversation are so
    difficult to render—the way in which he represents the woman
    who will not on any account be induced to look at him while
    he is reading, and at whom he looks steadily, endeavoring
    to compel the eyes to move—all these queer turns are too
    delicate to be set down. I thought I should have had a
    convulsion of laughter when Mrs. Dorr said Miss Laura Howe
    sat down in her (Mrs. D.’s) room and wrote out a charade in
    such an unparalleled and brilliant manner that nobody could
    have outshone her—not even the present company. “In the same
    given time, I trust?” said Dickens. “No, no,” said the lady,
    persistently.

    _December 31._—The year goes out clear and cold. The moon was
    marvellously bright last night, and every time I woke there she
    was with her attendant star looking freshly in upon us sleeping
    mortals in her eternal, unwearied way. We received a letter
    from Charles Dickens yesterday, saying he was coming to stay
    with us when he returns. What a pleasure this will be to us! We
    anticipate his coming with continual delight! To have him as
    much as we can, at morning, noon, and night.

This letter, long preserved in an American copy of “A Christmas Carol” on
the shelves of the Charles Street library, throws a light of its own on
the physical handicaps with which Dickens was struggling through all this
time.

                                        WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK

                              _Sunday, Twenty-Ninth December, 1867_

    MY DEAR FIELDS:—

    When I come to Boston for the two readings of the 6th and 7th I
    shall be alone, as Dolby must be selling elsewhere. If you and
    Mrs. Fields should have no other visitor, I shall be very glad
    indeed on this occasion to come to you. It is very likely that
    you may have some one with you. Of course you will tell me so
    if you have, and I will then reëmbellish the Parker House.

    Since I left Boston last, I have been so miserable that I
    have been obliged to call in a Dr.—Dr. Fordyce Barker, a very
    agreeable fellow. He was strongly inclined to stop the Readings
    altogether for some few days, but I pointed out to him how we
    stood committed, and how I must go on if it could be done.
    My great terror was yesterday’s Matinée, but it went off
    splendidly. (A very heavy cold indeed, an irritated condition
    of the uvula, and a restlessly low state of the nervous system,
    were your friend’s maladies. If I had not avoided visiting, I
    think I should have been disabled for a week or so.)

    I hear from London that the general question in society is,
    what will be blown up next by the Fenians.

    With love to Mrs. Fields, Believe me,

                    Ever affectionately yours,

                                              And hers,

                                                    CHARLES DICKENS

    _Saturday night, January 4._—All in readiness. Mr. Dickens
    arrived punctually with Mr. Osgood at half-past nine. Hot
    supper was soon in order and we put ourselves at it. The dear
    “chief” was in the best of good humor in spite of a cold which
    hangs about him and stuffs up head and throat, only leaving him
    for two hours at night when he reads. ’Tis something to be in
    first-rate mood with such a cold....

    The Readings have been so successful in New York he cannot fail
    to be pleased, and he does not fail to show it. Kate Field, New
    Year’s Eve, placed a basket of flowers on his table; he had
    seen her bright eyes and sensitive face, he said. I was glad
    for Kate, because he wrote her a little note, which pleased
    her, of course.

    _Wednesday, January 8_, 12 A.M.—I take up the pen again, having
    bade our guest a most unwilling farewell. Last night he read
    “Copperfield” and the Trial from “Pickwick.” It was an enormous
    house, packed in every extremity, receipts in gold about
    five hundred and ten pounds!! He was pleased, naturally, and
    read marvellously well even for him. He was somewhat excited
    and a good deal tired when he returned, and in spite of a
    light supper and stiff glass of punch, which usually contains
    soporific qualities, he could not sleep until near morning. He
    has been in the best of spirits during this visit—when he came
    downstairs last night to take a cup of coffee before leaving,
    he turned to J., saying, “The hour has almost come when I to
    sulphurous and tormenting gas must render up myself!” He has
    been afflicted with catarrh, which comes and goes and distracts
    him with a buzzing in his head. It usually leaves him for the
    two reading hours. This is convenient, but it probably returns
    with worse force.

    Sunday night dinner went off brilliantly. Longfellow, Appleton,
    Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter came to meet “the chief” and ourselves.
    Unfortunately there was one empty seat which Rowse, the artist,
    had promised to fill, but was ill at the last and could
    not—curiously enough we had asked Osgood, Miss Putnam, and Mr.
    Gay besides, all kept away by accident when they would have
    given their eyes to come. In the course of the day he had been
    to see (with O. W. H.) the ground of the Parkman murder which
    has lately been so clearly described by Sir Emerson Tennent in
    “All the Year Round”; in the evening the talk turned naturally
    enough that way, when, after much surmise with regard to the
    previous life of the man, Mr. Longfellow looked up and with an
    assured, clear tone, said: “Now I have a story to tell! A year
    or two before this event took place Dr. Webster invited a party
    of gentlemen to a dinner at this house, I believe to meet some
    foreigner who was interested in science. The doctor himself was
    a chemist, and after dinner he had a large bowl placed in the
    centre of the table with some chemical mixture in it which he
    set on fire after turning the lamp low. A lurid light came from
    the bowl which caused a livid look upon the faces of those who
    sat round the table, and while all were observing the ghastly
    effect, Dr. Webster rose and, pulling a bit of rope from
    somewhere about his person, put it around his neck, reached his
    head over the bowl to heighten the effect, hung it on one side,
    and lolled his tongue out to give the appearance of a man who
    had been hanged!!! The whole scene was terrible and ghastly in
    the extreme, and, remembered in the light of what followed, had
    a prescience frightful to contemplate.”[26]

    Appleton did not talk as much as usual, and we were rather
    glad; but Mrs. Thaxter’s story took strong hold on Dickens’s
    fancy, and he told me afterward that when he awaked in the
    night he thought of her. I have seldom sat at dinner with a
    gentleman more careful and fine in his choice and taste of
    food and drink than C. D. The idea of his ever passing the
    bounds of temperance is an absurdity not to be thought of for a
    moment. In this respect he is quite unlike Mr. Thackeray, who
    at times both ate and drank inordinately, and without doubt
    shortened his life by his carelessness in these particulars.
    John Forster, C. D.’s old friend, is quite ill with gout and
    some other ails, so C. D. writes him long letters full of
    his experiences. We breakfast at half-past nine punctually,
    he on a rasher of bacon and an egg and a cup of tea, always
    preferring this same thing. Afterward we talk or play with the
    sewing-machine or anything else new and odd to him. Then he
    sits down to write until one o’clock, when he likes a glass
    of wine and biscuit, and afterward goes to walk until nearly
    four, when we dine. After dinner, reading days, he will take
    a cup of strong coffee, a tiny glass of brandy, and a cigar,
    and likes to lie down for a short time to get his voice in
    order. His man then takes a portmanteau of clothes to the
    reading hall, where he dresses for the evening. Upon our return
    we always have supper and he brews a marvellous punch, which
    usually makes us all sleep like tops after the excitement. The
    perfect kindliness and sympathy which radiates from the man
    is, after all, the secret never to be told, but always to be
    studied and to thank God for. His rapid eyes, which nothing
    can escape, eyes which, when he first appears upon the stage,
    seem to interrogate the lamps and all things above and below
    (like exclamation points, Aldrich says), are unlike anything
    before in our experience. There are no living eyes like them,
    swift and kind, possessing none of the bliss of ignorance, but
    the different bliss of one who sees what the Lord has done and
    what, or something of what, he intends. Such charity! Poor man!
    He must have learned great need for that.... He is a man who
    has suffered, evidently. Georgina Hogarth he always speaks of
    in the most affectionate terms, such as “she has been a mother
    to my children,” “she keeps the list of the wine cellar, and
    every few days examines to see what we are now in want of.”

    I hardly know anything more amusing than when he begs not
    to be “set a-going” on one of his readings by a quotation
    or otherwise, and [it is] odd enough to hear him go on,
    having been so touched off. He has been a great student of
    Shakespeare, which appears often in his talk. His love of
    the theatre is something which never pales, he says, and the
    people who go upon the stage, however poor their pay or hard
    their lot, love it, he thinks, too well ever to adopt another
    vocation of their free will. One of the oddest sights a green
    room presents, he says, is when they are collecting children
    for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls together
    all the women in the ballet and begins giving out their names
    in order, while they press about him, eager for the chance
    of increasing their poor pay by the extra pittance their
    children will receive. “Mrs. Johnson, how many?” “Two, sir.”
    “What years?” “Seven and ten.” “Mrs. B.”—and so on until the
    requisite number is made up. He says, where one member of
    a family obtains regular employment at the theatre, others
    are sure to come in after a time; the mother will be in the
    wardrobe, children in pantomime, elder sisters in the ballet,
    etc.

    When we asked him to return to us, he said he must be loyal to
    “the show,” and, having three or four men with him, ought to be
    at an hotel where he could attend properly to the business. He
    never forgets the needs of those who are dependent upon him, is
    liberal to his servants (and to ours also), and liberal in his
    heart to all sorts and conditions of men.

    I have one deeply seated hope, that he will read for the Freed
    people before he leaves the country; and I cannot help thinking
    he will....

For more than a month from the time of this entry Dickens was carrying
the triumph of his readings into other cities than Boston. There he had
left a faithful champion in the person of Mrs. Fields, who wrote in her
diary on January 26, 1868: “It is odd how prejudiced people have allowed
themselves to become about Dickens. I seldom make a call where his name
is introduced that I do not feel the injustice done to him personally,
as if mankind resented the fact that he had excited more love than most
men.” As his return to Boston drew near, she wrote, February 18th: “We
are anticipating and doorkeeping for the arrival of our friend. Whatever
unpleasant is said of Charles Dickens I take almost as if said against
myself. It is so hard to help this when you love a friend.” On February
21st there is the entry: “We go to Providence tonight to hear ‘Dr.
Marigold.’ I have been full of plans for next week, which is to be a busy
season with us of company.”

    _Saturday, February 22._—We have heard “Marigold”! To be
    sure, the audience was sadly stupid and unresponsive, but we
    were penetrated by it.... What a night we had in Providence!
    Our beds were comfortable enough, for which we were deeply
    thankful; but none of the party slept, I believe, except Mr.
    Dolby, and his rest was inevitably cut short in the morning
    by business. I believe I lay awake from pure pleasure after
    such a treat. Hearing “Marigold” and having supper afterward
    with the dear great man. We played a game at cards which was
    most curious—indeed, something more—so much more that I have
    forgotten to be afraid of him.

In writing the chapter, “Glimpses of Emerson,” in “Authors and Friends,”
Mrs. Fields drew freely upon the entry that here follows in its fullness.

    _Tuesday morning, February 25._—Somewhat fatigued. The
    “Marigold” went off brilliantly. He never read better nor was
    more universally applauded. Mr. Emerson came down to go, and
    passed the night here; of course we sat talking until late,
    he being much surprised at the artistic perfection of the
    performance. It was queer enough to sit by his side, for when
    his stoicism did at length break down, he laughed as if he must
    crumble to pieces at such unusual bodily agitation, and with
    a face on as if it hurt him dreadfully—to look at him was too
    much for me, already full of laughter myself. Afterward we all
    went in to shake hands for a moment.

    When we came back home Mr. Emerson asked me a great many
    questions about C. D. and pondered much. Finally he said, “I am
    afraid he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful
    locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it
    nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong, evidently; and would
    persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness
    and amenities and superior to his talents, but I fear he is
    harnessed to them. He is too consummate an artist to have a
    thread of nature left. He daunts me! I have not the key.”

    When Mr. Fields came in he repeated, “Mrs. Fields would
    persuade me he is a man easy to communicate with, sympathetic
    and accessible to his friends; but her eyes do not see
    clearly in this matter, I am sure.” “Look for yourself, dear
    Mr. Emerson,” I answered, laughing, “and then report to me
    afterward.”

    While we were enjoying ourselves in this way, a great change
    has come to the country. The telegram arrived during the
    Reading bringing the news of the President’s impeachment,
    126 against 47. Since Johnson is to be thrust out, and since
    another revolution is upon us (Heaven help us that it be a
    peaceful one), we can only be thankful that the majority is
    so large. Mr. Dickens’s account of the ability of Johnson,
    of his apparent integrity and of his present temperance, as
    contrasted with the present (reported) failures of Grant in
    this respect, have made me shudder, for I presume Grant is
    inevitably the next man. Mrs. Agassiz was evidently pleased
    with the appearance of General Grant and his wife. She liked
    their repose of manner and ease; but I think this rather a
    shallow judgment because poise and ease of manner belong to
    the coarsest natures and to the finest; in the latter it is
    conquest; and this is why these qualities have so high a place
    in the esteem of man; but it is likewise the gift of society
    people who neither feel nor understand the varied natures with
    whom they come in contact.

    Longfellow is at work on a tragedy, of which no words are
    spoken at present. Today Mr. Dickens does not go out; he is
    writing letters home. Yesterday he and J. walked seven miles,
    which is about their average generally....

    _February 27._—Longfellow’s birthday. Last night Dickens
    went to a supper at Lowell’s and J. passed the evening with
    Longfellow. L.’s tragedy comes on apace. He looks to Fechter
    to help him. Dickens has doubtless done much to quicken him to
    write. He has two nearly finished in blank verse, both begun
    since this month came in. J. returned at half-past eleven,
    bringing an unread newspaper in his pocket which L. had lent
    him, telling him to read something to me about Dickens and
    return. Ah me! We could have cried as we read! It was the
    saddest of sad letters, written at the time the separation from
    his wife took place. The gentleman to whom he wrote it has died
    and the letter has stolen into print. I only hope the poor man
    may never see it.

    Tonight he reads “Carol” and “Boots” and sups here with
    Longfellow afterward.

An entry in Mrs. Fields’s diary about two years later indicates with some
clearness that she overestimated the sympathy between Longfellow and
Dickens. After a visit from Longfellow, she wrote, May 24, 1870:—

    When Mr. L. talks so much and so pleasantly, I am curiously
    reminded of Dickens’s saying to Forster, who lamented that he
    did not see Longfellow upon his return to London, “It was not
    a great loss this time, Forster; he had not a word to say for
    himself—he was the most embarrassing man in all England!” It
    is a difference of temperament which will never let those two
    men come together. They have no handle by which to take hold of
    each other. Longfellow told a gentleman at his table when J.
    was present that Dickens saved himself for his books, there was
    nothing to be learned in private—he never talked!!

To return to Dickens in Boston:—

    _Sunday, March 1._—What a week we have had! I feel utterly
    weary this morning, although I _did_ start up with exceeding
    bravery and walked four miles just after breakfast, in order
    to see that the flowers were right at church and to ask some
    people to dinner today who could not, however, come. The air
    was very keen and exciting and I did not know I was tired until
    I came back and collapsed. Our supper came off Thursday, but
    _without_ Dickens. His cold had increased upon him seriously
    and he was really ill after his long, difficult reading.
    But Longfellow was perfectly lovely, so easily pleased and
    so deeply pleased with my little efforts to make this day a
    festival time. Dickens and Whittier both sent affectionate and
    graceful notes when they found they really could not come. Our
    company stayed until two A.M., Emerson never more talkative and
    good. He is a noble purifier of the social atmosphere, always
    keeping the talk simple as possible but up to the highest pitch
    of thought and feeling.

    Friday, the Dana girls, Sallie and Charlotte, passed the night
    with us and went to the reading and shook hands with Mr.
    Dickens afterward. They were perfectly happy when they went
    away yesterday....

    [The walking match between Dolby and Osgood to which the
    following paragraph refers has already been mentioned. The
    elaborately humorous conditions of the contest, drawn up by
    Dickens, are printed in “Yesterdays with Authors.” “We have had
    such a funny paper from Dickens today,” Mrs. Fields had written
    in her diary, on February 5th, “that it can only describe
    itself—Articles drawn up arranging for a walk and dinner upon
    his return here, as if it were some fierce legal document.”]

    I had barely time yesterday, after the girls left, to dress
    and prepare some flowers and some lunch and make my way in
    a carriage, first to the Parker House at Mr. Dickens’s kind
    request, to see if all the table arrangements were perfect for
    the dinner. I found he had done everything he could think of
    to make the feast go off well and had really left nothing for
    me to suggest, so I turned about and drove over the mill-dam,
    following Messrs. Dickens, Dolby, Osgood, and Fields, who
    had left just an hour before on a walking match of six miles
    out and six in. This agreement was made and articles drawn
    up several weeks ago, signed and sealed in form by all the
    parties, to come off without regard to the weather. The wind
    was blowing strong from the north-west, very cold, and the snow
    blowing, too. They had turned and were coming back when I came
    up with them. Osgood was far ahead and, after saluting them all
    and giving a cheer for America, discovering too that they had
    refreshed on the way, I drove back to Mr. Osgood, keeping near
    him and administering brandy all the way in town. The walk was
    accomplished in precisely two hours forty-eight minutes. Of
    course Mr. Dickens stayed by his man, who was beaten out and
    out. They were all exhausted, for the snow made the walking
    extremely difficult, and they all jumped into carriages and
    drove home with great speed to bathe and sleep before dinner.

    At six o’clock we were assembled, eighteen of us, for dinner,
    looking our very best (I hope)—at least we all tried for that,
    I am sure—and sat punctually down to our elegant dinner. I
    have never seen a dinner more beautiful. Two English crowns
    of violets were at the opposite ends of the table and flowers
    everywhere arranged in perfect taste. I sat at Mr. Dickens’s
    right hand and next Mr. Lowell. Mrs. Norton sat the other side
    of our host, and he divided his attention loyally between us.
    He talked with me about Spiritualism as it is called, the
    humbug of which excites his deepest ire, although no one could
    believe more entirely than he in magnetism and the unfathomed
    ties between man and man. He told me many curious things about
    the traps which had been laid by well-meaning friends to bring
    him into “spiritual” circles. But he said, “If I go to a
    friend’s house for the purpose of exposing a fraud in which she
    believes, I am doing a very disagreeable thing and not what she
    invited me for. Forster and I were invited to Lord Dufferin’s
    to a little dinner with Home. I refused, but Forster went,
    saying beforehand to Lord Dufferin that Home would have no
    spirits about if he came. Lord Dufferin said, ‘Nonsense,’ and
    the dinner came off; but they were hardly seated at table when
    Home announced that there was an adverse influence present and
    the spirits would not appear. ‘Ah,’ said Forster, ‘my spirits
    in this case were clearer than yours, for they told me before I
    came that there would be no manifestations tonight.’”

    Speaking of dreams, he said he was convinced that no man
    (judging from his own experience, which could not be altogether
    singular, but must be a type of the experience of others),
    he believed no writer, neither Shakespeare nor Scott nor any
    other who had ever invented a character, had ever been known
    to dream about the creature of his imagination. It would be
    like a man’s dreaming of meeting himself, which was clearly an
    impossibility. Things exterior to oneself must always be the
    basis of our dreams. This talk about characters led him to say
    how mysterious and beautiful the action of the mind was around
    any given subject. “Suppose,” he said, “this wine-glass were a
    character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities, and
    soon fine filmy webs of thoughts almost impalpable coming from
    every direction, and yet we know not from where, spin and weave
    around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct
    with life....”

    Mr. Lowell asked him some question in a low voice about the
    country, when I heard him say presently that it was very much
    grown up, indeed he should not know oftentimes that he was not
    in England, things went on so much the same and with very few
    exceptions (hardly worth mentioning) he was let alone precisely
    as he would have been there.

    He loves to talk of Gad’s Hill and stopped joyfully from other
    talk to tell me how his daughter Mary arranged his table with
    flowers. He speaks continually of her great taste in combining
    flowers. “Sometimes she will have nothing but water-lilies,” he
    said, as if the memory were a fragrance.

    Some one has said, “We cannot love and be wise.” I will gladly
    give away the inconsistent wisdom, for Jamie and I are truly
    penetrated with grateful love to C. D.

    _Wednesday, March 3._—Mr. Dickens came over last night with
    Messrs. Osgood and Dolby, to pass the evening and have a little
    punch and supper and a merry game with us....

    They left punctually before eleven, having promised the driver
    they would not keep him waiting in the cold. Jamie has every
    day long walks with him. He has told him much regarding the
    forms and habits of his life. He is fond of “Gad’s Hill,” and
    his “dear daughters” and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, make his
    home circle. What a dear one it is to him can be seen whenever
    his thought turns that way; and if his letters do not come
    punctually, he is in low spirits. He is a great actor and
    artist, but above all a great and loving and well-beloved man.
    (This I cling to in memory of Mr. Emerson’s dictum.)

    I am deep in Carlyle’s history and every little thing I hear
    chimes in with that. After _the_ dinner (at the Parker) the
    other night, Mr. Dickens thought he would take a warm bath;
    but, the water being drawn, he began playing the clown in
    pantomime on the edge of the bath (with his clothes on) for the
    amusement of Dolby and Osgood; in a moment and before he knew
    where he was, he had tumbled in head over heels, clothes and
    all. A second and improved edition of “Les Noyades,” I thought.
    Surely this book is a marvel of thought and labor. Why, why
    have I left it unknown to myself until now? I fear, unlike
    Lowell, it is because I could not read eighteen uninterrupted
    hours without apoplexy or some other ’exy, which would destroy
    what power I have forever.

    _March 6._—Mr. Dickens dined here last night without company
    except Messrs. Dolby and Osgood and Howells. We had a very
    merry time. They had been to visit the Cambridge Printing
    Office in the afternoon and had been shown so many things that
    “the chief” said he began to think he should have a bitter
    hatred against any mortal who undertook to show him anything
    else in the world, and laughed immoderately at J.T.F.’s
    proposition to show him the new fruit house afterward. We all
    had a game of Nincomtwitch and separated rather early because
    we were going to a party; and as C. D. shook me by the hand to
    say good-bye, he said he hoped we would have a better time at
    this party than _he_ ever had at any party in all _his_ life.
    A part of the dinner-time was taken up by half guess and half
    calculation of how far Mr. Dickens’s manuscript would extend
    in a single line. Mr. Osgood said 40 miles. J. said 100,000
    (!!). I believe they are really going to find out. C. D. said
    _he_ felt as if it would go farther than 40 miles, and was
    inclined to be “down” on Osgood until he saw him doing figures
    in his head after a fearful fashion. All this amusing talk
    served to give one a strange, weird sensation of the value of
    words over time and space; these little marks of immeasurable
    value covering so slight a portion of the rough earth! Howells
    talked a little of Venice, thought the Ligurians lived better
    than the Venetians. C. D. said they ate but little meat when
    _he_ lived in Genoa; chiefly “pasta” with a good soup poured
    over it....

    He leaves Boston today, to return the first of April, so I will
    end this poor little surface record here, hoping always that
    the new sheet shall have something written down of a deeper,
    simpler, and more inseeing nature.

On the return of Dickens to Boston, Mrs. Fields dined with him at the
Parker House, March 31, 1868, and, commenting on his lack of “talent” for
sleeping, wrote in her diary:—

    I remember Carlyle says, “When Dulness puts his head upon
    his mattresses, Dulness sleeps,” referring to the apathetic
    people who went on their daily habits and avocations in Paris
    while men were guillotined by thousands in the next street.
    Mr. Dickens talked as usual, much and naturally—first of the
    various hotels of which he had late experience. The one in
    Portland was particularly bad, the dinner, poor as it was,
    being brought in small dishes, “as if Osgood and I should
    quarrel over it,” everything being very bad and disgusting
    which the little dishes contained.

    At last they came to the book, “Ecce Homo,” in which Dickens
    can see nothing of value, any more than we. He thinks
    Jesus foresaw and guarded as well as he could against the
    misinterpreting of his teaching, that the four Gospels are
    all derived from some anterior written Scriptures—made up,
    perhaps, with additions and interpolations from the “Talmud,”
    in which he expressed great interest and admiration. Among
    other things which prove how little the Gospels should be taken
    literally is the fact that _broad phylacteries_ were not in
    use until some years after Jesus lived, so that the passage in
    which this reference occurs, at least, must only be taken as
    conveying the spirit and temper, not the actual form of speech,
    of our Lord. Mr. Dickens spoke reverently and earnestly, and
    said much more if I could recall it perfectly.

    Then he came to “spiritualism” again, and asked if he had ever
    told us his interview with Colchester, the famous medium. He
    continued that, being at Knebworth one day, Lytton, having
    finished his dinner and retired to the comfort of his pipe,
    said: “Why don’t you see some of these famous men? What a
    pity Home has just gone.” (Here Dickens imitated to the
    life Lytton’s manner of speaking, so I could see the man.)
    “Well,” said D., “he went on to say so much about it that
    I inquired of him who was the next best man. He said there
    was one Colchester, if possible better than Home. So I took
    Colchester’s address, got Charley Collins, my son-in-law, to
    write to him asking an interview for five gentlemen and for
    any day he should designate, the hour being two o’clock. A day
    being fixed, I wrote to a young French conjuror, with whom
    I had no acquaintance but had observed his great cleverness
    at his business before the public, to ask him to accompany
    us. He acceded with alacrity. Therefore, with poor Chauncey
    Townshend, just dead, and one other person whom I do not at
    this moment recall, we waited upon Mr. Colchester. As we
    entered the room, I leading the way, the man, recognizing me
    immediately, turned deadly pale, especially when he saw me
    followed by the conjuror and Townshend, who, with his colored
    imperial and beard and tight-fitting wig, looked like a member
    of the detective police. He trembled visibly, became livid
    to the eyes, all of which was visible in spite of paint with
    which his face was covered to the eyes. He withdrew for a few
    minutes, during which we heard him in hot discussion with his
    accomplice, telling him how he was cornered and trying to
    imagine some way in which to get out of the trap, the other
    evidently urging him to go through with it now the best way he
    could. He returned, therefore, and placed himself with his back
    to the light, while it shone upon our faces. We sat awhile in
    silence until he began, insolently turning to me: ‘Take up the
    alphabet and think of somebody who is dead, pass your hands
    over the letters, and the spirit will indicate the name.’ I
    thought of Mary and took the alphabet, and when I came to M, he
    rapped; but I was sure that I had unconsciously signified by
    some movement and determined to be more skilful the next time.

    For the next letter, therefore, he went on to H, and then asked
    me if that was right. I told him I thought the spirits ought
    to know. He then began with some one else, but doing nothing
    he became hotter and hotter, the perspiration pouring from his
    face, until he got up, said the spirits were against him, and
    was about to withdraw. I then rose and told him that it was the
    most shameless imposition, that he had got us there with the
    intent to deceive and under false pretences, that he had done
    nothing and could do nothing. He offered to return our money—I
    said the fact of his taking the money at all was the point. At
    last the wretch said, turning to the Frenchman, ‘I did tell
    you one name, Valentine.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the young conjuror,
    with a sudden burst of English, ‘Yes, but I showed it to you!’
    indicating with a swift movement of the hand how he had given
    him a chance.” Then it was all up with Colchester, and more
    scathing words than those spoken by Dickens to him have been
    seldom spoken by mortal.

    It was the righteous anger of one trying to avenge and help the
    world. Mr. Dickens always seems to me like one who, working
    earnestly with his eyes fixed on the immutable, nevertheless
    finds to his own surprise that his words place him among the
    prophets. He does not arrogate a place to himself there; indeed
    he is singularly humble (as it seems to us) in the moral
    position he takes; but for all that is led by the Divine Hand
    to see what a power he is and in an unsought-for manner finds
    himself among the teachers of the earth. He says nowhere is
    a man placed in such an unfair position as at church. If one
    could only be allowed to get up and state his objections, it
    would be very well, but under the circumstances he declines
    being preached to.

A few days later Mrs. Fields heard Dickens read the “Christmas Carol” for
the last time in Boston.

    _Such_ a wonderful evening as it was!! We were on fire with
    enthusiasm and in spite of some people who went with us ...
    looking, as C. D. said, as if they were sorry they had come,
    they were really filled with enthusiasm, and enjoying as fully
    as their critical and crossed natures would allow. He himself
    was full of fun and put in all manner of queer things for our
    amusement; but what he put in, involuntarily, when he turned
    on a man who was standing staring fixedly at him with an opera
    glass, was almost more than we could bear. The stolidity of
    the man, the fixed glass, the despairing, annihilating look of
    Dickens were too much for our equanimity.

    _Thursday._—Anniversary of C. D.’s marriage day and of John
    Forster’s birthday. C. D. not at all well, coughing all the
    time and in low spirits. Mr. Dolby came in when J. was there in
    the morning to say there were two gentlemen from New Bedford
    (friends of Mr. Osgood’s) who wished to see him. Would he allow
    them to come in? “No, I’ll be damned if I will,” he said, like
    a spoiled child, starting up from his chair! J. was equally
    amused and astonished at the outburst, but sleeplessness,
    narcotics, and the rest of the crew of disturbers have done
    their worst. My only fear is he may be ill. However, they had a
    walk together towards noon and he revived, but coughed badly in
    the evening. I think, too, only $1300 in the house was bad for
    his spirits!

    _April 7._—Dickens ... told Jamie the other day in walking
    that he wrote “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Oliver Twist” at the
    same time for rival magazines from month to month. Once he was
    taken ill, with both magazines waiting for unwritten sheets. He
    immediately took steamer for Boulogne, took a room in an inn
    there, secure from interruption, and was able to return just in
    season for the monthly issues with his work completed. He sees
    now how the work of both would have been better done had he
    worked only upon one at a time.

    After the exertion of last evening he looked pale and
    exhausted. Longfellow and Norton joined with us in trying
    to dissuade him from future Readings after these two. He
    does not recover his vitality after the effort of reading,
    and his spirits are naturally somewhat depressed by the
    use of soporifics, which at length became a necessity....
    “Copperfield” was a tragedy last night—less vigor but great
    tragic power came out of it.

    _April 8._—In spite of a deluge of rain last night there was a
    large audience to hear Dickens, and Longfellow came as usual.
    He read with more vigor than the night before and seemed
    better.... The time approaches swiftly for our flight to New
    York. We dread to leave home and would only do it for _him_,
    besides, the pleasure must be much in the fact of trying to
    do something rather than in really doing anything, for I fear
    he will be too ill and utterly fatigued to care much about
    anything but rest.

    _Friday, April 10._—Left home at eight o’clock in the morning,
    found our dearly beloved friend C. D. already awaiting us, with
    two roses in his coat and looking as fresh as possible. It was
    my first ride in America in a compartment car. Mr. Dolby made
    the fourth in our little party and we had a table and a game of
    “Nincom” and “Casino” and talked and laughed and whiled away
    the time pleasantly until we arrived here at the Westminster
    Hotel in time for dinner at six. I was impressed all day long
    with the occasional languor which came over C. D. and always
    with the exquisite delicacy and quickness of his perception,
    something as fine as the finest woman possesses, which combined
    itself wondrously with the action of the massive brain and the
    rapid movement of those strong, strong hands. I felt how deeply
    we had learned to love him and how hard it would be for us to
    part.

    At dinner he gave us a marvellous description of his life as
    a reporter. It seems he invented (in a measure) a system of
    stenography for himself; this is to say he altered Gurney’s
    system to suit his own needs. He was a very young man, not yet
    20, when at seven guineas a week he was engaged as reporter
    on the “Morning Chronicle,” then a very large and powerful
    paper. At this period the present Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley,
    was beginning his brilliant career, and O’Connell, Shiel, and
    others were at the height of their powers. Wherever these men
    spoke a corps of reporters was detailed to follow them and
    with the utmost expedition forward verbatim reports to the
    “Chronicle.” Often and often he has gone by post-chaise to
    Edinburgh, heard a speech or a part of it (having instructions,
    whatever happened, to leave the place again at a certain hour,
    the next reporter taking up his work where he must leave it),
    and has driven all the way back to London, a bag of sovereigns
    on one side of his body and a bag of slips of paper on the
    other, writing, writing desperately all the way by the light of
    a small lamp. At each station a man on horseback would stand
    ready to seize the sheets already prepared and ride with them
    to London. Often and often this work would make him deadly
    sick and he would have to plunge his head out of the window
    to relieve himself; still the writing went steadily forward
    on very little slips of paper which he held before him, just
    resting his body on the edge of the seat and his paper on the
    front of the window underneath the lamp. As the station was
    reached, a sudden plunge into the pocket of sovereigns would
    pay the postboys, another behind him would render up the
    completed pages, and a third into the pocket on the other side
    would give him the fresh paper to carry forward the inexorable,
    unremitting work.

    At this period there was a large sheet started in which all
    the speeches of Parliament were reported verbatim in order
    to preserve them for future reference—a monstrous plan which
    fell through after a time. For this paper it was especially
    desired to have a speech of Mr. Stanley accurately reported
    upon the condition of Ireland, containing suggestions for
    the amelioration of the people’s suffering. It was a very
    long and eloquent speech and took many hours in the delivery.
    There were eight reporters upon the work, each to work
    three-quarters of an hour and then to retire to write out his
    portion and be succeeded by the next. It happened that the
    roll of reporters was exhausted before the speech came to an
    end and C. D. was called in to report the last portions, which
    were very eloquent. This was on Friday, and on Saturday the
    whole was given to the press and the young reporter ran down to
    the country for a Sunday’s rest. Sunday morning had scarcely
    dawned “when my poor father, who was a man of immense energy,
    surprised me by making his appearance. The speech had come into
    Mr. Stanley’s hands, who was most anxious to have it correctly
    given in order to have it largely circulated in Ireland, and he
    found it all bosh, hardly a word right, except at the beginning
    and the end. Sending immediately to the office, he had obtained
    my sheets, at the top of which, according to custom, the name
    of the reporter was written, and, finding the name of Dickens,
    had immediately sent in search of me. My father, thinking this
    would be the making of me, came immediately, and I followed him
    back to London. I remember perfectly the look of the room and
    of the two gentlemen in it as I entered—Mr. Stanley and his
    father. They were extremely courteous, but I could see their
    evident surprise at the appearance of so young a man. For a
    moment as we talked I had taken a seat extended to me in the
    middle of the room. Mr. Stanley told me he wished to go over
    the whole speech, and if I was ready he would begin. Where
    would I like to sit? I told him I was very well where I was
    and we would begin immediately. He tried to induce me to sit
    elsewhere or more comfortably, but at that time in the House
    of Commons there was nothing but one’s knees to write upon and
    I had formed the habit of it. Without further pause then he
    began, and went on hour after hour to the end, often becoming
    very much excited, bringing down his hand with violence upon
    the desk near which he stood and rising at the end into great
    eloquence.

    “In these later years we never meet without that scene
    returning vividly to my mind, as I have no doubt it does to his
    also, but I, of course, have never referred to it, leaving him
    to do so if he shall ever think fit.

    “Shiel was a small man with a queer high voice and spoke very
    fast. O’Connell had a fine brogue which he cultivated, and
    a magnificent eye. He had written a speech about this time
    upon the wrongs of Ireland, and, though he repeated it many,
    many times during three months when I followed him about the
    country, I never heard him give it twice the same, nor ever
    without being himself deeply moved.”[27]

    Mr. Dickens’s imitation of Bulwer Lytton is so vivid that
    I feel as if it were taking a glimpse at the man himself.
    His deaf manner of speaking he represents exactly. He says
    he is very brilliant and quick in conversation, and knows
    everything!! He is a conscientious and unremitting student
    and worker. “I have been surprised to see how well his books
    wear. Lately I have reread ‘Pelham’ and I assure you I found
    it admirable. His speech at the dinner given to me just before
    leaving was well written, full of good things, but delivered
    execrably. He lacks a kind of confidence in his own powers
    which is necessary in a good speaker.”

    Speaking of O’Connell, Mr. Dickens said there had been nobody
    since who could compare with him but John Bright, who is at
    present the finest speaker in England. Cobden was fond of
    reasoning, and hardly what would be called a brilliant speaker;
    but his noble truthfulness and devotion to the cause to
    which he had pledged himself made him one of the grandest of
    England’s great men. I asked about Mrs. Cobden. He told me she
    had been made very comfortable and in a beautiful manner. After
    her husband’s death, his affairs having become involved by some
    bad investment he had made, a committee of six gentlemen came
    together to consider what should be done to commemorate his
    great and unparalleled devotion to his country. The result was,
    instead of having a public subscription for Mrs. Cobden with
    the many unavoidable and disagreeable features of such a step,
    each of these gentlemen subscribed about £12,000, thus making
    £70,000, a sufficient sum to make her most comfortable for
    life....

    I have forgotten to say how in those long rides from Edinburgh
    the mud dashed up and into the opened windows of the
    post-chaise, nor how they would be obliged to fling it off from
    their faces and even from the papers on which they wrote. As
    Dickens told us, he flung the imaginary evil from him as he did
    the real in the days long gone, and we could see him with the
    old disgust returned. He said, by the way, that never since
    those old days when he left the House of Commons as a Reporter
    had he entered it again. His hatred of the falseness of talk,
    of bombastic eloquence, he had heard there made it impossible
    for him ever to go in again to hear anyone.

    _Sunday, April 12._—Last night we went to the circus together,
    C. D., J., and I. It is a pretty building. I was astonished
    at the knowledge C. D. showed of everything before him. He
    knew how the horses were stenciled, how tight the wire bridles
    were, etc. The monkey was, however, the chief attraction. He
    was rather drunk or tired last night and did not show to good
    advantage, but he knew how to do all the things quite as well
    as the men. When the young rope-dancer slipped (he was but an
    apprentice at the business, without wages, C. D. thought), he
    tried over and over again to accomplish a certain somersault
    until he achieved it. “That’s the law of the circus,” said C.
    D.; “they are never allowed to give up, and it’s a capital rule
    for everything in life. Doubtless this idea has been handed
    down from the Greeks or Romans and these people know nothing
    about where it came from. But it’s well for all of us.” ...

    At six o’clock Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby came in to dinner. He
    seemed much revived both in health and spirits, in spite of the
    weather....

    Dickens talked of Frédérick Lemaître; he is upwards of sixty
    years old now; but he has always lived a wretched life, a low,
    poor fellow; yet he will surprise the actors continually by the
    new points he will make. He will come in at rehearsal, go about
    the stage in an abject wretched manner, with clothes torn and
    soiled as he has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts,
    and without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently he
    says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle burning
    on his box, “Give me your candle”; then he will blow it out
    and with the snuff make a cross upon his book. “What are you
    going to do, Frédérick?” the actors say. “I don’t know yet;
    you’ll see by and by,” he says, and day after day perhaps will
    pass, until one night when he will suddenly flash upon them
    some wonderful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to
    hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least hint
    will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he will ask for
    a chair. “What will you do with it, Frédérick?” He does not
    reply, but night after night the chair is placed there until he
    makes his point. He often comes hungry to the theatre, and the
    manager must give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go
    on. Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells Dickens
    that there can be nothing more wonderful than his acting in the
    old scene of the miserable father who kills his own son at the
    inn. The son, coming in rich and handsome, and seeing this old
    sot about to be driven from the porch by the servant, tells
    the man to give him meat and wine. While he eats and drinks,
    the wretch sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and
    resolves to kill him. Fechter’s description, with his own
    knowledge of Lemaître, had so inspired Dickens that he was able
    to reproduce him again for us.

    _Wednesday, April 15._—[On returning from a reading in
    “Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be worse for reading
    or speaking”]: He soon came up after a little soup, when he
    called for brandy and lemons and made _such_ a burnt brandy
    punch as has been seldom tasted this side of the “pond.” As
    the punch blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an
    old-fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given
    between the plays at the theatre. One song led to another until
    we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for anything more comic
    than his renderings of the chorus cannot be imagined. Surely
    there is no living actor who could excel him in these things
    if he chose to exert his ability. His rendering of “Chrush ke
    lan ne chouskin!!” or a lingo which sounded like that (the
    refrain of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We
    laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself too
    hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old song full of
    rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty and circumlocution,
    to the word “annuity,” which it appeared has been sought
    by an old woman with great _assiduity_ and granted with
    immense _incongruity_. The negro minstrels have in great part
    supplanted these queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads,
    but they are sure to come up again from time to time. We did
    not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said)
    as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not forget, Dolby and
    he, to pay a proper tribute to “Maryland, My Maryland,” and
    “Dixie” as very stirring ballads.

    [After another reading, from which Dickens came home extremely
    tired]: We ran in at once to talk with him and he soon cheered
    up. When I first pushed open the door he was a perfect picture
    of prostration, his head thrown back without support on the
    couch, the blood suffusing his throat and temples again where
    he had been very white a few minutes before. This is a physical
    peculiarity with Dickens which I have never seen before in a
    man, though women are very subject to that thing. Excitement
    and exercise of reading will make the blood rush into his hands
    until they become at times almost black, and his face and head
    (especially since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red
    to white and back to red again without his being conscious of
    it.

    _Friday, April 17._—Weather excessively warm, sky often
    overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again and for the last
    time “Copperfield” and “Bob Sawyer.” He was much exhausted
    and said he watched a man who was carried out in a fainting
    condition to see how they managed it, with the lively interest
    of one who was about to go through the same scene himself.
    The heat from the gas around him was intolerable. After the
    reading we went into his room to have a little soup, “broiled
    bones,” and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were good in spite of
    fatigue, the thought of home and the memories of England coming
    back vividly. We, finally, from talk of English scenery, found
    ourselves in Stratford. He says there is an inn at Rochester,
    very old, which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This
    conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking
    that way and discovered Charles’s Wain setting over the chimney
    just as Shakespeare has described. “When you come to Gad’s
    Hill, please God, I will show you Charles’s Wain setting over
    the old roof.”

    We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he hardly closed
    his eyes all night. Whether he was haunted by visions of home,
    or what the cause was, we cannot discover, but whatever it
    may be, his strength fails under such unnatural and continual
    excitement.

    _Saturday, April 18._—Mr. Dickens has a badly sprained foot.
    We like our rooms at his hotel—47 is the number. Last night
    was “Marigold” and “Gamp” for the last time. He threw in a few
    touches for our amusement and a great deal of vigor into the
    whole. Afterward we took supper together, when he told us some
    remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a scene described
    to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of London of a man about to
    be hanged. His last hour had approached as the doctor entered
    the cell of the criminal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a
    wretch was for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate
    child. The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and
    forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman in
    attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and religious in
    his frame of mind, was administering the sacrament. The wine
    stood in a cup at one side until the sacred words were said,
    when at the proper moment the clergyman gave it to the man,
    who was still rocking backward and forward, muttering, “What
    will my poor mother think of this?” Finding the cup in his
    hands, he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect
    himself, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse manner,
    he said, “Gen’lemen, I drink your health,” and drained the
    cup in a drunken way. “I think,” said C. D., “it is thirty
    years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell me this, but I shall
    never forget the horror that scene inspired in my mind.” The
    talk had taken this turn from the fact of a much-dreaded Press
    dinner which is to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed
    the idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often
    thought how restricted one’s conversation must become with a
    man who was to be hanged in half an hour. “You could not say,
    if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what
    would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine
    my remarks to the times of Julius Cæsar and King Alfred!!” He
    then related a story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence
    could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was seated
    before a fire for a few moments, just before his execution,
    when a servant entered and smothered what fire there was with
    a huge hodful of coal. “_In half an hour that will be a good
    fire_,” he was heard to murmur.

    Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a dream.

    _Sunday, April 19._—Last night the great New York Press dinner
    came off. It was a close squeeze with Mr. Dickens to get there
    at all. He had been taken lame the night before, his foot
    becoming badly swollen and painful. In spite of a skilful
    physician he grew worse and worse every hour, and when the
    time for the dinner arrived he was unable to bear anything
    upon his foot. So long as he was above ground, however, it
    was a necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after
    the time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he
    made his way to Delmonico’s. Poor man! Nothing could be more
    unfortunate, but he bore this difficult part off in a stately
    and composed manner as if it were a sign of the garter he
    were doffing for the first time instead of a badge of ill
    health. The worst of it is that the papers will telegraph news
    of his illness to England. This seems to disturb him more
    than anything else. Ah! What a mystery these ties of love
    are—such pain, such ineffable happiness—the only happiness.
    After his return he repeated to me from memory every word of
    his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of such a
    thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it over in
    his mind and “balances the sentences,” when he is all right.
    He produced an immense effect on the Press of New York,
    tremendous applause responding to every sentence. Curtis’s
    speech was very beautiful. “I think him the very best speaker
    I ever heard,” said C. D. “I am sure he would produce a great
    effect in England from the sympathetic quality he possesses.”
    I have seldom seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr.
    Dickens’s attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward,
    too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He made a
    rum punch in his room, where we sat until one o’clock. After
    repeating his speech, he gave us an imitation of old Rogers as
    he would repeat a quatrain:—

    “The French have sense in what they do
      Which we are quite without,
    For what in Paris they call _goût_
      In England we call _gout_.”

    Mr. Dolby sat at dinner near a poor bohemian of great keenness
    of mind, Henry Clapp, by name, who said some things worthy
    of Rivarol or any other wittiest Frenchman we might choose
    to select. Speaking of Horace Greeley (the chairman at the
    dinner), he said: “He was a self-made man and worshipped his
    creator.” Of Dr. O——, a vain and popular clergyman, that “he
    was continually looking for a vacancy in the Trinity.” Of
    Mr. Dickens, that “nothing gave him so high an idea of Mr.
    Dickens’s genius as the fact that he created Uriah Heep without
    seeing a certain Mr. Young (who sat near them), and Wilkins
    Micawber without being acquainted with himself (Henry Clapp).”
    Of Henry T—— that “he aimed at nothing and always hit the mark
    precisely.”

    This speech of Mr. Dickens will make a fine effect, a
    reactionary effect, in the country. The enthusiasm for him knew
    no bounds. Charles Norton spoke for New England. I had a visit
    from him this morning as well as from Mr. Osgood, Dolby, etc.
    C. D. lunched at the Jockey Club with Dr. Barker and Donald
    Mitchell and returned to dine with us. He talked of actors,
    artists, and the clergy—church and religion—but was evidently
    suffering more or less all the time with his foot, yet kept up
    a good heart until nine o’clock, when he retired to the privacy
    of his own room. He feels bitterly the wrong under which
    English dissenters have labored for years in being obliged not
    only to support their own church interests in which they _do_
    believe, but also the abuses of the English Church against
    which their whole lives are a continual protest. He spoke of
    the beauty of the landscape through which we had both been
    walking and driving under a grey sky, with the eager spring
    looking out among leafless branches and dancing in the red and
    yellow sap. He said it had always been a fancy of his to write
    a story, keeping the whole thing in the same landscape, but
    picturing its constantly varying effects upon men and things
    and chiefly, of course, upon the minds of men. He asked me if I
    had ever read Crabbe’s “Lover’s Ride.” We became indignant over
    a tax of five per cent which had just been laid upon the entire
    proceeds of his Readings, telegraphed to Washington, and found
    that it was unjust and had been taken off.

    _Monday, April 20._—Attended a meeting of a new “institution”
    just on foot, first called “Sorosis” and afterwards “Woman’s
    League” for the benefit and mutual support of women. It was the
    first official meeting, but it proved so unofficial that I was
    entertained, and amused as well, and was able on my return to
    make Mr. Dickens laugh until he declared if anything could make
    him feel better for the evening that account of the Woman’s
    League would.

    _Tuesday._—I find it very difficult today to write at all. Mr.
    Dickens is on his bed and has been unable to rise, in spite of
    efforts all day long.... Mr. Norton has been here and we have
    been obliged to go out, but our hearts have been in that other
    room all the time where our dear friend lies suffering.... Oh!
    these last times—what heartbreak there is in the words. I lay
    awake since early this morning (though we did not leave him
    until half-past twelve) feeling as if when I arose we must
    say good-bye. How relieved I felt to brush the tears away and
    know there was one more day, but even that gain was lessened
    when I found he could not rise and even this must be a day of
    separation too. When Jamie told him last night he felt like
    erecting a statue to him because of his heroism in doing his
    duty so well, he laughed and said, “No, don’t; take down one of
    the old ones instead!”

The diary goes on to express the genuine sorrow of Mrs. Fields and her
husband at parting from a friend who had so completely absorbed their
affection, but in terms which the diarist herself would have been the
first to regard as more suitable for manuscript than for print. The pages
that contain them throw more light upon Mrs. Fields—a warm and tender
light it is—than upon Dickens. There is, however, one paragraph, written
after the Fieldses had returned to Boston from New York, which tells
something both of Dickens and of Queen Victoria, in whose personality
the public interest appears to be perpetual; and with this passage the
quotations from the diary shall end.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE PLAY-BILL OF “THE FROZEN DEEP,” WITH DICKENS AS
ACTOR-MANAGER]

    _Friday, April 24._—After the Press dinner in New York Mr.
    Dickens repeated all his speech to me, as I believe I have
    said above, never dropping a word. “I feel,” he said, “as if I
    were listening to the sound of my own voice as I recall it. A
    very curious sensation.” Jamie asked him if Curtis was quite
    right in the facts of his speech. He said, “Not altogether,
    as, for instance, in that matter about the Queen and our
    little play, ‘Frozen Deep.’ We had played it many times with
    considerable success, when the Queen heard of it and Colonel
    Phipps (?) called upon me and said he wished the Queen could
    see the play. Was there no hall which would be appropriate for
    the occasion? What did I think of Buckingham Palace? I replied
    that could not be, for my daughters played in the piece and I
    had never asked myself to be presented at court nor had I ever
    taken the proper steps to introduce them there, and of course
    they could not go as amateur performers where they had never
    been as visitors. This seemed to trouble him a good deal, so I
    said I would find some hall which would be appropriate for the
    purpose and would appoint an evening, which I did immediately,
    taking the Gallery of Illustration and having it fitted up for
    the purpose. I then drew up a list of the company, chiefly of
    artists, literary and scientific men, and interesting ladies,
    which I caused to be submitted to the Queen, begging her to
    reject or add as she thought proper, setting aside forty seats
    for the royal party. The whole thing went off finely until
    after the first play was over, when the Queen sent round a
    request that I would come and see her. This was considered an
    act of immense condescension and kindness on her part, and the
    little party behind the scenes were delighted. Unfortunately,
    I had just prepared myself for the farce which was to follow
    and was already standing in motley dress with a red nose. I
    knew I could not appear in that plight, so I begged leave to
    be excused on that ground. However, that was forgiven and
    all passed off well, although the large expense of the whole
    thing of course fell on me, which amounted to one hundred and
    fifty or two hundred pounds. Several years after, when Prince
    Albert died, the Queen sent to me for a copy of the play. I
    told Colonel Phipps the play had never been printed and was the
    property of a gentleman, Mr. Wilkie Collins. Then would I have
    it copied? So I had a very beautiful copy made and bound in the
    most perfect manner, and presented to her Majesty. Whereupon
    the Princess of Prussia, seeing this, asked for another for
    herself. I said I would again ask the permission of Mr. Collins
    and again I had a beautiful copy made with great labor. Then
    the Queen sent to ask the price of the books. I sent word that
    my friend, Mr. Wilkie Collins, was a gentleman who would, I was
    sure, hear to nothing of the kind and begged her acceptance of
    the volumes.” “How has the Queen shown her gratitude for such
    favors?” I said. “We have never heard anything more from her
    since that time.” Good Mr. Dolby said quietly, “You know in
    England we call her ‘Her Ungracious Majesty.’” Certainly one
    would not have believed it possible for even a queen’s nature
    to have become so hardened as this to the kindly acts of any
    human being, not to speak of the efforts of one of her most
    noble subjects and perhaps the greatest genius of our time.

If any reader wishes to follow the further course of the friendship
between Dickens and the Fieldses, he has only to turn to “Yesterdays
With Authors,” in which many letters written by Dickens after April,
1868, are quoted, and many remembrances of their intercourse when the
Fieldses visited England in 1869, the year before Dickens’s death, are
presented. Here it will suffice to quote one out of several passages in
Mrs. Fields’s diary relating to Dickens, and to bring to light a single
characteristic little note from Dickens, not hitherto printed.

On Wednesday, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Fields wrote of Dickens:—

    He drove us through the Parks in the fashionable afternoon
    hour and afterward to dine with him at the St. James, where
    Fechter and Dolby were the only outsiders. Mrs. Collins was
    like one of Stothard’s pictures. I felt this more even after
    refreshing my memory of Stothard’s coloring at the Kensington
    Museum yesterday. C. D. told me that the book of all others
    which he read perpetually and of which he never tired, the book
    which always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the
    fresh imagination he brings to it, a book for inexhaustiveness
    to be placed before every other book, is Carlyle’s “French
    Revolution.” When he was writing “A Tale of Two Cities,” he
    asked Carlyle if he might see some book to which he referred in
    his history. Whereat Carlyle sent down to him all his books,
    and Dickens read them faithfully; but the more he read the
    more he was astounded to find how the facts but passed through
    the alembic of Carlyle’s brain and had come out and fitted
    themselves each as a part of the one great whole, making a
    compact result, indestructible and unrivalled, and he always
    found himself turning away from the books of reference and
    rereading this marvellous new growth from those dry bones with
    renewed wonder.

The note from Dickens read:—

                                                   GAD’S HILL PLACE
                                          HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT

                                    _Wednesday Sixth October, 1869_

    MY DEAR FIELDS:—

    Delighted to enjoy the prospect of seeing you and yours on
    Saturday. Wish you had been at Birmingham. Wish you were not
    going home. Wish you had had nothing to do with the Byron
    matter.[28] Wish Mrs. Stowe was in the pillory. Wish Fechter
    had gone over when he ought. Wish he may not go under when he
    oughtn’t.

    With love,

                    Ever affectionately yours,

                                                    CHARLES DICKENS

[Illustration: _Facsimile note from Dickens to Fields_]

Among the papers preserved by Mrs. Fields there are, besides the
manuscript letters of Dickens himself, many letters written after his
death by his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth. From bits of these,
and especially from a letter written by Dickens’s daughter, while his
death was still a poignant grief, the affection in which he was held in
his own household is touchingly imaged forth.

“All the Old World,” wrote Miss Dickens, “all the New World loved him.
He never had anything to do with a living soul without attaching them to
him. If strangers could so love him, you can tell a little what he must
have been to his own flesh and blood. It is a glorious inheritance to
have such blood flowing in one’s veins. I’m so glad I have never changed
my name.”

From one of Miss Hogarth’s letters a single passage may be taken, since
it adds something of first-hand knowledge to the accessible facts about
one piece of Dickens’s writing which—in so far as the editor of these
pages is aware—has never seen the light of print. This letter was written
in the September after Dickens’s death:

“I must now tell you about the beautiful little New Testament which he
wrote for his children. I am sorry to say it is _never to be published_.
It happens that he expressed that decided determination only last autumn
to me, so we have no alternative. He wrote it years ago when his elder
children were quite little. It is about sixteen short chapters, chiefly
adapted from St. Luke’s Gospel, most beautiful, most touching, most
simple, as such a narrative should be. He never would have it printed
and I used to read it to the little boys in MS. before they were old
enough to read _writing_ themselves. When Charley’s children became old
enough to have this kind of teaching, I promised Bessy (his wife) that
I would make her a copy of this History, and I determined to do it as
a Christmas Gift for her last year, but before I began my copy I asked
Charles if he did not think it would be well for him to have it printed,
at all events for _private_ circulation, if he would not publish it
(though I think it is a pity he would never do that!). He said he would
look over the MS. and take a week or two to consider. At the end of the
time he gave it back to me and said he had decided _never to publish
it—or even have it privately printed_. He said I might make a copy for
Bessy, or for any one of his children, _but for no one else_, and that
he also begged that we would never even lend the MS., or a copy of it,
to any one to take out of the house; so there is no doubt about his
_strong feeling_ on the subject, and we must obey it. I made my copy for
Bessy and gave it to her last Christmas. After his death the original
MS. became _mine_. As it was never published, of course it did not count
as one of Mr. Forster’s MSS., and therefore it was one of his private
papers, which were left to me. So I gave it at once to Mamie, who was, I
thought, the most natural and proper possessor of it, as being his eldest
daughter. You must come to England and read it, dear Friend! as we must
not send it to you! We should be glad to see you and to show it to you
and Mr. Fields in our own house.”

Miss Hogarth must have known full well that, if this manuscript Gospel
according to Charles Dickens was to be shown to anybody outside his
immediate circle, he himself would have chosen the Charles Street friends
from what he called—to them—his “native Boston.”




VI

STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS


Had anyone crossed the Charles Street threshold of the Fieldses with the
expectation of encountering within none but the New England Augustans, he
would soon have found himself happily disillusioned, even at a time when
there was no Dickens in Boston. As it was in reality, so must it be in
these pages, if they are to fulfill their purpose of restoring a vanished
scene, the variety of which must indeed be counted among its most
distinctive characteristics. The pages that follow will accordingly serve
to illustrate the familiar fact that the pudding of a “family party” is
often rendered the more acceptable by the introduction of a few plums not
plucked from the domestic tree.

Mrs. Fields once noted in her diary the circumstance that, when her
husband came to Boston from Portsmouth at the age of fourteen, and began
to work as a “boy” in the bookshop of Carter & Hendee, the second of
these employers had a box at the theatre and, to keep his young employees
happy, used constantly to ask one or more of them to see a play in his
company. Thus enabled in his youth to see such actors as the elder Booth,
Fanny Kemble and her father, and many others of the best players to
be seen in America at the time, Fields acquired a love of the theatre
and of stage folk which stood him in good stead throughout his life.
A certain exuberance in his own nature must have sought a response
in social contacts other than those of the straiter sect of his local
contemporaries. In men and women of the stage, in authors from beyond
the compass of the local horizon, writers with whom he formed relations
in his double capacity of editor and publisher, in artists and public
men outside the immediate “literary” circle of Boston, Fields took an
unceasing delight, shared by his wife, and still communicable through her
journals.

[Illustration: JAMES T. FIELDS AT FIFTEEN

_From a drawing by a French painter_]

From their pages, then, I propose to assemble here a group of passages
relating first to stage folk, and then to others, and, since these
records so largely explain themselves, to burden them as lightly as
possible with explanations. Slender as certain of the entries are, each
contributes something to a recovery of the time and of the persons that
graced it.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, says his biographer, used to declare in his later
years, “Though I am not genuine Boston, I am Boston-plated.” His intimate
relation with Boston began in 1865, through the publication of a “Blue
and Gold” edition of his poems by the firm of which Fields was a member,
and the beginning of his editorship of “Every Saturday,” an illustrated
journal issued under the same auspices. His range of acquaintance
before that time was such that when the “plating” process began,—it was
really more like a transmutation of metals,—he sometimes served as a
sympathetic link between his new Boston and his old New York. It was
in New York, only a few weeks after the assassination of Lincoln, that
Aldrich appears in the diary, fresh from seeing his friend, Edwin Booth.

    _May 3, 1865._—An hour before we went to tea, Aldrich came to
    see us. He said he and Launt Thompson were staying with Edwin
    Booth alternate nights during this season of sorrow; that it
    was “all right between himself and the lady he was about to
    marry.” Then he described to us the first night while Booth
    was plunged in agony. He said the gas was left burning low
    and the bed stood in the corner, just where he lay sleepless,
    looking at a fearfully good crayon portrait of Wilkes Booth
    which glared at him over the gas. Launt Thompson started with
    the mother from New York for Philadelphia, where she was going
    to join her daughter the day that John Wilkes was shot, and an
    extra containing the news was brought them by a newsboy as they
    stepped on the ferry-boat. The old woman would have the paper.
    “He was her ‘Johnny’ after all,” said T. B. A.

    _Friday._—Have seen a lady who knows the person to whom Booth
    is engaged—said that her letter telling him she was true passed
    his letter of relinquishment on its way to Philadelphia. She
    thinks these two women have saved Booth. “I have been loved too
    well,” he said once....

    Aldrich said we should not have been more astonished to hear he
    himself had done the terrible deed than he was to know Wilkes
    Booth had done it. “He was so gentle, gentler than I, and very
    handsome—a slight, beautiful figure,” and (as he described the
    face, it was the Greek Antinous kind of beauty there) I could
    not but reflect how the deed may deform the man. Nobody said he
    was beautiful after he was dead, but they laid a cloth upon the
    face and said how dreadful. It has been a strange experience to
    come among the people who know the family. I hoped I should be
    spared this, but the soul of good in things evil God means we
    should all see.

    _Sunday, May 7._—A radiant day. Went to hear Dr. Bellows—a
    grand discourse. After service sat in his drawing-room and
    talked and then walked together.... He too has been to see
    Edwin Booth. The poor fellow said to him, “Ah! if it had been a
    fellow like myself who had done this dreadful deed, the world
    would not have wondered—but Johnny!!”

    _Wednesday, January 3, 1866._—Dined with the Grahams and went
    to see Booth upon the occasion of his reappearance. The unmoved
    sadness of the young man and the unceasing plaudits of the
    house, half filled with his friends, were impressive and made
    it an occasion not to be forgotten.

[Illustration: _Facsimile note from Booth to Mrs. Fields_]

    _September 23, 1866._—Edwin Booth and the Aldriches came to
    tea; also Tom Beal and Professor Sterry Hunt of Montreal, the
    latter late. Booth came in the twilight while a magnificent red
    and purple and gold sunset was staining the bay. The schooners
    anchored just off shore had already lighted their lanterns
    and swung them in the rigging, and the full moon cast a silver
    sheen over the scene. I hear he passes every Sunday morning
    while here at the grave of his wife in Mt. Auburn. He seems
    deeply saddened. He was very pleasant, however, and ready to
    talk, and gave amusing imitations—in particular of his black
    boy, Jan, who possesses, he says, the one accomplishment of
    forgetting everything he ought to remember. One day a man
    with a deep tragic voice, “Forrestian,” he said, came to him
    with letters of introduction asking Mr. Booth to assist him
    as he was about to go to England. Mr. B. told him he knew no
    one in England and could do nothing for him, he was sorry. If
    he ever found it possible to do him a service he would with
    pleasure. With that Mr. B. turned,—they were in the vestibule
    of the theatre—and entered the box-office to speak to someone
    there; immediately he heard the deep voice addressing Jan
    with “You are with Mr. Booth.” “Yes,” responded Jan with real
    negro accent, “I’m wid Mr. Booth.” “In what capacity—are
    you studying?” “Yaas,” returned Jan, unblushingly, “I’se
    studyin’.” “What are you upon now?” “Oh, Richelieu, Hamlet,
    an’ a few of dese yer.” “Ah, I should be pleased to enter into
    correspondence with you while I am abroad. Would you have any
    objections?” “Oh, no, no objection, no objection at all.”
    “Thank you, sir; good-day, sir.” With that they parted and
    Jan came with his mouth stretched wide with laughter. “Massa,
    what is ‘correspond’? I told him I’d correspond, what’d he
    mean, correspond?” Then Jan, convulsed with his joke, roared
    and roared again. They are surely a merry race, but provoking
    enough sometimes. They are capable of real attachments,
    however; this man has been several times dismissed but will
    not go. Booth told everything very dramatically, but I was
    especially struck with his description of a man travelling with
    two shaggy terrier pups in the cars. He had them in a basket
    and hung them up over his head and then composed himself to
    sleep. Waking up half an hour later, he observed a man on the
    opposite side of the car, his eyes starting from his head and
    the very picture of dismay, as if a demon were looking at him.
    The owner of the pups, following the direction of the man’s
    eyes, looked up and saw the two pups had their heads out of
    the basket. He quietly made a sign for them to go back and
    they disappeared. The man’s gaze did not apparently slacken,
    however, but in a moment became still more horrified when the
    pups again looked out. “What’s the matter?” said the owner.
    “What are those?” said the man, pointing with trembling finger;
    “pray excuse me, but I have been on a spree and I thought they
    were demons.” He introduced the subject of the stage and talked
    of points in “Hamlet,” which he had made for the first time,
    but occasionally through accident had omitted. The next day he
    will be sure to be asked by letter or newspaper why he omits
    certain points which would be so excellent to make, _the writer
    thinks_. He has had a life of strange vicissitudes, as almost
    all actors. He referred last night to his frequent travels
    during childhood over the Alleghanies with his father, of long
    nights spent in this kind of travel; and once in Nevada he
    walked fifty miles chiefly through snow. “Why?” said Lilian.
    “Because I was hard up, Lily,” he continued; “I walked it too
    in stage boots which were too tight—it was misery.” ...

    They had all gone by half-past ten, but we lay long awake
    thinking over poor Booth and his strange sad fortune. Hamlet,
    indeed!—although Forceythe Willson says, “I have been to see
    Mr. Hamlet play Booth.” Yes, perhaps when he is playing it for
    the 400th time with a bad cold, it may seem so; indeed I found
    it dullish myself, or his part, I mean, the other night; but he
    _did_ play it once—the night of his reappearance in New York.

[Illustration: BOOTH AS HAMLET]

    _May 18, 1869._—Last Sunday evening Booth, Aldrich and his wife
    and sister, Dr. Holmes and Amelia and Launt Thompson, Leslie
    and ourselves took tea here together. In the evening came Mr.
    and Mrs. Emerson. We did have a rare and delightful symposium.
    Booth talked little as usual, and the next night went round
    to Aldrich’s and took himself off as he behaves in company!!
    Nevertheless he was glad to see Holmes, though every time Dr.
    H. addressed him across the table he seemed to receive an
    electric shock.

A chance meeting between William Warren and Fields in a lane at the
seaside Manchester is recorded, with their talk, in the diary as early
as 1865. Two entries in 1872 have to do with Jefferson, first alone and
then with Warren. The friendship with Jefferson, begun so long ago, was
continued until his death.

    _Tuesday, March 18, 1872._—Left Boston for a short trip to New
    York. Jefferson the actor, famous throughout the world for
    his impersonation of “Rip Van Winkle,” was on the train and
    finding us out (or J. him), came to our compartment car to
    pass the day. He talked without cessation and without effort.
    He described his sudden disease of the eyes quite bravely
    and simply, from the use of too much whiskey. He said the
    newspapers had said it was the gas, and many other reasons had
    been assigned first and last; but he firmly believed there
    was no other reason than too much whiskey. He had taken the
    habit—when he was somewhat below his ordinary physical and
    mental condition in the evening and wished to rise to the
    proper point and “carry the audience”—of taking a small glass
    of whiskey. This glass was after a time made two, and even
    three or four. Finally he was stricken down by a trouble of
    the eyes which threatened the entire extinction of sight. His
    physician at once suggested that unnatural use of stimulants
    was the cause, of which he himself is now entirely convinced
    and no longer touches anything stronger than claret. He has
    played to a larger variety of audiences probably than almost
    any other great actor. The immense applause he received in
    England, where he played 170 consecutive nights at the Adelphi
    in London, always as “Rip,” has only served to make him
    more modest, it would seem, more desirous to uphold himself
    artistically. He gave us a hint of his taste for fishing and
    described his trout-raising establishment in Jersey; very
    curious and wonderful it was. Nature preserves only one in a
    hundred of the eggs of trout to come to maturity. Mr. Jefferson
    in his pond is able to raise 85 out of 100. There seems no
    delight to him so great as that of sitting beside a stream on a
    sunny day, line in hand.

    Talking of the everlasting repetition of “Rip,” he says he
    should be thankful to rest himself with another play, but this
    has been a growth and it would be a daring thing for him to
    attempt anything new with a public who would always compare
    him with himself in this play which is the result of years
    of his best thought and strength. I think myself, if he were
    quite well he would be almost sure to attempt something else.
    He told us several stories very dramatically. He is an odd,
    carelessly dressed little mortal, a cross between Charles Lamb
    and Grimaldi, but we have seldom passed a more delightful day
    of talk than with him. The hours absolutely fled away.

    _Wednesday, May 22, 1872._—Mr. Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, and
    Jefferson and Warren, the two first comedians of our time,
    dined here. The hour was three o’clock, to accommodate the
    two professional gentlemen. The hours until three, with the
    exception of two visits (Miss Sara Clarke and Miss Wainwright
    in spite of saying “engaged”), were occupied in making
    preparations for the little feast. I mean the hours after
    breakfast until time to dress. (Of hours before breakfast I
    have now-a-days nothing to say. I am not strong enough to do
    anything early, but country life this summer is to change all
    that.) Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Warren arrived first. Finding
    much to interest them in the pictures of our lower room, they
    lingered there a few moments before coming to the library,
    when we talked of Marney’s pictures (Mr. J. owns some of his
    water-colors) and looked about at others. Soon Longfellow came
    with Jamie. He said he felt like one on a journey. He left home
    early in the morning, had been sight-seeing in Boston all day,
    was to dine and go to the theatre with us afterward.

    He asked Mr. Warren why a Mr. Inglis was selling his fine
    library and pictures—a question nobody had been able to solve.
    Mr. Inglis is, however, in some way connected with the stage,
    and Warren told us it was because he had been arrested with
    Mr. Harvey Parker and others and condemned to be thrown in the
    House of Correction, for selling liquor. His money protected
    him from the rigor of the law, but the disgrace remained. His
    children felt it much and he was going to Europe at least for
    a season. We could not help feeling the injustice of this when
    we remembered the myriad liquor shops for the poor all over the
    town, with which no one interferes.

    Mr. Jefferson was deeply interested in our pictures of the
    players by Zanaçois. Dr. Holmes came in, talked a little at my
    suggestion about Anne Whitney’s bust of Keats, which he appears
    to know nothing about artistically (I observed the same lack
    of knowledge in Emerson), but he criticised the hair. He said
    he supposed nothing was known about Keats’s hair, so it might
    as well be one way as another. I told him on the contrary I
    owned some of it; whereat I got it out, and he went off in a
    little episode about an essay which he had sometimes thought
    of writing about hair. He has a machine by which the size of a
    hair can be measured and recorded. This he would like to use,
    and make a note of comparison between the hairs of “G. W.” (as
    he laughingly called Washington), Jefferson, Milton, and other
    celebrities of the earth. He thought it might be very curious
    to discover the difference in quality.

    We were soon seated at the table (only six all told) where the
    conversation never flagged. Longfellow properly began it by
    saying he thought Mr. Charles Mathews was entirely unjust to
    Mr. Forrest as King Lear. He considered Mr. Forrest’s rendering
    of the part, and he sat through the whole, as fine and close to
    nature. He could not understand Mr. Mathews’s underrating it
    as he did. Of course the other two gentlemen could say nothing
    more than the difficulty Mr. Mathews from his nature would
    have in estimating at its proper worth anything Mr. Forrest
    might do, their idea of Art being so dissimilar. Here arose the
    question if one actor was a good judge of another. Jefferson
    said he sometimes thought actors very bad judges—indeed he
    preferred to be judged by an audience inspired by feeling
    rather than by one intellectually critical.

    Jefferson has a clear blue eye, very fine and bright and sweet.
    Longfellow thinks his mouth a very weak one, and certainly his
    face is not impressive. Warren appears a man of finer intellect
    and more wit. He had many witty things to say and his little
    tales were always dramatically given. Dr. Holmes could not seem
    to recover from the idea that Jefferson had made a fortune out
    of one play and that he _never_ played but one. “I hear, Mr.
    Jefferson,” he said, when he first came in, “that you have been
    playing the same play ever since you came here.” (He has been
    playing the same for a dozen years, I believe, nearly—and has
    been here _three weeks_!) Jefferson could hardly help laughing
    as he assured him that for the space of three weeks he had
    given the same every night. Dr. Holmes had a way at the table
    of talking of “you actors,” “you gentlemen of the stage,” until
    I saw Longfellow was quite disturbed at the unsympathetic
    unmannerliness of it, in appearance, and tried to talk more
    than ever in a different strain.

    After I left the table, which I did because I thought they
    might like to smoke, Jamie sent for Parsons’s poems and read
    them some of the finest. Of course the talk was wittier and
    quicker as the time came to separate, but I cannot report
    upon it. The impression the two actors left upon me, however,
    was rather that of men who enjoyed coming up to the surface
    to breathe a natural air seldom vouchsafed to them than of
    men sparring with their wits—they are affectionate, gentle,
    subdued gentlemen and a noble contrast to the self-opinionated
    ignorance which we often meet in society. Dr. Holmes was,
    however, the wit of the occasion, as he always is, and
    everybody richly enjoyed his sallies. They stayed until the
    last moment—indeed I do not see how they got to their two
    theatres in time to dress. It must have been, as they say of
    eggs, a “hard scrabble.” _We_ went afterward—we four—to see a
    new actor, Raymond, play “Colleen Bawn” at the Globe—pretty
    play, though very touching and melodramatic, by Boucicault.
    I must confess to dislike such plays where your feelings are
    wrought to the highest pitch for nothing.

[Illustration: JEFFERSON IN THE BETROTHAL SCENE OF “RIP VAN WINKLE”]

The name of Fechter is familiar to the middle-aged through the memory
of fathers, to the young through that of grandfathers. Readers of these
pages will recall that Dickens, soon after reaching America in 1867,
spoke of him in terms which caused Mrs. Fields to look forward with
confidence to a new friendship. His coming to America was specifically
heralded by an article, “On Mr. Fechter’s Acting,” contributed by Dickens
to the “Atlantic” for August, 1869. When Fechter was in Boston, warmly
received as Dickens’s friend, he often appears in the journals of Mrs.
Fields, in conjunction with others.

    _Friday, February 25, 1870._—Mr. Fechter came to lunch with Mr.
    Longfellow, Mr. Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. Dorr. He talked freely
    about his Hamlet, so different from all other impersonations.
    His audience here he finds wonderfully good, better than any
    other; fine points which have never been applauded before
    bring out a round of applause. On the whole he appears to
    enjoy new hearers—does not understand the constant comparison
    between himself and Booth. They are already great friends.
    Booth was in the house the last night of his performance there;
    afterward he did not come to speak to him, and Fechter felt it;
    but a letter came yesterday saying he was so observed that he
    slipped away as soon as possible, and could not come on Sunday
    because visitors prevented him. Better late than never; it was
    pleasant to Fechter to hear from Booth—with one exception:
    he enclosed a notice from some newspaper, cutting up himself
    horribly and praising Fechter. “Ah! that won’t do; I shall send
    it back to him and tell him why. We are totally unlike in our
    Hamlets, and neither should be praised at the other’s expense.”

    Mr. Fechter described minutely Mr. Dickens’s attack of
    paralysis last year, and, the year before, his prompt
    appearance in the box of the theatre at the last performance of
    “No Thoroughfare,” which he said he should do; but as Fechter
    had not heard of his return from America, it was a great shock.
    “If it had been ‘Hamlet,’ or any difficult play, I could not
    have gone on! He should not have done such a thing.” He told us
    a strange touching story of M’lle Mars, during her last years.
    She came upon the stage one night to give one of the youthful
    parts in which she had once been so famous. When she appeared,
    some heartless wretch threw her a wreath of immortelles, as if
    for her grave. She was so shocked that the drops stood on her
    brow, the rouge fell from her cheeks, and she stood motionless
    before the audience, a picture of age and misery. She could not
    continue her part.

[Illustration: A NAST CARTOON OF DICKENS AND FECHTER]

    He spoke with intense enthusiasm of Frédérick Lemaître, much
    as I have heard Mr. Dickens do. “The second-class actors were
    always arguing with him (only second-class people argue) and
    saying, ‘Why do you wish me to stand here, Frédérick?’ ‘I don’t
    know,’ he would say, ‘only do it.’”

    Mr. Appleton was deeply interested in the fact that Shakespeare
    proved himself such a believer in ghosts, as “Hamlet” shows,
    and would like to push the subject farther, Mr. Fechter
    evidently finding much to say on this topic also. Mr.
    Longfellow was interested to ask about the Dumas, _père et
    fils_. Mr. Fechter has known them well and has many queer
    stories to tell of their relation to each other. _Le fils_
    calls _mon père_, “my youngest child born many years ago,” and
    the father usually introduces the son as M. Dumas, _mon père_.
    The motto on Fechter’s note paper is very curious and a type
    of the man—“_Faiblesse vaut vice_.” Mr. Longfellow spoke again
    of Mr. Dickens’s restlessness, of his terrible sadness. “Yes,
    yes,” said Fechter, “all his fame goes for nothing.” ...

    Jamie is so weak that he went to sleep almost as soon as they
    were gone. God knows what it all means; I do not.

    It is odd that Fechter’s eyes should be brown after all. They
    look so light in the play. He is a round little man, naturally
    friendly, spontaneous. We do not know what his life has been,
    and we will not ask; that does not rest with us; but he is a
    very fine artist. His imitation of Mr. Dickens, as he sat on
    the lawn watching him at work, or as he joined him coming from
    his desk at lunchtime with tears on his cheek and a smile on
    his mouth, was very close to the life and delightful.

    Mr. Longfellow did not talk much, not as much as the last time
    he was here, but he was lovely and kind.[29] He brought a
    coin of the French Republic which had been touched by French
    wit, _Liberté_ x (point), _Egalité_ x (point), _Fraternité_ x
    (point). And more to the same effect, without altering the coin.

    Appleton has just bought a new Troyon, which he says he shall
    lend me for a week.

At the end of the following August there is a record of a talk with
Fechter on the boat from Boston to Nahant, where he and the Fieldses
dined with Longfellow. Dickens had died in the June just past, and
Fechter had much to say of him and his family life. “Day by day,” wrote
Mrs. Fields, “I am grateful to think of him at rest.” The little party at
Nahant is described.

    We found dear Longfellow looking through a glass to espy our
    approach, and all his dear little girls and Ernest and his wife
    and Appleton, who whisked me away from the dinner-table to his
    studio where he had some really good sketches. The conversation
    at table was half French, Longfellow and Appleton both finding
    it agreeable to recall the foreign scenes by the foreign
    tongue. But except a queer imitation of John Forster, by
    Fechter, I do not remember any quotable talk. F. said Forster
    always looked at everybody as if regarding their qualifications
    for a lunatic asylum (he is commissioner of lunacy), saying to
    himself, “Well, I’ll let you off _today_, but tomorrow you must
    certainly go and be shut up.” He describes Forster’s present
    state of health as something very precarious and wretched.

    _November 14, 1870._—Monday night went to see Fechter in
    “Claude Melnotte.” Longfellow and his daughter Edith sat in
    the box adjoining ours. It was the stage box where they were
    sheltered from observation; ours was the box next it, to be
    sure, but accessible to all eyes. During the curtain Longfellow
    came into our box; Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Andrew were with me,
    both plain ladies dressed in mourning. His advent caused a
    little rustle of curiosity to ripple over the house. Longfellow
    was never looking finer than he is today. His white hair and
    deep blue eyes and kind face make his presence a benediction
    wherever he goes—of such men one cannot help feeling what
    Dr. Putnam so well expressed last Sunday in speaking of the
    presence of our Lord at a feast. “He rewarded the hospitality
    of his friends by his presence.”

    Longfellow brought an illegible scrawl in his hand which
    Parsons had written from London to Lunt. He told me also of
    having lately received a photograph from Virginia of a young
    woman, and written under it were the words, “What fault can be
    found with this?” He said he thought of replying, “The fault of
    too great youth.” It certainly could not be agreeable to him
    to sit in the eye of the audience as he did; but he was very
    talkative and pleasant, expressed his disappointment at not
    having us at his Nilsson dinner, but his family were too many
    for him; said how he liked her for her frankness; told me of
    the old impressario Garrett, the Jew, coming without invitation
    and certainly without being wanted (as it sent “his children
    upstairs to dine”); and then, as the play was about to begin,
    he withdrew. He was much amused and disgusted by the platitudes
    of the play. Returned to his own box, Jamie said he laughed
    immoderately over the absurdities of it as it continued. He
    tooted as the instruments tooted and spouted as the second-rate
    actors spouted, all of which was highly amusing to Edith, who
    was weeping over the unhappy lovers, utterly absorbed in the
    play. Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Andrew, too, were full of tears, and
    I found it no use attempting to say anything more during the
    evening.

    Fechter was indeed marvellous. He raised the play into
    something human, something exquisite whenever he was upon the
    stage. His terrible earnestness sweeps the audience utterly
    away. But he is not the player for the million.

    _Sunday evening, December 11, 1870._—Went to Mr. Bartol’s and
    met Mr. Collyer. He was pleased to hear what Fechter said of
    him Saturday night (by the by we met Fechter at Mrs. Dorr’s
    dinner on Saturday), that he singled him out, found him a
    capital audience, and played to him. It was a fine house on
    Saturday and Fechter played “Don Cæsar.” It was never played
    better. Curtis was there, and fine company. Fechter was
    graceful and saucy too in talk at dinner—just right for the
    occasion.

    _Monday, December 19._—I have just returned from seeing Fechter
    in “Ruy Blas.” The public has just received the news that he
    is to leave the Globe Theatre and Boston in four weeks. The
    result was an enormous house, and the most fashionable house I
    have seen this season. He played with great fire and ease, but
    he has a wretched cold and his pronunciation was so thick and
    French (as it is apt to be when he is excited) that I could
    often hardly catch a word. But his audience was determined to
    be pleased and they caught and applauded all his good points.
    I saw but one dissenting spirit, that was a spoiled queen of
    fashion just returned from Europe, who saw nobody and nothing
    but herself....

    _Saturday, January 7, 1871_.—Dined at Mr. Longfellow’s with
    Mr. Fechter. The poet welcomed us with a cordiality peculiar
    to himself and his children, with a simple glad-to-see written
    over their faces which is worth a world of talk. We had a
    merry table-talk although Fechter was laboring under the
    unnatural excitement of his position in having lost his season
    at the Globe, broken with the proprietor Cheney who was his
    friend, and finding himself without an engagement for the time.
    Also, so mischance held the day, Miss Leclercq, his only fit
    support, injured herself in the afternoon and their superb
    audience went away disappointed. However, the dinner went off
    beautifully, as it always must with Longfellow at the helm.
    There was some talk of poetry and the drama and J. amused
    them too with anecdotes. Then we adjourned to the room of
    Charles the East-India man, where we saw many curiosities and
    had a very pleasant hour before leaving. Passing through the
    dressing-room of our dear Longfellow, I was struck with seeing
    how like the house of a German student it was—a Goethean aspect
    of simplicity and largeness everywhere—books too are put on all
    the walls. It is surely a most attractive house.

    _January 13, 1871._—Today Jamie lunched with Appleton. We
    passed the evening at Mrs. Quincy’s. It is the great benefit to
    Fechter, but in consequence of the tickets being sold unjustly
    at auction, we shall not go. Unhappily there are rumors about
    town that Fechter is to be insulted in the theatre. I wish I
    could get word to him. I shall wait until J. gets home and then
    ask him to drive up to put F. on his guard.

    _January 23._—It proved an unnecessary alarm! The evening went
    off well enough but unenthusiastically, and at last Fechter
    gave all the money to the poor!

When Mrs. Fields first met that representative of the once alluring art
of “elocution,” James E. Murdoch, he was already a veteran who had twice,
at an interval of nearly twenty years, retired from the stage. Two notes
about him recall his robust personality.

    _January 13, 1867._—I never met James E. Murdoch, the actor,
    to hear any talk until Sunday night. The knowledge of his
    patriotism, of his son who died in the war, and of the weary
    miles the father had travelled to comfort the soldiers by
    reading to them, and afterwards the large sums of money he
    had given to the country’s cause gathered up laboriously
    night by night by public “readings”—all this I had known. Of
    course no introduction could have been better, yet I liked
    the man even more than I had fancied was possible. He was so
    modest and talked in such a free generous way, purely for the
    entertainment of others, I fancied, because we saw he had a
    severe cold on his chest. The way too in which he recited
    “Sheridan’s Ride” and anything else for the children which he
    thought they would like was quite beautiful to see in a man
    of his years, who must have had quite enough of that kind of
    thing to do. His hobby is elocution. He is about to establish
    a school or college or something of that description, whatever
    its honorable title will be, at the West[30] (the money having
    been granted in part by legislature, the other half to be
    made by his own public efforts) for the purpose of educating
    speakers and teaching men and women how to read. He has known
    Grant and Sheridan well, lived in camp with them at the same
    mess-table, and has the highest opinion of the patriotism and
    probity of both of them. There is no mistake about one thing.
    Mr. Murdoch made himself a power during the war, and now that
    is over does not cease to work, nor does he allow himself to
    presume upon the laurels he has won nor to brag of his own work.

    _Saturday morning, November 13, 1875._—After a western
    journey, left for home. Sunday met James E. Murdoch in the
    cars at Springfield. It was about six o’clock A.M., but he was
    bound for Newton. He came in therefore with us, and talked
    delightfully until we parted. He is an old man but as full of
    nerve, vigor, and ripened intellect as anyone whom I have seen.
    His talk of the stage, of his disgust for Macready’s book, his
    disgust at the manner in which Forrest treated his wife, his
    account of his own experiences, when he was glad to play for
    $35 a week, were deeply interesting. The better side of Forrest
    he understood and appreciated thoroughly.

[Illustration: JAMES E. MURDOCH AND WILLIAM WARREN]

The hospitalities of Charles Street were by no means confined to the men
of the theatrical and kindred professions. In later years Miss Ellen
Terry, Lady Gregory, and those other ladies associated with the stage who
so surely found their way to Mrs. Fields’s door when they visited Boston,
were but carrying on the traditions of the earlier decades. As the
visitors came and went, the diary in the sixties and seventies recorded
their exits and their entrances. A few passages are typical of many.

A portion of the notes relating to Charlotte Cushman will be the better
understood for a preliminary remark upon a Boston event of huge local
moment in the autumn of 1863. This was the dedication of the Great Organ,
that wonder of the age, in Music Hall. The first public performance
on the organ, at the ceremonies on the evening of November 2, were
preceded by Charlotte Cushman’s reading of a dedicatory ode, contributed,
according to the “Advertiser” of the next day, by an “anonymous lady of
this city.” The secret of Mrs. Fields’s authorship of this poem, which
the “Advertiser” found somewhat too long in spite of its merits, must
have been shared by some of her friends, though it was temporarily kept
from the public.

    _Sunday, September 20, 1863._—In the evening Charlotte Cushman
    and her niece, Dr. Dewey and Miss McGregor, Miss Mears and Mr.
    W. R. Emerson, passed a few hours with us. Charlotte, always
    of athletic but prejudiced mind, talked busily of people and
    events. She is a Seward-ite in politics and called Dr. Howe
    and Judge Conway “ass-sy” because they said Charles Sumner
    had prevented thus far a war with England. She has made money
    during the war, but believes apparently not at all in the
    patriotism of the people. She is to give one performance for
    “the Sanitary” in each of the four northern seacoast cities,
    also for fun and fame. She can’t endure to give up the stage.
    She is a woman of effects. She lives for effect, and yet doing
    always good things and possessed of most admirable qualities.
    She has warm friends. Mrs. Carlyle is extremely fond of her,
    gives her presents and says flattering things to her. “Cleverer
    than her husband,” says Miss Cushman. I put this quietly into
    my German pipe and puff peacefully.

    _Saturday Evening, September 26, 1863._—Charlotte Cushman
    played Lady Macbeth for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission
    to a large audience. Her reading of the letter when she first
    appears is one of her finest points. She moves her feet
    execrably and succeeds in developing all the devilish nature
    in the part, but discovers no beauty. Yet it is delightful
    to hear the wondrous poetry of the play intelligently and
    clearly rendered. It would be impossible to say this of the
    man who played Macbeth, who talked of “encarnardine,” and
    “heat-oppre_st_ brain,” for “oppressèd,” besides innumerable
    other faults and failures, which he mouthed too much for me
    to discover. Charlotte in the sleeping scene was fine—that
    deep-drawn breath of sleep is thrilling....

    There has been an ode written to be spoken at the organ
    opening. No one is to know who wrote it. Miss Cushman will
    speak it if they are speedy enough in their finishing. This
    is of interest to many. I trust they will be ready for Miss
    Cushman.

[Illustration: FROM A CRAYON PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN]

    _Monday, November 2, 1863._—Miss Dodge and Una Hawthorne
    came to dine. At 7 o’clock we all started for the Music Hall.
    Miss Cushman read my ode in a most perfect manner. She was
    very nervous about it and skipped something, but what she did
    read was perfect. Her dress and manner too were dignified and
    beautiful. It was a night never to be forgotten. Afterward we
    had a little supper. Dr. and Mrs. Holmes, Mr. Ogden of New
    York, Dr. Upham[31] and Judge Putnam and Mrs. Howe were added
    to our other guests. Charlotte Cushman left early the next day
    and Gail Hamilton and I sat down and took a long delicious
    draught of talk.

    _April 27, 1871._—Charlotte Cushman came to see us yesterday.
    Her full brain was brimming over, and her rich sympathetic
    voice is ringing now in my ears. She does not overestimate
    herself, that woman, which is part of her greatness, for the
    word _does_ apply to her in a certain way because she grows
    nearer to it every day. J. de Maistre refused the epithet
    “grand” to Napoleon because he lacked more stature—but this
    hand-to-hand fight with death over herself (loving life clearly
    as she does) has strengthened her hold upon her affection for
    life, insensibly. She grows daily wiser and nobler.

    _November 13, 1871._—We all went together to Charlotte
    Cushman’s début in Queen Katherine at the Globe Theatre. A
    house filled with her friends and a noble piece of acting. She
    spoke to every woman’s heart there; by this I felt the high art
    and the noble sympathetic nature far above art which was in
    the woman and radiates from her. Much of the play beside was
    poor, but Mrs. Hunt was very amusing and we laughed and laughed
    at her sallies until I was quite ashamed. J. went behind the
    scenes and talked with C. C. She was in first-rate condition.

For other contacts with the stage, three brief passages may speak:—

    _November 8, 1866._—Went to see Ristori’s “Pia dei Tolomei” in
    the evening. It was pure and beautiful. Being R.’s benefit,
    she made a short speech, and exquisitely simple as it was, her
    fine voice and the slight difficulty of enunciating the English
    words made her speech one of the most touching features of the
    time.

    _Saturday._—Morning at home. Went to see Ristori for the last
    time, as Elizabeth, perhaps her finest characterization.
    Longfellow and Whittier had both promised to go with us, but
    the courage of both failed at the last moment. The house was
    crowded. Mr. Grau asked Mr. Fields to go and speak with the
    great actress, but he excused himself.

    Whittier had never been inside of a theatre and could not quite
    feel like breaking the bonds now—besides he said it would cost
    him many nights of sleep. Longfellow does not face high tragedy
    before a crowd.

[Illustration: RISTORI AND FANNY KEMBLE

_The photograph of Mrs. Kemble was taken in Philadelphia in 1863_]

    _January 16, 1868._—Fanny Kemble read “The Merchant of Venice”
    in Boston last night—the old way of losing her breath when she
    appeared, as if totally overcome by the audience. We could
    not doubt that she felt her return deeply and sincerely,
    but—however, the feeling was undoubtedly real if short-lived,
    and we will give her credit for it. Her voice is sadly faded
    since the brilliant readings of ten years ago; she has had much
    sorrow since then and shows the marks of it. It is interesting
    to compare her work with Mr. Dickens’s; he is so much the
    greater artist! You can never mistake one of his characters for
    another, nor lose a syllable of his perfectly enunciated words.
    She speaks much more slowly usually, and there is a grand
    intonation as the verses sway from her lips, but one cannot
    be sure always if Jessica or Nerissa be speaking, Antonio or
    Bassanio. Her face is marvellous in tender passages, a serenity
    falls upon it born of immortal youth. It is beautiful enough
    for tears. She enjoys the wit too herself thoroughly, and
    brought out Launcelot Gobbo with great unction. An enormous and
    enthusiastic audience gave her hearty welcome. Longfellow could
    not come. His wife in the old days enjoyed this play too well
    when they used to go together for him to trust himself to hear
    it again.

    _Monday, May 18, 1868._—Raining like all possessed again
    today. I was to have done my gardening today but there is
    no chance yet. Walked over to Roxbury with J. yesterday and
    found everything gay with the coming loveliness. It has
    scarcely come, however. Jamie was much entertained by tales
    Mrs. Kemble’s agent told him of that lady: how she watched an
    Irish scrubbing woman dawdle over her work, who was paid by
    the hour, and finally called her to her (she was sitting at
    her own reading-desk in the hall), and said in her stately
    fashion, “I fear, madam, if you exert yourself so much over
    your work you will make yourself ill. Your health is seriously
    endangered by your severe efforts.” The woman, not seeing
    the sarcasm, replied in the strongest possible brogue to the
    effect that nothing short of the direst necessity would compel
    such dreadful labor. Whereat Mrs. Kemble, with a look not to
    be reproduced, and a wink to Mr. Pugh, withdrew. She read
    “Midsummer Night’s Dream” on Saturday P.M. We went, but found
    the place entirely without air and left after the first part.
    She did not begin with much spirit, but her voice was exquisite
    and her fun also, and her dress was an æsthetic pleasure, as a
    lady’s dress should always be, but alas! so seldom is, in this
    country.

    _Wednesday, November 9, 1870._—We have had a reception today
    for Miss Nilsson. Longfellow and Henry Ward Beecher were
    here, beside Perabo and many excellent or talented people,
    nearly sixty in all. It was a curious fact to give out seventy
    invitations and have sixty (or nearly that) present.

    Miss Nilsson, Mrs. Richardson (her attendant), Alice
    Longfellow, and ourselves sat down to lunch afterward, when she
    sang snatches of her loveliest songs and talked and laughed and
    was as graceful and merry and sweet as ever a beautiful woman
    knows how to be. She is now twenty-seven years old. Her light
    hair, deep blue eyes, full glorious eyes, are of the Northern
    type, but her broad intellectual brow, her beautiful teeth,
    and strong character, belong only to the type of genius and
    beauty. She is not only brave but almost imperious, I fancy,
    at times; a manner quite necessary, I say, to protect her from
    vulgar animosity and audacity. We heard her last night sing
    “Auld Robin Gray” not only with exquisite feeling, but with
    a pronunciation of the Scottish dialect that appeared to us
    very remarkable. When we spoke to her of it she said, “Yes,
    but there is much like that too in the Swedish dialect. When I
    first came up a peasant to Stockholm to learn to sing, I had
    the dialect very bad indeed, and it was a long time before I
    lost it. Then I went to school in France, and now my accent
    and dialect are French. When I went back home and talked with
    the French dialect, they said to me, ‘Now Christine, don’t be
    absurd,’ but I could not help it. I catch everything. I have
    never studied English in my life. I am learning American fast.
    I have learned ‘I guess,’ and I shall soon say ‘I reckon’ by
    the time I come back from the West.”

    Vieuxtemps, the violinist, she appreciates and enjoys highly
    as an artist. Of Ole Bull she says, “He is a charlatan. Ah,
    you will excuse me, but it is true.” Of Viardot-Garcia she has
    the highest admiration. Nothing ever gave her higher delight
    than Viardot’s compliment after hearing her “Mignon.” It was
    uncalled for, unexpected, and from the heart. She rehearsed
    what we recall so well, Viardot’s plain face, poor figure—and
    great genius triumphant over all. Well, we hear poor Viardot
    has lost her fortune by this sad French war.

    I have set down nothing which can recall the strong sweet
    beauty of Nilsson. She is a power to command success—fine and
    strong and sweet. Her face glowed and responded and originated
    in a swift yet gentle way, as one person after another was
    presented, that was a study and a lesson. She neither looked
    nor seemed tired until the presentation was over, when she said
    she was hungry. “We have had no breakfast yet, nothing to eat
    all day; ah, I shall know again what it means when Mrs. Fields
    asks me to lunch at one o’clock!” with an arch look at me. I
    was extremely penitent and hurried the lunch, but the people
    could not go out of the dining-room. However, all was cleaned
    at last and we had a quiet cosy talk and sit-down, which was
    delightful.

    On Saturday she sang from “Hamlet,” the mad scene of Ophelia.
    As usual, her dress and whole appearance were of the most
    refined and perfect beauty, and her singing we appreciated even
    more deeply than ever. She has not the remote _exalté_ nature
    of highest genius, but she is the great singer of this new
    time, and her realism is in marked sympathy with her period.

[Illustration: CHRISTINE NILSSON AS OPHELIA]

It has already been suggested that, when Thomas Bailey Aldrich made his
migration to Boston as editor of “Every Saturday,” he brought into the
circle of the Fieldses many fresh breezes from the outer world. In the
diary of Mrs. Fields there are frequent notes revealing a friendship
which lasted, indeed, long after the diary ceased, and up to the end of
Aldrich’s life, in 1907. Two entries—the first relating to the meteoric
author of “The Diamond Lens,” regarded in its day as a bright portent
in the literary heavens, the second to the Aldriches themselves at the
country place with the name which Aldrich embalmed in his excellent
title, “From Ponkapog to Pesth”—warrant conversion from manuscript into
print.

    _November 9, 1865._—Aldrich told us the story of Fitz-James
    O’Brien, the able author of “The Diamond Lens.” He was a
    handsome fellow, and began his career by running away with
    the wife of an English officer. The officer was in India, and
    Fitz-James and the guilty woman had fled to one of the seaports
    on the south of England in order to take passage for America,
    when the arrival of the woman’s husband was announced to them
    and O’Brien fled. He concealed himself on board a ship bound
    for New York. There he ran a career of dissipation, landing
    with only sixty dollars. He went to a first-rate hotel, ordered
    wines, and left a large bill behind when the time came to run
    away. Then he wrote for Harpers, and one publisher and another,
    writing little and over-drawing funds on a large scale. He
    came and lived six weeks upon Aldrich in his uncle’s house one
    summer when the family were away. One day he tried to borrow
    money of Harpers, and being refused he went into the bindery
    department, borrowed a board, printed on it, “I am starving,”
    bored holes through the ends, put in a string, hung it round
    his neck, allowed his fawn-colored gloves to depend over each
    end, and stood in the doorway where the firm should see him
    when they went to dinner. A great laugh and more money was
    the result of this escapade. Finally, when the war broke out,
    he enlisted, and this was the last A. heard of him for some
    time; but, being himself called to take a position on General
    Lander’s staff, he was on his way to Richmond and had reached
    Petersburg, when someone told him Fitz-James O’Brien had been
    shot dead. Then he went to the hospital and saw him lying there
    dead.

    Shortly after this, when Bayard Taylor and his wife were dining
    in a hotel restaurant at Dover, I believe,—it was one of the
    south of England towns,—they saw themselves closely observed by
    a lady and gentleman sitting near them. Finally the gentleman
    arose and came to speak to Taylor, said he observed they were
    Americans, and asked if he had ever heard of F. J. O’Brien.
    “Oh, yes,” said Taylor, “I knew him very well. He was killed
    in our war.” Then the lady burst into tears and the gentleman
    said, “She is his mother!”

    I forgot to say in the course of the story that he borrowed
    once sixty-five dollars for which A. became responsible,
    and when it was not paid he sent a letter to O’B. saying he
    must pay it. In return O’Brien sent him a challenge for a
    duel, which A. accepted, in the meantime discovering that an
    honorable fight could not be between a debtor and a creditor.
    However, when the time appointed arrived, O’Brien had
    absconded. We could not repress a smile at the idea of A.’s
    _fighting_, for he is a painfully small gentleman.

    _May 31, 1876._—Passed the day with the Aldriches at Ponkapog.
    Aldrich maintained at dinner that the horse railroad injured
    Charles Street. His wife and J. T. F. took the opposite ground.
    Finally J. said, “Well, the Philadelphians don’t agree with
    you; they have learned the value of horse railroads in their
    streets.” “Oh, that’s because they are such Christians,” said
    A. “They know whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”

    He is a queer, witty creature. When the railroad dropped us
    at Green Lodge station, a tiny place surrounded by wild green
    woods and bog, we found him sitting on a corner of the platform
    where he said he had been “listening to the bullfrog tune
    his violin. He had been twanging at one string a long time!”
    Aldrich was in an ecstasy of delight, and in truth it was a day
    to put the most untuned spirit into tune. In the afternoon we
    floated on the beautiful pond. The whole day gave us a series
    of pictures—only thirteen miles from town, yet the beechwoods
    can be no more retired. Mr. Pierce owns 500 acres, and it
    must be a pleasure to him, while he is away in Washington, to
    feel that someone is using and enjoying his beautiful domain;
    and how could it be half so well used and enjoyed as by the
    family of a struggling literary man! The house they live in,
    which was going to decay, may really be considered a creation
    of Lilian’s. Altogether she is very clever and Aldrich most
    fortunate and our Washington senator is doubtless most content
    to think of the enjoyment of others in his domain.

Still more exotic a figure in Boston than Aldrich was William Morris
Hunt—in spite of his temporary association with Harvard College and
his Boston marriage. Both he and his wife are constantly to be met in
the pages of Mrs. Fields’s journals, from which they emerged with some
frequency into her published “Biographical Notes,” even as they have
reappeared, with others, on earlier pages of this book.

In other places than Charles Street, Fields and Hunt were often meeting.
One brief record of an encounter, at the end of a Saturday Club meeting,
should surely be preserved, for all that it suggests of Hunt in amused
rebellion against his surroundings.

    _Sunday, August 26, 1874._—Hunt came to Jamie when the
    afternoon was nearly ended and asked him to go up to his
    studio. As they went along, he said, “I’ve made a poem! First
    time I ever wrote anything in my life. ’Tisn’t long, only four
    lines, but I’ve got it written down.” Whereat then and there he
    pulled out his pocketbook and read:

    “Boston is a hilly place;
    People all are brothers-in-law.
    If you or I want something done
    They treat us then like mothers-in-law.

    “This goes to the tune of Yankee Doodle,” Whereat he sang
    it out on the public highway. He looked very handsome, was
    beautifully dressed in brown velvet with a gold chain about
    his neck, but swore like a trooper and was in one of his most
    lawless moods.

    He gave J. for me a photograph of a marvellous picture which
    he calls his Persian Sybil, Anahita. I see his wife in it as
    in so many of his best works. “I don’t mean to do any more
    portraits,” he said. “When I remember how I have wasted time on
    an eyebrow because somebody’s 14th cousin thought it ought to
    turn up a little more—it makes me mad!”

[Illustration: _Facsimile letter from Hunt to Fields_]

When the English painter, Lowes Dickinson, the father of G. Lowes
Dickinson, was visiting the Fieldses in Boston, a photograph of Hunt’s
portrait of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw so impressed him that he asked to
be taken to the painter’s studio. In Miss Helen M. Knowlton’s “Art Life
of William Morris Hunt” this circumstance is related, together with its
sequel, which was the publication of Hunt’s “Talks on Art” from notes
made by Miss Knowlton herself. It is a surmise but slightly hazardous
that a characteristic note found among the Fields papers was written
apropos of Dickinson’s visit to Hunt: “Send ’em along—I mean Painters,”
he wrote to Fields. “I have had a delightful day with your friend—and I
know he is a painter—why? because he likes what I do well and _hates_
what I do that ain’t worth....”

It has been seen that, as early as November, 1868, James Parton suggested
that “a writer named Mark Twain” be engaged to contribute to the
“Atlantic.”[32] In October, 1868, “F. Bret Harte” wrote to the editor
of the “Atlantic” from San Francisco: “As the author of ‘The Luck of
Roaring Camp,’ I have to thank you for an invitation to contribute to
the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ but as editor of ‘The Overland,’ my duties
claim most of my spare time outside of the Government office in which
I am employed.... But I am glad of this opportunity to thank someone
connected with the ‘Atlantic’ for its very gracious good-will toward
me and my writings, particularly the book which G. W. Carleton of New
York malformed in its birth. There was an extra kindness in your taking
the deformed brat by the hand, and trying to recognize some traces of a
parent so far away.”

It was in the discharge of his work as editor of the “Atlantic” that
Fields, hospitable to practitioners of all the arts, entered especially
into relations with writers whose paths might not otherwise have crossed
his, and his wife’s. Of all the young Lochinvars of the pen who came
out of the West while Mrs. Fields was keeping her diary, Bret Harte and
Mark Twain were the daring and dauntless gallants who most captured the
imagination and have longest held it. To each of them Mrs. Fields devoted
a number of pages in her diary. We shall see first what she had to say
about Bret Harte.

    _Friday, March 10, 1871._—Too many days full of interest have
    passed unrecorded. Chiefly I should record what I can recall
    of Francis Bret Harte, who has made his first visit to the
    East just now, since he went to San Francisco in his early
    youth. He is now apparently about 35 years old. His mind is
    full of the grand landscape of the West, and filled also with
    sympathetic interest in the half-developed natives who are
    to be seen there, nearer to the surface than in our Eastern
    cities. He told me of a gambler who had a friend lying dead in
    the upper room of a gambling house. The man went out to see
    about having services performed. “Better have it at the grave,”
    said the parson to whom he applied. Jim shook his head as if
    he feared the proper honors would not be paid his friend. The
    other then suggested they should find the minister and leave
    it to him. “Well,” said Jim, “yes, I wish you’d do just that,
    for I ain’t much of a funeral ‘sharp’ myself.” He told me also,
    as a sign of the wonderful recklessness which had pervaded San
    Francisco, that at one time there was a glut of tobacco in the
    market and, a block of houses going up at the same period, _the
    foundations of those houses were laid of boxes of tobacco_.
    Bret Harte, as the world calls him, is natural, warm-hearted,
    with a keen relish for fun, disposed to give just value to the
    strong language of the West, which he is by no means inclined
    to dispense with; at ease in every society, quick of sense
    and sight. Jamie, who saw him more than I, finds him lovable
    above all. We liked his wife too,—not handsome but with good
    honest sense, appreciative of him,—and two children. She is
    said to sing well, but poor woman! the fatigues of that most
    distressing journey across the continent, the fêtes, the heat
    (for the weather is unusually warm), have been almost too much
    for her and she is not certainly at her best. They dined and
    took tea here last Friday.

[Illustration: _Facsimile page from an early letter of Bret Harte’s_]

    _Tuesday, September 5, 1871._—J. went to Boston. I wrote in the
    pastures and walked all the morning. Coming home, after dinner,
    came a telegram for me to meet J. and Bret Harte at Beverly
    station with the pony carriage. I drove hard to catch the
    train, but arrived in season, glad to take up the two good boys
    and show them Beverly shore. Stopped at Mrs. Cabot’s returning
    to see Mrs. ——, etc. They were all glad to have a glimpse of
    Bret Harte. The talk turned a little upon Hawthorne, and I was
    much amused to hear Mrs. —— say, drawing herself up, “Yes, he
    was born in Salem, but we never knew anything about him.” (The
    truth was, Mrs. —— was the last person to appreciate him.) ...
    Fortunately Miss Howes was present, whose father was one of
    Hawthorne’s best friends; so matters were made clear there. We
    left soon and came on to Manchester, where, after showing him
    the shore, we sat and talked during the evening.

    Mr. Harte had much to say of the beautiful flowers of
    California, roses being in bloom about his own house there
    every month in the year. He found the cloudless skies and
    continued drought of California very hard to bear. For the
    first time in my life I considered how terrible perpetual
    cloudlessness would be! He thinks there is no beauty in the
    mountains of California, hard, bare, snowless peaks. Neither
    are there trees, nor any green grass.

    He is delighted with the fragrant lawns of Newport and has, I
    believe, put into verse a delightful ghost story which he told
    us.[33] He has taken a house of some antiquity in Newport,
    connected with which is the story of a lady who formerly lived
    there and who was very fond of the odor of mignonette. The
    flower was always growing in her house, and after her death,
    at two o’clock every night, a strong odor has always been
    perceived passing through the house as if wafted along by the
    garments of a woman. One night at the appointed hour, but
    entirely unconnected in his thought with the story Mr. Harte
    had long ago heard, he was arrested in his work by a strong
    perfume of mignonette which appeared to sweep by him. He looked
    about, thinking his wife might have placed a vase of flowers
    in the room, but finding nothing he began to follow the odor,
    which seemed to flit before him. Then he recalled, for the
    first time, the story he had heard. He opened the door; the
    odor was in the hall; he opened the room where the lady died,
    but there was no odor there; until returning, after making a
    circuit of the house, he found a faint perfume as if she had
    passed but not stayed there also. At last, somewhat oppressed
    perhaps by the ghostliness of the place and hour, he went out
    and stood upon the porch. There his dream vanished. The sweet
    lawn and tree flowers were emitting an odor, as is common at
    the hour when dews congeal, more sweet than at any other time
    of day or night, and the air was redolent of sweets which might
    easily be construed into mignonette. The story was well told
    and I shall be glad to see his poem.

    Many good stories came off during the evening, some very
    characteristic of California; ones such as that of an uproar in
    a theatre and a man about to be killed, when someone shouts,
    “Don’t waste him, but kill a fiddler with him.” Also one of the
    opening nights at the California theatre, the place packed,
    when a man who has taken too much whiskey wishes a noise;
    immediately the manager, a strong executive man, catches him
    up with the help of a policeman, and before anybody knows the
    thing is done or the disturber what is the matter, he finds
    himself set down on the sidewalk outside in the street. “Well,”
    said he with an oath, “is this the way you do business here;
    raise a fellow before he has a chance to draw?” (referring to
    the game of poker).

    Mr. Harte is a very sensitive and nervous man. He struggles
    against himself all the time. He sat on the piazza with J. and
    talked till a late hour. This morning at breakfast I found him
    most interesting. He talked of his early and best-loved books.
    It appears that at the age of nine he was a lover and reader of
    Montaigne. Certain writers, he says, seem to him to stand out
    as friends and brothers side by side in literature. Now Horace
    and Montaigne are so associated in his mind. Mr. Emerson, he
    thinks, never in the least approaches a comprehension of the
    character of the man. With an admiration for his great sayings,
    he has never guessed at the subtle springs from which they
    come. The pleasant acceding to both sides in politics, and
    other traits of like nature, gives him affinity with Hawthorne.
    By the way, he is a true appreciator of Hawthorne. He was moved
    to much merriment yesterday by remembering a passage in the
    notes, where he slyly remarks, “Margaret Fuller’s cows hooked
    the other cows.” Speaking of Dr. Bartol, he said, “What a dear
    old man he is! A venerable baby, nothing more!” But Harte is
    most kindly and tender. His wife has been very ill and has
    given him cause for terrible anxiety. This accounts for much
    left undone, but he is an oblivious man oftentimes to his
    surroundings—leaves things behind!!

    _January 12, 1872._—Bret Harte was here at breakfast. It is
    curious to see his feeling with regard to society. For purely
    literary society, with its affectations and contempts, he has
    no sympathy. He has at length chosen New York as his residence,
    and among the Schuylers, Sherwoods, and their friends he
    appears to find what he enjoys. There is evidently a _gêne_
    about people and life here, and provincialisms which he found
    would hurt him. He is very sensitive and keen, with a love and
    reverence for Dickens almost peculiar in this coldly critical
    age. Bryant he finds very cold and totally unwilling to lead
    the conversation, as he should do when they are together, as
    he justly remarks, he being so much younger—but never a word
    without cart and horses to fetch it.

    Bret Harte has a queer absent-minded way of spending his time,
    letting the hours slip by as if he had not altogether learned
    their value yet. It is a miracle to us how he lives, for he
    writes very little. Thus far I suppose he has had money from J.
    R. O. & Co., but I fancy they have done with giving out money
    save for a _quid pro quo_.

    _February, 1872_ [during a visit to New York].—We had promised
    to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Harte early and go to the theatre
    afterward, therefore four o’clock found us at their door. He
    welcomed us by opening it himself and only this reassured
    Jamie. We had driven up in a “Crystal,” much to my amusement,
    in which J. had insisted I should sit until he discovered if
    that was the house. The scene was altogether comic. I shortened
    the ludicrousness as much as possible by jumping out and
    running quickly up the steps. Mrs. Harte was not ready to see
    me, but I found Mr. Barrett the actor with Mr. Harte in the
    parlor, and soon being invited upstairs, found Mrs. Barrett and
    Mrs. Harte together. We had a merry dinner together, the young
    actor evidently quite nervous with respect to the evening’s
    performance. He went an hour before us to the play. We sat in
    the stage box; the play was “Julius Cæsar.” It is useless to
    deny Edwin Booth great talent, exquisite grace and feeling.
    Both the young men, the first, Barrett, a man of intellect, and
    Booth, a man of inherited grace and feeling as well as good
    mind, have the advantage moreover of being born to the stage.
    Their stage habits fit them more perfectly than those of the
    drawing-room and they walk the stage with the ease that most
    men do their own parlors. During the performance Booth invited
    us into his drawing-room; a short carpeted way led from the box
    into the small room where he was sitting in Roman costume, pipe
    in mouth; he rose and called “Mary,” as we approached, when the
    tiniest woman ever called wife made her appearance. She is an
    ardent little spark of human flame and he really looks large
    beside her.

    But his grace, his grace! His dress too, was as usual
    perfect—more, far more than all, both the actors had such
    feeling for Shakespeare and for their parts with which they
    are filling the stage nightly, that they were deeply and truly
    enthusiastic. It was a sight to warm Shakespeare.

[Illustration: BRET HARTE AND MARK TWAIN

_From early photographs_]

    _Saturday, September 18, 1875._—Bret Harte came on the ½ past
    12 train. He came in good health, save a headache which ripened
    as the day went on; but he was bubbling over with fun, full of
    the most natural and unexpected sallies. He wished to know if
    I was acquainted with the Cochin China hen. They had one at
    Cohasset. They had named him Benventuro (after a certain gay
    Italian singer of strong self-appreciation who came formerly
    to America). He said this hen’s state of mind on finding a
    half-exploded firecracker and her depressed condition since
    its explosion was something extraordinary. His description was
    so vivid that I still see this hen perambulating about the
    house, first with pride, second with precipitation, fallen into
    disgrace among her fellows.

    He said Cohasset was not the place to live in the summer if
    one wanted sea-breezes. They all came straight from Chicago!!
    He fancied the place, thinking it an old fishing village, not
    unlike Yarmouth. Instead of which they prided themselves upon
    never having “any of your sea-smells,” and, being five miles
    from the doctor, could not be considered a cheerful place to
    live in with sick children. He said he was surprised to find J.
    T. F. without a sailor’s jacket and collar. The actors among
    whom he had been living rather overdid the business; their
    collars were wider, their shirts fuller, and their trousers
    more bulgy than those of any real sailor he had ever observed,
    and the manner of hitching up the trousers was entirely
    peculiar to themselves and to the stage.

    We went to call upon the Burlingames. In describing Harrisburg,
    Virginia, where he had lectured, he said a committee-man came
    to invite him to take a walk, and he was so afflicted with a
    headache that he was ready to take or give away his life at
    any moment; so he accepted the invitation and walked out with
    him. The man observed that Harrisburg was a very healthy place;
    only one man a day died in that vicinity. “Oh!” said Harte,
    remembering the dangerous state of his own mind, “has that
    man died yet today?” The man shook his head gravely, never
    suspecting a joke, and said he didn’t know, but he would try to
    find out. Whereat Harte, to keep up the joke, said he wished
    he would. He went to the lecture forgetting all about it and
    saw this man hanging around without getting a chance to speak.
    The next morning very early, he managed to get an opportunity
    to speak to him. “I couldn’t find out exactly about that man
    yesterday,” he said. “What man?” said H. “Why, the one we were
    speaking of; the Coroner said he couldn’t say precisely who it
    was, but the one man would average all right.”

    Harte said in speaking of Longfellow that no one had yet
    overpraised him. The delicate quality of humor, the exquisite
    fineness in the choice of words, the breadth and sweetness of
    his nature were something he could hardly help worshipping. One
    day after a dinner at Mr. Lowell’s he said, “I think I will
    not have a carriage to return to town. I will walk down to the
    Square.” “I will walk with you,” said Longfellow. When they
    arrived at his gate, he said, he was so beautiful that he could
    only think of the light and whiteness of the moon, and if he
    had stayed a moment longer he should have put his arms around
    him and made a fool of himself then and there. Whereat he said
    good night abruptly and turned away.

    He brought his novel and play[34] with him which are just now
    finished, for us to read. He has evidently enjoyed the play,
    and he enjoys the fame and the money they both bring him.

    He is a dramatic, lovable creature with his blue silk
    pocket-handkerchief and red dressing slippers and his quick
    feelings. I could hate the man who could help loving him—or the
    woman either.

In the passages touching upon Mark Twain now to be copied from the
journals, he is seen, not in Boston, but in Hartford. If Mrs. Fields
had continued her diary until 1879, there would doubtless have been a
faithful contemporaneous account of the humorist’s unhappy attempt to
be funny both in the presence and at the expense of the “Augustans”
assembled in honor of Whittier’s seventieth birthday.[35] But Mrs.
Fields’s reports of talk and observations under his own roof, in the days
when his fame rested entirely upon a handful of his earlier books, should
take their place in the authentic annals of an extraordinary personality.
On the first of the two occasions recorded, Fields went alone to deliver
a lecture in Hartford, and in answer to a post-card invitation signed
“Mark,” stayed in the new house of the Clemenses. On the second occasion,
three weeks later, Mrs. Fields accompanied him. After her husband’s
return from the first visit she wrote:—

    _April 6, 1876._—He found Mrs. Clemens quite ill. They had been
    in New York where he had given four lectures hoping to get
    money for Dr. Brown. He had never lectured there before without
    making a great deal of money. This time he barely covered
    his expenses. He was very interesting and told J. the whole
    story of his life. They sat until midnight after the lecture,
    Mark drinking ale to make him sleepy. He says he can’t sleep
    as other people do; his kind of sleep is the only sort for
    him—three or four hours of good solid comfort—more than that
    makes him ill; he can’t afford to sleep all his thoughts away.
    He described the hunger of his childhood for books, how the
    “Fortunes of Nigel” was one of the first stories which came to
    him while he was learning to be a pilot on a Mississippi boat.
    He hid himself with it behind a barrel where he was found by
    the master, who read him a lecture upon the ruinous effects
    of reading. “I’ve seen it over and over agin,” he said. “You
    needn’t tell me anythin’ about it; if ye’re going to be a pilot
    on this river yer needn’t ever think of reading, for it just
    spiles all. Yer can’t remember how high the tides was in Can’s
    Gut three trips before the last now, I’ll wager.” “Why no,”
    said Mark, “that was six months ago.” “I don’t care if’t was,”
    said the man. “If you hadn’t been spiling yer mind by readin’
    ye’d have remembered.” So he was never allowed to read any
    more after that. “And now,” says Mark, “not being able to have
    it when I was hungry for it, I can only read the Encyclopedia
    nowadays.” Which is not true—he reads everything.

    The story of his courtship and marriage, too, was very strange
    and interesting. A portion of this has, however, leaked into
    the daily papers, so I will not repeat it here. One point
    interested me greatly, however, as showing the strength of
    character and rightness of vision in the man. He said he had
    not been married many months when his wife’s father came to
    him one evening and said, “My son, wouldn’t you like to go to
    Europe with your wife?” “Why yes, sir,” he said, “if I could
    afford it.” “Well then,” said he, “if you will leave off
    smoking and drinking ale you shall have ten thousand dollars
    this next year and go to Europe beside.” “Thank you, sir,”
    said Mark, “this is very good of you, and I appreciate it,
    but I can’t sell myself. I will do anything I can for you or
    any of your family, but I can’t sell myself.” The result was,
    said Mark, “I never smoked a cigar all that year nor drank a
    glass of ale; but when the next year came I found I must write
    a book, and when I sat down to write I found it wasn’t worth
    anything. I must have a cigar to steady my nerves. I began
    to smoke, and I wrote my book; but then I couldn’t sleep and
    I had to drink ale to go to sleep. Now if I had sold myself,
    I couldn’t have written my book, or I couldn’t have gone to
    sleep, but now everything works perfectly well.”

    He and his wife have wretched health, poor things! And in spite
    of their beautiful home must often have rather a hard time. He
    is very eccentric, disturbed by every noise, and it cannot be
    altogether easy to have care of such a man. It is a very loving
    household though Mrs. Clemens’s mother, Mrs. Langdon, hardly
    knows what to make of him sometimes, it is quite evident.

    _Thursday, April 27, 1876_.—We lunched and at 3 P.M. were
    en route for Hartford. I slept, and read Mr. Tom Appleton’s
    journal on the Nile, and looked out at the sunset and the
    torches of spring in the hollows, each in turn, doing more
    sleeping than either of the others, I fear, because I seem for
    some unexplained reason to be tired, as Mrs. Hawthorne used
    to say, far into the future. By giving up to it, however, I
    felt quite fresh when we arrived, at half-past seven o’clock,
    Mr. Clemens’ (Mark Twain’s) carriage waiting for us to take
    us to the hall where he was to perform for the second night
    in succession Peter Spyle in the “Loan of a Lover.” It is a
    pretty play, and the girl’s part, Gertrude, was well done by
    Miss Helen Smith; but Mr. Clemens’ part was a creation. I see
    no reason why, if he chose to adopt the profession of actor,
    he should not be as successful as Jefferson in whatever he
    might conclude to undertake. It is really amazing to see what
    a man of genius can do beside what is usually considered his
    legitimate sphere.

[Illustration: _Facsimile verses and letter from Mark Twain to Fields_]

    Afterward we went with Mr. Hammersley to the Club for a bit
    of supper—this I did not wish to do, but I was overruled of
    course by the decision of our host. We met at supper one of
    the clever actors who played in a little operetta called “The
    Artful Mendicants.” It was after twelve o’clock when we finally
    reached Mr. Clemens’ house. He believed his wife would have
    retired, as she is very delicate in health; but there she was
    expecting us, with a pretty supper table laid. When her husband
    discovered this, he fell down on his knees in mock desire for
    forgiveness. His mind was so full of the play, and with the
    poor figure he felt he had made in it, that he had entirely
    forgotten all her directions and injunctions. She is a very
    small, sweet-looking, simple, finished creature, charming in
    her ways and evidently deeply beloved by him. The house is a
    brick villa, designed by one of the first New York architects,
    standing in a lovely lawn which slopes down to a small stream
    or river at the side. In this spring season the blackbirds are
    busy in the trees and the air is sweet and vocal. Inside there
    is great luxury. Especially I delight in a lovely conservatory
    opening out of the drawing-room.

    Although we had already eaten supper, the gentlemen took a
    glass of lager beer to keep Mrs. Clemens company while she ate
    a bit of bread after her long anxiety and waiting. Meantime Mr.
    Clemens talked. The quiet earnest manner of his speech would
    be impossible to reproduce, but there is a drawl in his tone
    peculiar to himself. Also he is much interested in actors and
    the art of acting just now, and seriously talks of going to
    Boston next week to the début of Anna Dickinson.

    We were a tired company and went soon to bed and to sleep. I
    slept late, but I found Mr. Clemens had been re-reading Dana’s
    “Two Years before the Mast” in bed early and revolving subjects
    for his “Autobiography.” Their two beautiful baby girls came
    to pass an hour with us after breakfast—exquisite affectionate
    children, the very fountain of joy to their interesting
    parents....

    Returning to lunch, I found our host and hostess and eldest
    little girl in the drawing-room. We fell into talk of the
    mishaps of the stage and the disadvantage of an amateur under
    such circumstances. “For instance, on the first night of our
    little play,” said Mr. Clemens, “the trousers of one of the
    actors suddenly gave way entirely behind, which was very
    distressing to him, though we did not observe it at all.”

    I want to stop here to give a little idea of the appearance of
    our host. He is forty years old, with some color in his cheeks
    and a heavy light-colored moustache, and overhanging light
    eyebrows. His eyes are grey and piercing, yet soft, and his
    whole face expresses great sensitiveness. He is exquisitely
    neat also, though careless, and his hands are small, not
    without delicacy. He is a small man, but his mass of hair seems
    the one rugged-looking thing about him. I thought in the play
    last night that it was a wig.

    To return to our lunch table—he proceeded to speak of his
    “Autobiography,” which he intends to write as fully and simply
    as possible to leave behind him. His wife laughingly said she
    should look it over and leave out objectionable passages. “No,”
    he said, very earnestly, almost sternly, “_you_ are not to edit
    it—it is to appear as it is written, with the whole tale told
    as truly as I can tell it. I shall take out passages from it,
    and publish as I go along in the ‘Atlantic’ and elsewhere, but
    I shall not limit myself as to space, and at whatever age I am
    writing about, even if I am an infant, and an idea comes to me
    about myself when I am forty, I shall put that in. Every man
    feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else, and
    therefore he should write it down. He finds also that everybody
    else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has
    done, and therefore he should write it down.”

    The talk naturally branched to education, and thence to the
    country. He has lost all faith in our government. This wicked
    ungodly suffrage, he said, where the vote of a man who knew
    nothing was as good as the vote of a man of education and
    industry; this endeavor to equalize what God had made unequal
    was a wrong and a shame. He only hoped to live long enough to
    see such a wrong and such a government overthrown. Last summer
    he wrote an article for the “Atlantic,” printed without any
    signature, proposing the only solution of such evil of which
    he could conceive. “It is too late now,” he continued, “to
    restrict the suffrage; we must increase it—for this let us give
    every university man, let us say, ten votes, and every man with
    common-school education two votes, and a man of superior power
    and position a hundred votes, if we choose. This is the only
    way I see to get out of the false position into which we have
    fallen.”

    At five, the hour appointed for dinner, I returned to the
    drawing-room where our host lay at full length on the floor
    with his head on cushions in the bay-window, reading, and
    taking what he called “delicious comfort.” Mrs. Perkins came in
    to dinner, and we had a cosy good time. Mr. Clemens described
    the preaching of a Western clergyman, a great favorite, with
    the smallest possible allowance of idea to the largest possible
    amount of words. It was so truthfully and vividly portrayed
    that we all concluded, perhaps, since the man was in such
    earnest, he moved his audience more than if he had troubled
    them with too many ideas. This truthfulness of Mr. Clemens,
    which will hardly allow him to portray anything in a way to
    make out a case by exaggerating or distorting a truth, is a
    wondrous and noble quality. This makes art and makes life, and
    will continue to make him a daily increasing power among us.

    He is so unhappy and discontented with our government that he
    says he is not conscious of the least emotion of patriotism
    in himself. He is overwhelmed with shame and confusion and
    wishes he were not an American. He thinks seriously of going
    to England to live for a while, at least, and I think it not
    unlikely he may discover away from home a love of his country
    which is still waiting to be unfolded. I believe hope must
    dawn for us, that so much earnest endeavor of our statesmen
    and patriots cannot come to naught; and perhaps the very idea
    he has dropped, never believing that it can bring forth fruit,
    will be adopted in the end for our salvation. Certainly women’s
    suffrage and such a change as he proposes should be tried,
    since we cannot keep the untenable ground of the present....

    It is most curious and interesting to watch this growing man
    of forty—to see how he studies and how high his aims are. His
    conversation is always earnest and careful, though full of
    fun. He is just now pondering much upon actors and their ways.
    Raymond, who is doing the “Gilded Age,” is so hopelessly given
    “to saving at the spigot and losing at the bung-hole” that he
    is evidently not over-satisfied nor does he count the acting
    everything it might be.

    We sat talking, chiefly we women, after dinner and looking at
    the sunset. Mr. Clemens lay down with a book and J. went to
    look over his lecture. I did not go to lecture, but after all
    were gone I scribbled away at these pages and nearly finished
    Mr. Appleton’s “Nile Journal.” They returned rather late,
    it was after ten, bearing a box of delicious strawberries,
    Mrs. Colt’s gift from her endless greenhouses. They were
    a sensation; the whole of summer was foreshadowed by their
    scarlet globes. Some beer was brought for Mr. Clemens (who
    drinks nothing else, and as he eats but little this seems to
    answer the double end of nourishment and soothing for the
    nerves) and he began again to talk. He said it was astonishing
    what subjects were missed by the Poet Laureate. He thought
    the finest incident of the Crimean War had been certainly
    overlooked. That was the going down at sea of the man of
    war, Berkeley Castle. The ship with a whole regiment, one of
    the finest of the English army, on board, struck a rock near
    the Bosphorus. There was no help—the bottom was out and the
    boats would only hold the crew and the other helpless ones;
    there was no chance for the soldiers. The Colonel summoned
    them on deck; he told them the duty of soldiers was to die;
    they would do their duty as bravely there as if they were on
    the battle-field. He bade them shoulder arms and prepare for
    action. The drums beat, flags were flying, the service playing,
    as they all went down to silent death in the great deep.

    Afterward Mr. Clemens described to us the reappearance before
    his congregation of an old clergyman who had been incapacitated
    for work during twelve years—coming suddenly into the pulpit
    just as the first hymn was ended. The younger pastor proposed
    they should sing the old man’s favorite, “Coronation,”
    _omitting_ the first verse. He heard nothing of the omission,
    but beginning at the first verse he sang in a cracked treble
    the remaining stanza after all the people were still. There
    was a mingling of the comic and pathetic in this incident which
    made it consonant with the genius of our host. Our dear little
    hostess complained of want of air, and I saw she was very
    tired, so we all went to bed about eleven.

    _Saturday morning._—Dear J. was up early and out in the
    beautiful sunshine. I read and scribbled until breakfast at
    half-past nine. It was a lovely morning, and I had already
    ventured out of my window and round the house to hear the
    birds sing and see the face of spring before the hour came for
    breakfast. When I did go to the drawing-room, however, I found
    Mr. Clemens alone. He greeted me apparently as cheerfully as
    ever, and it was not until some moments had passed that he told
    me they had a very sick child upstairs. From that instant I
    saw, especially after his wife came in, that they could think
    of nothing else. They were half-distracted with anxiety. Their
    messenger could not find the doctor, which made matters worse.
    However, the little girl did not really seem very sick, so I
    could not help thinking they were unnecessarily excited. The
    effect on them, however, was just as bad as if the child were
    really very ill. The messenger was hardly despatched the second
    time before Jamie and Mr. Clemens began to talk of our getting
    away in the next train, whereat he (Mr. C.) said to his wife,
    “Why didn’t you tell me of that,” etc., etc. It was all over
    in a moment, but in his excitement he spoke more quickly than
    he knew, and his wife felt it. Nothing was said at the time,
    indeed we hardly observed it, but we were intensely amused and
    could not help finding it pathetic too afterward, when he came
    to us and said he spent the larger part of his life on his
    knees making apologies and now he had got to make an apology
    to us about the carriage. He was always bringing the blood to
    his wife’s face by his bad behavior, and here this very morning
    he had said such things about that carriage! His whole life
    was one long apology. His wife had told him to see how well we
    behaved (poor we!) and he knew he had everything to learn.

    He was so amusing about it that he left us in a storm of
    laughter, yet at bottom I could see it was no laughing matter
    to him. He is in dead earnest, with a desire for growth
    and truth in life, and with such a sincere admiration for
    his wife’s sweetness and beauty of character that the most
    prejudiced and hardest heart could not fail to fall in love
    with him. She looked like an exquisite lily as we left her.
    So white and delicate and tender. Such sensitiveness and
    self-control as she possesses are very, very rare.

    _May Day._—Longfellow, Greene, Alexander Agassiz and Dr. Holmes
    dined with us. This made summer, Longfellow said at table—that
    this was May Day enough, it was no matter how cold it was
    outside. (The wind outside had been raging all day and winter
    seemed to be giving us a last fling.) Jamie recalled one or
    two things “Mark Twain” had said which I have omitted. When
    he lectured a few weeks ago in New York, he said he had just
    reached the middle of his lecture and was going on with flying
    colors when he saw in the audience just in front of him a noble
    gray head and beard. “Nobody told me that William Cullen
    Bryant was there, but I had seen his picture and I knew that
    was the old man. I was sure he saw the failure I was making,
    and all the weak points in what I was saying, and I couldn’t do
    anything more—that old man just spoiled my work. Then they told
    me afterward that my lecture was good and all that; I could
    only say, ‘no, no, that fine old head spoiled all I had to say
    _that_ night.’”

    Longfellow was quite like himself again, but the talk was
    mainly sustained by Dr. Holmes and Mr. Agassiz. When Dr. Holmes
    first came in he looked earnestly at the portrait of Sydney
    Smith. “It reminds me of our famous story-teller, Sullivan,”
    he said; “it is full of epicureanism. _The mouth is made for
    kisses and canvas-backs._” Later on in the dinner, when Mr.
    Agassiz was describing the fatigue he suffered after talking
    Spanish all day while he still understood the language very
    imperfectly, “Why,” said Holmes, “it’s like playing the piano
    with mittens on.”

    There was something pathetic in the fact of this young man
    sitting here among his father’s friends, almost in the very
    place his father had filled so many times—but his speech
    was manly and wise, from a full brain. They talked of the
    spectroscope as on the whole the most important discovery
    the world had known. “Well, what is it?” said Longfellow.
    “Explain it to us.” (I was glad enough to have him ask.)
    Agassiz explained quite clearly that it was an instrument to
    discover the elements which compose the sun, and proceeded
    to unfold its working in some detail. Two men made the
    discovery simultaneously, one in India and one in England.
    This spectroscope has been infinitely improved, however, by
    every living mind brought to bear upon it, almost, since its
    first so-called discovery. It is so difficult, Dr. H. said,
    to tell where an invention began; you could go back until it
    seemed that no man that ever lived really did it—like some
    verses, whereupon one of Gray’s was given as an example. The
    talk turned somewhat upon the manner of putting things, the
    English manner being so poor and inexpressive compared with the
    southern natures—the French being the masters of expression.

    Longfellow gave a delightful account of the old artist and
    spiritualist, Kirkup, the discoverer of the Dante portrait,
    though Greene undertook to say that a certain Wilde was the
    man. I never heard anybody else have the credit but Kirkup, and
    certainly England believes it was he.

    I think they all had “a good time”; I am sure I did.

[Illustration: CHARLES SUMNER]

As Mark Twain, in the preceding pages may be said to have led the reader
back into the Boston and Cambridge circle, so there were constant
excursions of interest from that circle out into the world in which such
a man as Sumner stood as the friend of such another as Longfellow. For
twenty-three years, from 1851 till his death in 1874, Sumner was a member
of the United States Senate, and consequently was much more to be seen
in Washington than in the State he represented. He appears from time to
time in the pages of Mrs. Fields’s diary, and in the two ensuing passages
figures first at her Boston dinner-table and then in Washington:

    _Saturday, November 18, 1865._—Last night Miss Kate Field
    and Charles Sumner dined with us. Before we went to dinner
    Charlotte Foster, the young colored girl whom Elizabeth
    Whittier was so fond of and who is now secretary of the
    Freedmen’s Bureau, came in to call. She is very pretty
    and good. It is difficult nevertheless for her to find a
    boarding-place. People do not readily admit a colored woman
    into their families. I shall help her to find a good home....

    Mr. Sumner opened the conversation at dinner by asking Miss
    Field to tell him something of Mr. Landor. She, smiling, said
    that was difficult now because she had talked and written so
    much of him that she hardly knew what was left unsaid. Mr.
    Sumner described his own first introduction then at the house
    of his old friend, Mr. Kenyon, in London. He had dropped in
    there by accident, but was positively engaged elsewhere at
    dinner; before he left, however, he was able to parry skilfully
    a remark aimed at the Yankees, which tickled Mr. Landor and
    made him try to hold on and induce him to stay. He was obliged
    to go then, however, but he returned a few days after to
    breakfast, when Landor asked him why the body of Washington
    did not rest in the Capitol at Washington. “Because,” said Mr.
    Sumner, “his family wished his ashes to remain at Mt. Vernon.”
    “Ashes,” said L., “his body was not burned; why do you say
    ‘ashes,’ sir?” “I quoted, ‘E’en in our ashes live their wonted
    fires,’ and he said nothing more at the time, but,” added Mr.
    Sumner, “I have never used ‘ashes’ since.”

    Kate Field said “his wife was a perfect fiend”; but Mr. Sumner
    was inclined to doubt the statement. “These marriages with men
    of genius are hard,” he said, “because genius wins the race in
    the end.”

    Then Kate brought the authority of Mr. Browning and others to
    back her statement, but, referring to Mr. Landor’s temper, she
    said that while the Storys were at Siena passing the summer one
    year, the Brownings took a villa near by and Mr. Landor lived
    opposite, while she and Miss Isa Blagden went down to make the
    Brownings a visit. During their stay Mr. Landor fancied that
    the stock of tea lately purchased for his use was poisoned,
    and threw it all out of the window. The Contadine reaped the
    benefit of this; they came and gathered it up like a flock of
    doves.

    Mr. Sumner spoke of the high, very high place he accorded to
    Mr. Landor as a writer of prose. He had been a source of great
    admiration to him for years, he said. As long ago as when G.
    W. Greene was living in Rome and first becoming a writer,
    he asked Mr. Sumner what masters of prose he should study.
    “Then,” said Mr. S., “you remember his own style was bad; the
    sentences apt to be jumbled up together. I told him to read
    Bacon, and Hooker, and all the prose of Dryden he could find
    in the prefaces and elsewhere, and Walter Savage Landor; and
    my reverence for Mr. Landor as a writer of prose has never
    diminished.”

    Later during the dinner, talking of his life abroad, Mr. Sumner
    was reminded of a letter he had received from John P. Hale,
    our minister plenipotentiary to Spain. He said for a number
    of years, while Mr. Hale was in the Senate, whenever appeals
    came from our foreign ministers or consuls abroad asking for
    increase of salary, Mr. Hale would jump up and say, “Gentlemen
    of the Senate, allow me to say I would engage to live at any
    point in Europe upon the salary now granted by the Government.
    It is no economy, indeed it is a great lack of economy, to
    think of raising these salaries.”

    “Hereupon comes a letter from Spain urging an increase of
    salary in terms which would convulse the Senate with laughter
    after the protestations they have heard so often. I should like
    nothing better than to read it to them.” For the lack of their
    presence, however, he read it to us, and it was amusing truly,
    as if the old days and speeches were a blank.

    Mr. Sumner easily slipped from this subject into others
    connected with the Government.

    Kate Field said that Judge Russell told her that President
    Johnson was no better than a sot, and that the head of the
    Washingtonian Home (a refuge for inebriates here) had been
    sent for, as a man having skill in such cases, to try to save
    him. “Is this true, Mr. Sumner?” she asked. Mr. Sumner said
    not one word at first; then asked, “What authority had Judge
    Russell for making such an assertion?” Kate did not know, and
    I thought on the whole Mr. Sumner, who knew the man had really
    been sent for by the President himself, it is supposed for some
    other reason, doubted the whole tale. I doubted it sincerely
    from the first moment, and I wonder a man can be left to say
    such things.

    Sumner then continued to describe very vividly what he had
    known of Andy Johnson’s behavior. When he left Tennessee to
    come to Washington to be Vice-President, he travelled with a
    negro servant and two demijohns of whiskey which he dispensed
    freely, drinking enough himself at the same time to arrive at
    Washington in a maudlin condition, in which state he remained
    until after the fourth of March. He was then living at the
    hotel, and a young Massachusetts officer, who lived on the
    same floor and was obliged to pass Mr. Johnson’s door many
    times a day, told Mr. S. that during the two days subsequent
    to Mr. Johnson’s arrival he saw, while passing his room, and
    counted twenty-six glasses of whiskey go in. At length good men
    interfered; they saw delirium tremens or some other dreadful
    thing would be the result if this continued, and old Mr. Blair
    went with Mr. Preston King and persuaded Mr. Johnson to go
    down and stay at Mr. Blair’s house, and he surrendered at
    discretion. It was a small house and a very quiet family, but
    they stowed Mr. Johnson away and Mr. King also, who was kind
    enough to offer to take care of him. Shortly after this Mr.
    Lincoln and Mr. Sumner had gone down the river in a yacht, and
    had landed at General Grant’s headquarters. They were sitting
    together at two desks reading the papers for the day when
    Mr. Sumner observed a figure darken the door, and looking up
    found Mr. Johnson. “Ah, Mr. Vice-President, how do you do,” he
    said, putting his papers aside. “Mr. President, here is the
    Vice-President.” Mr. Lincoln arose and extended his hand, but
    as Mr. Sumner thought very coldly, and after a short time they
    started again for their yacht. Mr. Johnson walked as far as the
    wharf, talking with Mr. Lincoln, but when they arrived there,
    Mr. Lincoln did not say, “Come with us and have lunch,” or
    “Come at night and have dinner,” but bade him simply “Good-bye”
    there, where they observed him afterward watching their
    departure with Mr. King by his side, who had come to rejoin him.

    “This,” said Mr. Sumner, “is all Mr. Lincoln saw of Mr.
    Johnson. One week after this time the President was
    assassinated, and they never met from that hour until his
    death.”

    Mr. Sumner thinks Mr. Beecher is making a dangerous and deadly
    mistake, and told him so. He said further to Mr. B. that his
    anxieties prevented him from sleeping, that he had not slept
    for three nights. “I should think so,” Mr. Beecher replied,
    “you talk like a man who had been deprived of his natural
    rest.” The two men have a respect for each other and talk
    kindly of each other, but they do not see things from the same
    point of view now at all.

    _Friday morning, March 21, 1872._—L. W. J. and her daughter met
    us at the cars [in New York] bound to go with us to Washington.
    A pleasant day’s journey we had of it with their friendly faces
    to accompany us and with Colonel Winthrop to meet us at the
    train. The evening of our arrival Jamie went at once to see
    Charles Sumner who lives in a fine house adjoining our hotel.
    Nothing could be finer than the situation he has chosen. He
    kept J. until midnight and tried to detain him still longer,
    but the knowledge that I was waiting for him made him insist at
    length upon coming away. He found him better in health than he
    had supposed from the newspapers, and “the same old Sumner,” as
    Jamie said.

    Saturday morning I went in early with J. and passed the entire
    morning with the Senator. Several colored persons came in
    as we sat there, and those who were people of eminence were
    introduced. He talked of literature and showed us his own
    curiosities which appear to be numberless. Jamie was called
    away, but he urged me to stay. He said he had sent a message to
    the Senate which required a reply and he expected every moment
    to hear the sound of hoofs on the pavement, as he had requested
    a special messenger to be sent on horseback. The messenger did
    not arrive, but I stayed on all the same until his carriage
    came to take him to the Capitol, when he insisted that I should
    accompany him. He showed me all the wonders of the place,
    not forgetting the doors which Crawford never lived even to
    design in clay altogether, but which his wife, desiring to
    have the money, caused to be finished by her husband’s workmen
    and foisted upon our Government. They are poor enough. Sumner
    opposed her in what he considered a dishonest attempt to get
    money, but of course he could not make an open opposition of
    this nature against a lady, the widow of his friend.

    Sumner’s character is one of the most extraordinary pictures
    of opposing elements ever combined in one person. He is so
    possessed by Sumner that there is really no room for the fair
    existence of another in his world. Position, popularity,
    domestic happiness, health, have one by one been cut away
    from him, but he still stands erect, with as large a faith in
    Sumner and with as determined a look toward the future as if it
    beckoned him to glory and happiness. I suppose he must believe
    that the next turn of Fortune’s wheel must give him the favor
    he has now lost; but were he another man, all the honors of
    the state could hardly recompense him in the least for what
    he has lost. He has a firm proud spirit which his terrible
    bodily suffering does not appear to make falter. His health
    is so precarious that doubtless a few more adverse strokes
    would finish him; but he has had all there are to have, one
    would say. His friends, however, uphold him most tenderly;
    letters from dear Mrs. Child and others lay upon his table
    urging him to put away all excitement and try to live for the
    service of the state. Public honor, probity, the high service
    of his country seem to be the passions which animate him and
    by which he endures. He has a mania for collecting rare books
    and pictures nowadays and it is almost pitiful to see how
    this fancy runs away with him and how he must frequently be
    deceived. The tragedy of his marriage would be far more tragic
    if it had left any scar (as far as mortal can discover) save
    upon his pride. I would not do a man whom I hold in such honor
    any injustice, but he never _seemed_ in love.

    _Sunday._—Not well—kept to my room in the Arlington Hotel all
    day, obliged to refuse to see guests also, and dear J. has gone
    alone to dine with Sumner. I had hoped to see his home once
    more and to see him among his peers. There is always a doubt of
    course, but especially in his state of health, whether we may
    ever meet again. If not, I shall not soon forget his stately
    carriage at the Capitol yesterday nor the store he sets at
    present upon his counted friends.

    He pointed out the great avenue named Massachusetts, and the
    school house named after himself, with a just and noble pride
    yesterday. The trees are all ready to burst into leaf. Read
    Bayard Taylor’s Norwegian story, “Lars”—very sweet and fine it
    is—just missing “an excuse for being.” L. J. fills us with new
    respect and regard. Her devotion to her daughter is so perfect
    and so wise.

    Jamie returned about 12 o’clock. There had been a gorgeous
    dinner. The guests were Caleb Cushing, Carl Schurz, Perley
    Poore, Mr. Hill, J. T. F. The service was worthy of the house
    of an English nobleman, the feast worthy of Lucullus. It fairly
    astonished J. to see Sumner eat. He of course sat at S.’s
    right. Not a wine, nor a dish, was left untasted and even the
    richest puddings were taken in large quantities. I thought
    of poor Mrs. Child and other devout admirers of this their
    Republican (!) leader, then of Charlotte Brontë’s story of
    Thackeray at dinner. Some day, said J., we shall take up the
    paper and find Sumner is no more, and it will be after one of
    these dinners.

    The talk astonished J., utterly unused as he is to look behind
    the scenes of government. Caleb Cushing, a man over 70, who
    appears to have the vigor of 50, called Stanton “a master
    of duplicity.” Caleb Cushing said Seward was the first man
    who introduced ungentlemanly bearing into the Cabinet. Until
    he came there, there was no smoking, no putting up of the
    feet, but always a fine courtesy and dignity of behavior was
    preserved.

Before leaving the diaries from which so many pages have already been
drawn, before letting the last of the familiar faces which look out from
them fade again from sight, it would be a pity not to assemble a few
entries recalling notable persons of whom Mrs. Fields made fragmentary
but significant record. Here, for instance, are glimpses of Henry Ward
Beecher, fresh from the great service he rendered to the Union cause in
the Civil War by his speeches in England.

    _Tuesday, November 17, 1863._—J. T. F. saw Mr. Kennard today
    and we heard from him the particulars of Mr. Beecher’s landing.
    He came on shore in the warm fog which was the precursor of
    the heavy rain we have today, at 3 o’clock A.M. of Sunday. He
    went to the Parker House until day should break and Mr. Kennard
    could come and take him to the retirement of Brookline, to
    pass the day until the train should leave for New York. News
    of his arrival getting abroad, a company of orthodox deacons
    waited upon him very early to invite him to preach. “Gentlemen,
    do you take me for a fool,” he said, “to jump so readily into
    the harness of the pulpit even before the fatigue of the voyage
    has worn away?” He heard of the illness of one of his younger
    children and therefore hastened as quickly as possible toward
    home.

    The day before the one upon which he was to speak at Exeter
    Hall he awoke in the morning with a heavy headache; his voice,
    too, was seriously impaired by over-use. He wanted to speak,
    his whole heart was in it, yet how in this condition? He shut
    himself up in the house all that day and hoped for better
    things and went early to bed that night. The next morning at
    dawn he awoke, he opened his eyes quickly. “Is God to suffer me
    to do this work?” He leaped from the bed with a bound. His head
    was clear and fresh, but his voice—he hardly dared to try that.
    “I will speak to my sister three thousand miles away,” he said,
    and cried, “Harriet.” The tones were clear and strong. “Thank
    God!” he said—then speedily dressed—trying his voice again and
    again—then he sat down and wrote off the heads of his address.
    All he needed to say came freshly and purely to his mind just
    in the form he wished. The day ebbed away and the carriage came
    to take him to the hall. When he descended to the street, to
    his surprise there was a long file of policemen, through whom
    he was conducted because of the crowds waiting about his door.
    He was obliged to descend also at some distance from Exeter
    Hall, and he was again conducted through another line of police
    before he reached the door. The people pushed and cried out
    so that he ran from the carriage towards the hall; and one of
    the staid policemen, observing a man running, cried out and
    caught him by the coat-tail saying he mustn’t run there, that
    line was preserved for the great speaker. “Well, my friend,”
    said Mr. Beecher, “I can tell you one thing. There won’t be
    much speaking till I get there.” While he hurried on, he felt
    a woman lay hold of the skirts of his coat. The police, seeing
    her, tried to push her away, but she said to one of them, “I
    belong to his party.” Mr. B. said, “I overheard the poor thing,
    but I thought if she chose to tell a lie I would not push her
    away; but as I neared the door she crept up and whispered to
    me, ‘I am one of your people. Don’t you remember ——, a Scotch
    woman who used to live in Brooklyn and go to the Plymouth
    Church? I have thought of this for weeks and longed and dreamt
    of being with you again. Now my desire is heard.’”

    The rest of this wonderful night the public journals and his
    own letters can tell us of—have told us. He has been as it were
    a man raised up for this dark hour of our dear Country. May he
    live to see the promised land, and not only from the top of
    Pisgah.

    _December 10, 1863._—Visit from H. W. Beecher.... Mr. Beecher
    did not like Mr. Browning. He found him flippant and worldly.
    To be sure he had but one interview and could scarcely judge,
    but had he met the man by chance in a company he should never
    have sought him a second time. He said of Charles Lamb that he
    always reminded him of a honeysuckle growing between and over
    a rough trellis; it would cover the stakes, it would throw
    out blossoms and tendrils, it would attract hummingbirds and
    make corners for their nests and fill the wide air with its
    fragrance. Such was C. Lamb to him.

    He was sure he could have liked Mrs. Browning—so credulous,
    generous, outspoken. He liked strong outspoken people, yet he
    liked serene people too; but then, he loved the world in its
    wide variety.

    He said his boy wished to be either a stage-driver or a
    missionary. His fancy was for stage-driving; he thought perhaps
    his duty might make him a missionary....

    It was such a privilege to see him back and such a privilege to
    grasp his hand, I could say nothing but be happy and thankful.

A few years later a passing shape from still an earlier generation casts
its shadow of tragic outline across the pages of the diary.

    _Sunday, January 6, 1867._—A driving snow-storm. Last night
    Jamie went to the Club; met W. Everett, who said that while his
    father was member of Congress and was at one time returning
    from Washington to Boston he was stopped in the street as he
    passed through Philadelphia by a haggard man wrapped in a
    cloak. “I am Aaron Burr,” said the figure, “and I pray you to
    ask Congress for an appropriation to aid me in my misery.”
    Mr. E. replied that the member from his own district was the
    person to whom to apply. “I know that,” was the sad rejoinder,
    “but the others are all strangers to me and I pray you to help
    me.” After some reflection Mr. Everett promised to try to do
    something in his behalf; fortunately, however, he was released
    by death before Congress was again in session.

Then soon appears a more cheerful figure, in the person of the Rev.
Elijah Kellogg whose lines of “Spartacus to the Gladiators” have
resounded in many a schoolhouse. His tales of the Stowes and the family
Bible may still divert a generation that knows not Spartacus.

    _Thursday, January 10, 1867._—Yesterday J. fell in with a Mr.
    Kellogg, a clergyman from Harpswell, Maine, the author of many
    noble things, among the rest, of the “Speech of Spartacus”
    which is in Sargent’s “School Speaker,” a piece of which the
    boys are very fond, but the masters are obliged to forbid
    their speaking it because it always takes the prize. He wrote
    it while in college, to speak himself. He went to school with
    Longfellow, though he is younger than the poet, and the latter
    calls him a man of genius. He is a preacher of the gospel and
    for the past ten months has been speaking every Sunday at
    the Sailor’s Bethel with great effect. He called to see J.
    and told him some queer anecdotes regarding his sea-life. He
    dresses like a fisherman, red shirt, etc., while at home. He
    remembers Professor Stowe and his wife well. He says their
    arrival at Brunswick was looked for with eagerness by many,
    with some natural curiosity by himself. One day about the time
    they were expected he was in his boat floating near the pier
    and preparing to return to his island where he lives, as the
    tide was going down and if he delayed much longer he would be
    ashore; but he observed a woman sitting on a cask upon the
    wharf swinging her heels, with two large holes the size of a
    dollar each in the back of her stockings, a man standing by her
    side, and several children playing about. At once he believed
    it must be the new professor, so he dallied about in his boat
    observing them. Presently the man cried out, “Hallo there, will
    you give my wife a sail?” “I can’t,” he replied, “there’s no
    wind.” “Will you give her a row then?” “The tide’s too low and
    I shan’t get home.” “Oh,” said the woman, “we will pay you;
    you’d better take me out a little way.” “No, I can’t,” he said.
    Presently he heard somebody say something about that’s being
    the minister and not a fisherman at all. “Do you think so?”
    said Mrs. Stowe. With that he dropped down into the bottom of
    his boat and was off before another word.

    He told Mr. Fields also of the professor who preceded Professor
    Stowe. He was an unmarried man with three sisters, all of
    whom were insane at times and frequently one of them was away
    from home in an asylum. One day the brother was away, the
    eldest sister being at home in apparently good health, when
    another professor came to visit them to whom she wished to
    be particularly polite. “What will you have for dinner,” said
    she, “today?” “Oh! the best thing you’ve got,” he replied. So
    when dinner came she had stewed the family Bible with cabbage
    for his repast. He speaks with the greatest enthusiasm of the
    beauty of that Maine coast. We must go there.

Out of what seems a past almost pre-Augustan come these memories of N. P.
Willis, a poet who suffered the misfortune of outliving much of his own
fame.

    _Thursday, January 31, 1867._—The papers of last night brought
    the news of N. P. Willis’s death and that he was to be buried
    in Boston from St. Paul’s Church today. Early this morning
    a note came from Mrs. Willis asking Mr. Fields to see Dr.
    Howe and Edmund Quincy, to ask them to be pall-bearers with
    himself and Colonel Trimble. Fortunately last night J. had
    seen the announcement, and before going to Longfellow’s made
    up his mind to ask Longfellow and Lowell to come in to assist
    at the ceremony of their brother-author; he had also sent to
    Professor Holmes before the note came from Mrs. Willis. He then
    sent immediately for the others whom she mentioned and for a
    quantity of exquisite flowers. All his plans turned out as he
    had arranged and hoped and the poet’s grave was attended by the
    noblest America had to offer. The dead face was not exposed,
    but the people pressed forward to take a sprig from the coffin
    in memory of one who had strewn many a flower of thought on
    the hard way of their lives. There are some to speak hardly of
    Willis, but usually the awe of death ennobles his memory to the
    grateful world of his appreciators. “Refrain! refrain!” we long
    to say to the others who would carp. “If you have tears, shed
    them on the poet’s grave.”

    There had been previously an exquisite and touching service at
    Idlewild where Octavius Frothingham did all a man could do,
    inspired by the occasion and the loveliness of the day and
    scene. The service here would have seemed cold as stone except
    for the gracious poets who surrounded the body and prevented
    one thought of chill lack of sympathy from penetrating the
    flowers with which it was covered. I could not restrain my
    tears when I remembered a few years, only two, and the same
    company had borne Hawthorne’s body to its burial. Which, which,
    of that beloved and worshipped few was next to be borne by the
    weeping remnant!!

    _Wednesday, July 1, 1868._—In our walk yesterday J. delighted
    himself and me by rehearsing his memories of Willis. J. was at
    the Astor House when Willis returned first from Europe with his
    young bride. He was then the observed of all observers. As in
    those days travellers crossed in sailing vessels, his coming
    was not heralded; the first that was known of their arrival was
    when he walked into the Astor with his beautiful young wife
    upon his arm. He wore a brown cloak thrown gracefully about his
    shoulders and was a man to remind one of Lady Blessington’s
    saying, “If Willis had been born to £10,000 a year he would
    have been a perfect man.” He was then at the head of the world
    of literature in America; his influence could do anything and
    his heart and purse were both at the service of the needy
    asker. Unfortunately from the first he never paid his debts.
    J. said he never believed the tales of Willis’s dissipation.
    He spent money freely even when he had it not. All the English
    folk, lords and ladies, who then came to see America were the
    guests of Willis.

    I asked what his wife was like! “Like a seraph. She was lovely
    with all womanly attractions.”

Of the various “causes” to which Mrs. Fields and her husband paid
allegiance, the cause of equal opportunity for men and women cannot
justly be left unmentioned. They espoused it before its friends were
taken with the seriousness they have long commanded, and, as the
following passage will suggest, were full of sympathy with those who
fought its early battles. The impact of one of these combatants, Mrs.
Mary A. Livermore, a reformer in sundry fields, against the rock of
conservatism represented by the President of Harvard College, is the
subject of a lively bit of record.

    _September 22, 1876._—At four came Miss Phelps, at six came
    Mrs. Livermore. Ah! She is indeed a great woman—a strong arm to
    those who are weak, a new faith in time of trouble. She came to
    tea as fresh as if she had been calmly sunning herself all the
    week instead of speaking at a great meeting at Faneuil Hall the
    previous evening and taking cold in the process. She talked
    most wittily and brilliantly, beside laughing most heartily and
    merrily over all dear J.’s absurd stories and illustrations.
    He told her of a woman who came to speak to him after one of
    his lectures, to thank him for what he was trying to do for the
    education of women. She said, “I was educated at home with my
    brothers and taught all they were taught, learning my lessons
    by their side and reciting with them until the time came for
    them to go to college. Nobody ever told me I was not to go to
    college! And when the moment arrived and it dawned upon me that
    I was to be left behind to do nothing, to learn nothing more, I
    was terribly unhappy.”

    “I know just how she felt,” said Mrs. Livermore; “there was a
    party of six of us girls, sisters and cousins, who had studied
    with our brothers up to the time for going to college. We were
    all ready, but what was to be done? We were told that no girls
    had entered Harvard thus far. We said to each other, we six
    girls will go to Cambridge and call upon President Quincy, show
    him where we stand in our lessons, and ask him to admit us. I
    was the youngest of the party. I was noted for being rather hot
    and intemperate in speech in those days, and the girls made me
    promise before we left the house [not to speak]—‘For as sure as
    you do,’ they said, ‘you will spoil all.’ So I promised, and we
    went to Cambridge and found Mr. Quincy. The girls laid their
    proposition before him as clearly as they dared, by showing
    him what they had done in their lessons. ‘Very smart girls,
    unusually capable girls,’ he said encouragingly; ‘but can you
    cook?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said one, ‘we have kept house for some
    time.’ ‘Highly important,’ he said; and so on during the space
    of an hour.”

    Mrs. Livermore said she found he was toying with them and
    they were as far away from the subject in their minds as the
    moment they arrived, and, forgetting her promise of silence,
    she said: “‘But, Mr. Quincy, what we came to ask is, will you
    allow us to come to college when our brothers do? You say we
    are sufficiently prepared; is there anything to prevent our
    admission?’ ‘Oh, yes, my dear, we never allow girls at Harvard;
    you know, the place for girls is at home.’ ‘Yes, but, Mr.
    Quincy, if we are prepared, we would not ask to recite, but may
    we not attend the recitations and sit silent in the classes?’
    ‘No, my dear, you may not.’ ‘Then I wish—’ ‘What do you wish?’
    he said. ‘I wish I were God for one instant, that I might kill
    every woman from Eve down and let you have a masculine world
    all to yourselves and see how you would like that.’ Up to this
    point the girls had been kept up by excitement, but there we
    broke down. I tried the best I could not to cry, but I found
    my eyes were getting full, and the only thing for us to do
    was to leave as soon as we could for home. We lived in the
    vicinity of Copp’s Hill and I can see, as distinctly as if it
    were yesterday, the room looking out on the burial-ground in
    which we all sat down together and cried ourselves half-blind.
    ‘I wish I was dead,’ said one. ‘I wish I had never been born,’
    said another. ‘Martha, get up from that stone seat,’ said
    a third; ‘you’ll get cold.’ ‘I don’t care if I do,’ said
    Martha; ‘I shall perhaps die the sooner.’ We were all terribly
    indignant.”

    I was deeply interested in this history. I was standing over
    the cradle of woman’s emancipation and seeing it rocked by the
    hand of sorrow and indignation.

Other passages might be cited merely to illustrate the skill and industry
of Mrs. Fields in reducing to narrative form the mass of reported talk
of one sort or another which her husband brought home to her. A striking
instance of this is found in the full rendering of a story told by R. H.
Dana, Jr., to Fields, at a time when they were discussing a new edition
of “Two Years before the Mast.” It is a long dramatic account of Dana’s
experience on a burning ship in the Pacific, which he told Fields he
had “never yet found time to write down.” In Charles Francis Adams’s
biography of Dana, the bare bones of the story are preserved in a diary
Dana was keeping during the voyage in which this calamity occurred. If
Adams could but have turned to the diary of Mrs. Fields for 1868, he
would have found a detailed description of an episode in Dana’s life
which might well have been included in his biography.

[Illustration: _From a letter of Edward Lear’s to Fields_]

But the _if’s_ of bookmaking are hardly less abundant than those of
history. If, for a single instance, this were in any real sense a
biography of Mrs. Fields, it would be necessary for the reader to explore
with the compiler the journals and letters written during two visits the
Fieldses made to Europe in 1859 and 1869. But this would be foreign to
the present purpose, which has not been either to produce a biography,
or to evoke all the interesting persons known to Mrs. Fields, at home
and abroad, but rather to present them and her against her own intimate
and distinctive background. She herself has written, in her “Authors and
Friends,” of Tennyson and Lady Tennyson, and to the pictures she has
drawn of them it would be easily possible to add fresh lines from the
unprinted records—as it would be, also, to bring forth passages touching
upon many another familiar figure of Victorian England. The roving lover
who justified himself by singing that

    They were my visits, but thou art my home,

stated, in essence, the principle to which these pages have adhered.
The frequenters of the house in Charles Street well knew that something
of its color and flavor was derived from the excursions its hostess
made into other scenes. Yet her own color and flavor were not those of
the visitor, but of the visited. It is a pity that many who would have
been welcome visitors—none more than Edward Lear—never came. Even as it
is, there is ample ground for laying the emphasis of this book upon the
panorama of a picturesque social life chiefly as seen from within the
hospitable walls of Mr. and Mrs. Fields. When he died in 1881, a long and
happy chapter in her long and happy life came to its close.




VII

SARAH ORNE JEWETT


Such a statement about Mrs. Fields as that she “was to survive her
husband many years and was to flourish as a copious second volume—the
connection licenses the figure—of the work anciently issued,” almost
identifies itself, without remark, as proceeding from the same friend,
Henry James, whose words have colored a previous chapter of this book.
The many years to which he referred were, indeed, nearly thirty-four
in number, about a third of a century, or what is commonly counted a
generation. For a longer period than that through which she was the
wife of James T. Fields, she was thus his widow. Through nearly all
of this period the need of her nature for an absorbing affectionate
intimacy was met through her friendship with Sarah Orne Jewett. It was
with reference to her that Mrs. Fields, in the preface to a collection
of Miss Jewett’s letters, published in 1911, two years after her death,
wrote of “the power that lies in friendship to sustain the giver as well
as the receiver.” In the friendship of these two women it would have
been impossible to define either one, to the exclusion of the other, as
the giver or the receiver. They were certainly both sustained by their
relation.

Miss Jewett, born in South Berwick, Maine, in 1849, and continuously
identified with that place until her death in 1909, first entered the
“Atlantic circle” in 1869, when she was but twenty years old, and Fields
was still editor of the magazine. In that year a story by her, called
“Mr. Bruce” and credited in the index of the magazine—for contributions
then appeared unsigned—to “A. C. Eliot,” was printed in the “Atlantic.”
Four years later, _Consule Howells_, “The Shore House,” a second story,
appeared over her own name, the practice of printing signatures having
meanwhile been instituted. In May, 1875, the “Atlantic” contained a poem
by Miss Jewett, which may be quoted, not so much to remind the readers
of those stories of New England on which her later fame was based, that
in her earlier years she was much given to the writing of verse, as to
explain in a way the union—there is no truer word for it—that came later
to exist between herself and Mrs. Fields.

Thus it read:—

    TOGETHER

    I wonder if you really send
      Those dreams of you that come and go!
    I like to say, “She thought of me,
      And I have known it.” Is it so?

    Though other friends walk by your side,
      Yet sometimes it must surely be,
    They wonder where your thoughts have gone,
      Because I have you here with me.

    And when the busy day is done
      And work is ended, voices cease,
    When every one has said good night,
      In fading firelight, then in peace

    I idly rest: you come to me,—
      Your dear love holds me close to you.
    If I could see you face to face
      It would not be more sweet and true;

    I do not hear the words you speak,
      Nor touch your hands, nor see your eyes:
    Yet, far away the flowers may grow
      From whence to me the fragrance flies;

    And so, across the empty miles
      Light from my star shines. Is it, dear,
    Your love has never gone away?
      I said farewell and—kept you here.

[Illustration: SARAH ORNE JEWETT]

It was not strange that the writer of just such a poem should have
seemed to Fields, before his death in 1881, the ideal friend to fill the
impending gap in the life of his wife. He must have known that, when the
time should come for readjusting herself to life without him, she would
need something more than random contacts with friends, no matter how
rewarding each such relationship might be. He must have realized that
the intensely personal element in her nature would require an outlet
through an intensely personal devotion. If he could have foreseen the
relation that grew up between Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett—her junior by
about fifteen years—almost immediately upon his death, and continued
throughout the life of the younger friend, he would surely have felt a
great security of satisfaction in what was yet to be. In all her personal
manifestations, and in all her work, Miss Jewett embodied a quality of
distinction, a quality of the true _aristophile_,—to employ a term
which has seemed to me before to fit that small company of lovers of
the best to which these ladies preëminently belonged,—that made them
foreordained companions. To Mrs. Fields it meant much to stand in a
close relation—apart from all considerations of a completely uniting
friendship—with such an artist as Miss Jewett, to feel that through
sympathy and encouragement she was furthering a true and permanent
contribution to American letters. To Miss Jewett, whose life, before
this intimacy began, had been led almost entirely in the Maine village
of her birth,—a village of dignity and high traditions that were her
own inheritance,—there came an extension of interests and stimulating
contacts through finding herself a frequent member of another household
than her own, and that a very nucleus of quickening human intercourse. To
pursue her work of writing chiefly at South Berwick, to come to Boston,
or Manchester, for that freshening of the spirit which the creative
writer so greatly needs, and there to find the most sympathetic and
devoted of friends, also much occupied herself with the writing of books
and with all commerce of vital thoughts—what could have afforded a more
delightful arrangement of life?

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY IN CHARLES STREET; MRS. FIELDS AT THE WINDOW,
MISS JEWETT AT THE RIGHT]

Even as early as 1881, the year of Fields’s death, Miss Jewett published
the fourth of her many books, “Country By-Ways,” preceded by “Deephaven”
(1877), “Play Days” (1878), and “Old Friends and New” (1879). From 1881
onward her production was constant and abundant. In 1881 also began a
period of remarkable productiveness on the part of Mrs. Fields. In
that very year of her husband’s death she published both her “James T.
Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches,” and a second edition
of “Under the Olive,” a small volume in which she had brought together in
1880 a number of poems in which the influence of the Greek and English
poets is sometimes manifested—notably in “Theocritus”—to excellent
purpose. If Mrs. Fields had been a poet of distinctive power, the fact
would long ago have established itself. To make any such claim for her
at this late day would be to depart from the purpose of this book. It
was for the most part rather as a friend than as a daughter of the Muses
that she turned to verse, the medium of utterance for so many of that
nest of singing-birds in which her life was passed. In 1883 came her
little volume “How to Help the Poor,” representing an interest in the
less fortunate which prepared her to become one of the founders of the
Associated Charities of Boston, kept her long active and influential in
the service of that organization, and made her at the last one of its
generous benefactors. In 1895 and 1900, respectively, appeared two more
volumes of verse, “The Singing Shepherd and Other Poems,” assembling the
work of earlier and later years, and “Orpheus, a Masque,” each strongly
touched, like “Under the Olive,” with the Grecian spirit. From “The
Singing Shepherd” I cannot resist quoting one of the best things it
contains—a sonnet, “Flammantis Mœnia Mundi,” under which, in my own copy
of the book, I find the penciled note, written probably more than twenty
years ago: “Mrs. Fields tells me that this sonnet came to her complete,
one may almost say; standing on her feet she made it, but for one or two
small changes, just as it is, in about fifteen minutes.”

    I stood alone in purple space and saw
    The burning walls of the world, like wings of flame,
    Circling the sphere; there was no break nor flaw
    In those vast airy battlements whence came
    The spirits who had done with time and fame
    And all the playthings of earth’s little hour;
    I saw them each, I knew them for the same,
    Mothers and brothers and the sons of power.

    Yet were they changed; the flaming walls had burned
    Their perishable selves, and there remained
    Only the pure white vision of the soul,
    The mortal part consumed, and swift returned
    Ashes to ashes; while unscathed, unstained,
    The immortal passed beyond the earth’s control.

For the rest, her writings may be said to have grown out of the life
which the pages of her diary have pictured. The successive volumes
were these: “Whittier: Notes of his Life and of his Friendship” (New
York, 1893); “A Shelf of Old Books” (New York, 1894); “Letters of Celia
Thaxter” (edited with Miss Rose Lamb, Boston, 1895); “Authors and
Friends” (Boston, 1896); “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe”
(Boston, 1897); “Nathaniel Hawthorne” (in the “Beacon Biographies,”
Boston, 1899); “Charles Dudley Warner” (New York, 1909); and, after the
death of the friend whose name appears above this chapter, “Letters of
Sarah Orne Jewett” (Boston, 1911).

[Illustration: _An autograph copy of Mrs. Fields’s “Flammantis Mœnia
Mundi” before its final revision_]

This catalogue of publications is in itself a dry bit of reading, and
to add the titles of all the books produced by Miss Jewett after 1881
would not enliven the record. But the lists, explicit and implicit, will
serve at least to suggest the range and nature of the activities of mind
and spirit in which the two friends shared for many years. It is no
wonder that Mrs. Fields, who abandoned the regular maintenance of her
diary in the face of her husband’s failing health, resumed it in later
years only under the special provocations of travel. In its place she
took up the practice of writing daily missives—sometimes letters, more
often the merest notes—to Miss Jewett whenever they were separated.
These innumerable little messages of affection contained frequent
references to persons and passing events, but rather as memoranda for
talk when the two friends should meet than as records at all resembling
the earlier journals. Such local friends as Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. Bell,
in whom the spirit and wit of their father, Rufus Choate, shone on for
later generations; Mrs. Whitman, mistress of the arts of color and
of friendship; Miss Guiney, figuring always as “the Linnet,” even as
Mrs. Thaxter was “the Sandpiper”; Dr. Holmes, Phillips Brooks, “dear
Whittier”—these and scores of others, young and old, known and unknown
to fame, people the scene which the little notes recall. There are,
besides, such visitors from abroad as Matthew Arnold and his wife, Mrs.
Humphry Ward and her daughter, M. and Mme. Brunetière, and Mme. Blanc
(“Th. Bentzon”), whose article, “Condition de la Femme aux États-Unis,”
in the “Revue des Deux Mondes” for September, 1894, could not have been
written but for the knowledge of Boston acquired through a long visit to
the house in Charles Street. Of the salon of her hostess she wrote: “Je
voudrais essayer de peindre celui qui se rapproche le plus, par beaucoup
de côtés, les salons de France de la meilleure époque, le salon de Mrs.
J. T. Fields.” She goes on to paint it, and from the picture at least one
fragment—apropos of the portraits in the house—should be rescued, if only
for the piquancy conferred by Mme. Blanc’s native tongue upon a bit of
anecdote: “Emerson réalise bien, en physique, l’idée d’immatérialité que
je me faisais de lui. Mrs. Fields me conte une jolie anecdote: vers la
fin de sa vie, il fut prit d’un singulier accès de curiosité; il voulut
savoir une fois ce que c’était le whisky et entra dans un bar pour s’en
servir:—Vous voulez un verre d’eau, Mr. Emerson? dit le garçon, sans lui
donner le temps d’exprimer sa criminelle envie. Et le philosophe but son
verre d’eau, ... et il mourut sans connaître le goût du whisky.”

[Illustration: MRS. FIELDS ON HER MANCHESTER PIAZZA]

But if the notes of Mrs. Fields to Miss Jewett, and Miss Jewett’s own
letters to her friend in Boston, do not provide any counterpart to the
diaries which make up the greater portion of this book, there are, in the
journals kept by Mrs. Fields on special occasions of travel, records of
experiences shared by the two friends which should be given here.

When they went to Europe together, as early as 1882, the two travellers
were happily characterized by Whittier in a sonnet, “Godspeed,” as

                      her in whom
    All graces and sweet charities unite
    The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
    And her for whom New England’s byways bloom,
    Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
    Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.

No effort or adventure seemed to daunt the companions in their
journeyings. There was an indomitable quality in Mrs. Fields which
Miss Jewett used to ascribe to her “May blood,” with its strain of
abolitionism, and it showed itself when she accepted with enthusiasm,
and successfully urged Miss Jewett to accept, an invitation to make a
two months’ winter cruise in West Indian waters, in company with Mr. and
Mrs. Aldrich, on the yacht Hermione of their friend, Henry L. Pierce.
The diary of Mrs. Fields records discomforts and pleasures with an equal
hand, and gives lively glimpses of island and ocean scenes. At Santo
Domingo, for example, the President of the Republic of Haiti dined on the
Hermione on St. Valentine’s Day, 1896, and talked in a manner to which
the impending liberation of Cuba from the Spanish yoke may now be seen to
have added some significance.

    Anything more interesting than his conversation [wrote Mrs.
    Fields] would be impossible to find. He ended just before
    we left the table by speaking of Cuba. He is inclined to
    believe that the day of Spain is over. The people are already
    conquerors in the interior and are approaching Havana. Spain
    will soon be compelled to retire to her coast defenses and she
    is sure to be driven thence in two years or sooner. Of course,
    if the Cubans are recognized by the great powers they will
    triumph all the sooner.

    “Do these island republics take the part of Cuba?” someone
    asked.

    “I will tell you a little tale of a camel,” he said, “if you
    will allow me—a camel greatly overladen who lamented his sad
    fate. ‘I am bent to the earth,’ he said; ‘everything is heaped
    upon me and I feel as if I could never rise again under such a
    load.’ Upon his pack was seated a flea, who heard the lament
    of the camel. Immediately the flea jumped to the ground. ‘See!’
    he said; ‘now rise, I have relieved you of my own weight.’
    ‘Thank you, Mr. Elephant,’ said the camel, as he glanced at the
    flea hopping away. The recognition of these islands would help
    Cuba about as much,” he added laughingly.

But the President of Haiti, concerning whom much more might be quoted, is
less a part of the present picture than Thomas Bailey Aldrich, of whom
Mrs. Fields wrote, February 21:—

    T. B. A.’s wit and pleasant company never fail—he is so
    natural, finding fault at times, without being a fault-finder,
    and being crusty like another human creature when out of
    sorts—but on the whole a most refreshing companion, coming
    up from below every morning with a shining countenance, his
    hair curling like a boy’s, and ready for a new day. He said
    yesterday that he should like to live 450 years—“shouldn’t
    you?” “No,” I said; “I am on tip-toe for the flight.” “Ah,”
    he said with a visible shudder, “we know nothing about it!
    Oddly enough, I have strange impressions of having lived
    before—once in London especially—not at St. Paul’s, or Pall
    Mall, or in any of the great places where I might have been
    deceived by previous imaginations,—not at all,—but among some
    old streets where I had never been before and where I had no
    associations.” He would have gone on in this vein and would
    have drawn me into giving some reasons for my faith which would
    have been none to him, but fortunately we were interrupted.
    He is full of quips and cranks in talk—is a worshipper of the
    English language and a good student of Murray’s Grammar, in
    which he faithfully believes. His own training in it he values
    as much as anything which ever came to him. He picks up the
    unfortunates, of which I am chief, who say “people” meaning
    “persons,” who say “at length” for “at last,” and who use
    foolish redundancies, but I cannot seem to record his fun. He
    began to joke Bridget early in the voyage about the necessity
    of being tattooed when she arrived at the Windward Islands,
    like the rest of the crew! Fancying that he saw a sort of half
    idea that he was in earnest, he kept it up and told her that
    the butter-mark of Ponkapog should be the device! The matter
    had nearly blown over when yesterday he wanted her suddenly and
    called, “Bridget,” at the gangway rather sharply. “Here, sir,”
    said the dear creature running quickly to mount the stairs.
    “The tattoo-man is here,” said T. B. With all seriousness
    Bridget paused a moment, wavered, looked again, and then came
    on laughing to do what he really wanted. “That man will be
    the death of me—so he will,” said B. as she went away on her
    errand. She is his slave; gets his clothes and waits upon him
    every moment; but his fun and sweetness with her “_désennuie de
    service_,” and more, charges it with pleasantness.

    T. B. A. is a most careful reader and a true reporter upon the
    few good books of which he is cognizant. He has read Froude’s
    history twice through, and Queen Mary’s reign three times. He
    has read a vast number of novels, hundreds and hundreds,—French
    and English,—but his knowledge of French seems to stop there.
    He also once knew Spanish, but that seems to have dropped—he
    never, I think, could speak much of any language save his
    own. Being a master there is so much more than the rest of us
    achieve that we feel he has won his laurels.

On a later journey, in 1898, Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett, visiting
England and France in company with Miss Jewett’s sister and nephew, were
on more familiar and more suitable ground—if indeed that word can be used
even figuratively for the unstable deck of a yacht. In London there were
many old and new friends to be seen. In Paris Mme. Blanc opened for the
travellers the doors of many a salon not commonly accessible to visiting
Americans. But from all the abundant chronicle of these experiences, it
will be enough to make two selections. The first describes a visit to the
Provençal poet, Mistral, with his “Boufflo Beel” dog and hat; the second,
a glimpse of Henry James at Rye.

[Illustration: MISTRAL, MASTER OF “BOUFFLO BEEL”]

It was in May of 1898, that Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett, finding Paris
cold and rainy, determined to strike for sunshine, and the South. A
little journey into Provence, and a visit to Mistral, followed this
decision. The following notes record the visit.

    A perfect time and perfect weather in which to see the country
    of Provence. Fields of great white poppies and other flowers
    planted for seed in this district made the way beautiful on
    either hand. Olive trees with rows of black cypress and old
    tiled-roofed farmhouses, and the mountains always on the
    horizon, filled the landscape. The first considerable house
    we reached was the home of the poet. A pretty garden which
    attracted our attention with a rare eglantine called La Reine
    Joanne, and other charming things hanging over the wall made
    us suspicious of the poet’s vicinity. Turning the corner of
    this garden and driving up a short road, we found the courtyard
    and door on the inner side as it were. We heard a barking
    dog. “Take care,” said the driver, “there is a dangerous dog
    inside.” We waited until Mistral himself came to meet us from
    the garden; he was much amused. There was an old dog tied,
    half asleep, on a bench and a young one by his side. He said
    laughing, “These are all, and they could not be less dangerous.
    The elder” (he let them loose while he spoke and they played
    about us), “the elder I call Bouffe, from Boufflo Beel”
    (Mistral does not speak any English, nor does his wife) “and
    the reason is because I happened to be in the neighborhood of
    Paris once just after Buffalo Bill had passed on toward Calais
    with his troupe. I saw a little dog, unlike the dogs of our
    country, who seemed to be lost, but the moment he saw me, he
    thought I was ‘Boufflo Beel’ and adopted me for his master.
    You see I look like him,” he said, putting his wide felt hat
    a little more on one side! Yes, we did think so. “Well, the
    little dog has been with us ever since. He possesses the most
    wonderful intelligence and understands every word we say. One
    day I said to him, ‘What a pity such a nice dog as you should
    have no children!’ A few days later the servant said to me,
    ‘Bouffe has been away nearly two days, but he has now come
    back bringing his wife.’ ‘Ah!’ I said, ‘take good care of them
    both.’ In due time this other little dog, his son, arrived
    in the world, and shortly after Bouffe carried his wife away
    again, but kept the little dog. He is a wonderful fellow, to be
    sure.”

    We went into the house and sat down to talk awhile about poetry
    and books. There was a large book-case full of French and
    Provençal literature here, but it was rather the parlor and
    everyday sitting-room than his work-room. Unhappily, they have
    no children. Evidently they are exceedingly happy together and
    naturally do not miss what they have never had. She opened the
    drawing-room for us, which is the room of state. It is full
    of interesting things connected with Provence and their own
    life, but perfectly simple, in accord with the country-like
    fashion of their existence. There is a noble bas-relief of
    the head of Mistral, the drum or “tambour” of the Félibre, or
    for the Farandole, and, without overloading, plenty of good
    things—photographs, one or two pictures, not many, for the
    house is not that of a rich man, plaster casts, and one or
    two busts,—perhaps the presents of artists,—illustrations of
    “Mirèio,” and things associated with their individual lives
    or the life of Provence. Presently Mistral gave me his arm
    and we went across the hall. Standing in the place of honor
    opposite the front door and in the large corner made by the
    staircase, is a fine copy of the bust of Lamartine, crowned
    with an olive wreath. We paused a moment here while Mistral
    spoke of Lamartine, and always with the sincere reverence which
    he has expressed in the poem entitled “_Élégie sur la mort de
    Lamartine_.” ...

    The dining-room was still more Provençal, if possible, than the
    rooms we had visited. The walls were white, which, with the
    closed green blinds, must give a pleasant light when the days
    are hot, yet bright even on grey days. Specimens of the pottery
    of the country hang around, decorated with soft colors. The
    old carved bread-mixing-and-holding affair, which belonged in
    every well-to-do house of the old time, was there, and one or
    two other old pieces of furniture, while the chairs, sofa, and
    table were of quaint shape, painted green with some decorations.

    The details are all petty enough, but they proved how sincerely
    Mistral and his wife love their country and their surroundings
    and endeavor to ennoble them and make the most of them. After
    sitting at table and enjoying their hospitality, we went out
    again into the garden where Madame Mistral gathered “Nerto”
    (myrtle) for us, beside roses and other more beautiful but
    more formidable things. “Nerto” is the title of one of his
    last books (I hear) and the wife doubtless believed that we
    should cherish a branch of her myrtle especially in memory of
    the visit. She was quite right, but these things which are
    “to last”—how frail they are; the things that remain are those
    which are written on the heart.

    We cannot forget these two picturesque beings standing in their
    garden, filling our hands with flowers and bidding us farewell.
    As we drove away into the sunny plain once more, we found it
    speaking to us with a voice of human kindness echoing from
    that poetic and friendly home. In a more personal vein, the
    address to Lamartine by Mistral expresses better his mood of
    the afternoon when we stood together looking at the bust and
    recalling each our personal remembrance of the man.

An excursion from London, on September 12, devoted to a day with Henry
James, gave Mrs. Fields a memorable glimpse of the son of an old friend,
and an honest pleasure in learning at first hand of his appreciation of
Miss Jewett’s writings.

    _Monday, September 13, 1898._—We left London about 11 o’clock
    for Rye, to pass the day with Mr. Henry James. He was waiting
    for us at the station with a carriage, and in five minutes we
    found ourselves at the top of a silent little winding street,
    at a green door with a brass knocker, wearing the air of
    impenetrable respectability which is so well known in England.
    Another instant and an old servant, Smith (who with his wife
    has been in Mr. James’s service for 20 years), opened the door
    and helped us from the carriage. It was a pretty interior—large
    enough for elegance, and simple enough to suit the severe
    taste of a scholar and private gentleman.

    Mr. James was intent on the largest hospitality. We were asked
    upstairs over a staircase with a pretty balustrade and plain
    green drugget on the steps; everything was of the severest
    plainness, but in the best taste, “not at all austere,” as he
    himself wrote us.

    We soon went down again after leaving our hats, to find a
    young gentleman, Mr. McAlpine, who is Mr. James’s secretary,
    with him, awaiting us. This young man is just the person to
    help Mr. James. He has a bump of reverence and appreciates
    his position and opportunity. We sat in the parlor opening on
    a pretty garden for some time, until Mr. James said he could
    not conceive why luncheon was not ready and he must go and
    inquire, which he did in a very responsible manner, and soon
    after Smith appeared to announce the feast. Again a pretty room
    and table. We enjoyed our talk together sincerely at luncheon
    and afterward strolled into the garden. The dominating note was
    dear Mr. James’s pleasure in having a home of his own to which
    he might ask us. From the garden, of course, we could see the
    pretty old house still more satisfactorily. An old brick wall
    concealed by vines and laurels surrounds the whole irregular
    domain; a door from the garden leads into a paved courtyard
    which seemed to give Mr. James peculiar satisfaction; returning
    to the garden, and on the other side, at an angle with the
    house, is a building which he laughingly called the temple
    of the Muse. This is his own place _par excellence_. A good
    writing-table and one for his secretary, a typewriter, books,
    and a sketch by Du Maurier, with a few other pictures (rather
    mementoes than works of art), excellent windows with clear
    light, such is the temple! Evidently an admirable spot for his
    work.

[Illustration: _Reduced facsimile of postscript of a letter from Henry
James, expressing the intention, which he could not fulfill, to provide
an Introduction to the “Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett”_]

    After we returned to the parlor Mr. James took occasion to
    tell Sarah how deeply and sincerely he appreciated her work;
    how he re-reads it with increasing admiration. “It is foolish
    to ask, I know,” he said, “but were you in just such a place
    as you describe in the ‘Pointed Firs’?” “No,” she said, “not
    precisely; the book was chiefly written before I visited
    the locality itself.” “And such an island?” he continued.
    “Not exactly,” she said again. “Ah! I thought so,” he said
    musingly; and the language—“It is so absolutely true—not a word
    overdone—such elegance and exactness.” “And Mrs. Dennet—how
    admirable she is,” he said again, not waiting for a reply. I
    need not say they were very much at home together after this.

    Meanwhile the carriage came again to the door, for he had made
    a plan to take us on a drive to Winchelsea, a second of the
    Cinq Portes, Rye itself also being one. The sea has retreated
    from both these places, leaving about two miles of the Romney
    Marsh between them and the shore. Nothing could be more
    like something born of the imagination than the old city of
    Winchelsea.... Just outside the old gate looking towards Rye
    and the sea from a lonely height is the cottage where Ellen
    Terry has found a summer resting-place and retirement. It is a
    true home for an artist—nothing could be lovelier. Unhappily
    she was not there, but we were happy to see the place which she
    described to us with so great satisfaction.

    From Winchelsea Mr. James drove us to the station, where we
    took the train for Hastings. He had brought his small dog, an
    aged black and tan terrier, with him for a holiday. He put on
    the muzzle, which all dogs just now must wear, and took it off
    a great many times until, having left it once when he went to
    buy the tickets and recovered it, he again lost it and it could
    not be found; so as soon as he reached Hastings, he took a
    carriage again to drive us along the esplanade, but the first
    thing was to buy a new muzzle. This esplanade is three miles
    long, but we began to feel like tea, so having looked upon
    the sea sufficiently from this decidedly unromantic point of
    view, we went into a small shop and enjoyed more talk under new
    conditions. “How many cakes have you eaten?” “Ten,” gravely
    replied Mr. James—at which we all laughed. “Oh, I know,” said
    the girl with a wise look at the desk. “How do you suppose they
    know?” said Mr. James musingly as he turned away. “They always
    do!” And so on again presently to the train at Hastings, where
    Mr. McAlpine appeared at the right instant. Mr. James’s train
    for Rye left a few moments before ours for London. He took a
    most friendly farewell and having left us to Mr. McA. ran for
    his own carriage. In another five minutes we too were away,
    bearing our delightful memories of this meeting.

Not because they record momentous events and encounters, but merely
as little pictures of the life which Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett led
together, these passages are brought to light. They are the last to be
presented here. For more than another decade beyond the summer of 1898,
Miss Jewett, sorely invalided through the final years as the result of a
carriage accident, remained the central personal fact in Mrs. Fields’s
interest and affections. Soon after her death, in June, 1909, Mrs. Fields
wrote about her to a common friend: “Of my dear Sarah—I believe one of
her noblest qualities was her great generosity. Others could only guess
at this, but I was allowed to know it. Not that she made gifts, but a
wide sympathy was hers for every disappointed or incompetent fellow
creature. It was a most distinguishing characteristic! Governor Andrew
spoke of Judge B—— once as ‘A friend to every man who did not need a
friend’! Sarah’s quick sympathy knew a friend was in need before she knew
it herself; she was the spirit of beneficence, and her quick delicate wit
was such a joy in daily companionship!”

Of this daily companionship an anonymous contributor to the “Atlantic
Monthly” for August, 1909, had been a fortunate witness. I need not ask
his permission to repeat a portion of what he then wrote:—

“There is but one familiar portrait of Miss Jewett. It has been so
often reprinted that many who have seen it, even without seeing her,
must think of her as immune from change, blessed with perpetual youth,
with a gracious, sympathetic femininity, with an air of breeding and
distinction quite independent of shifting fashions.

“This portrait is intimately symbolic of her work. It typifies with a
rare faithfulness the quality of all the products of her pen. In them
one found, and finds, the same abiding elements of beauty, sympathy, and
distinction. The element of sympathy—perhaps the greatest of these—found
its expression in a humor that provoked less of outward laughter than
of smiles within, and in a pathos the very counterpart of this delicate
quality. The beauty and the distinction may be less capable of brief
characterization, but they pervaded her art....

“This work of hers, in dealing with the New England life she knew and
loved, was essentially American, as purely indigenous as the pointed firs
of her own countryside. The art with which she wrought her native themes
was limited, on the contrary, by no local boundaries. At its best it had
the absolute quality of the highest art in every quarter of the globe.
And the spirit in which she approached her task was as broad in its
scope and sympathy as her art in its form. It was precisely this union
of what was at once so clearly American and so clearly universal that
distinguished her stories, in the eyes of both editor and reader, as the
best—so often—in any magazine that contained them.

“Her constant demand upon herself was for the best. There were no
compromises with mediocrity, either in her tastes or in her achievements.
It was the best aspect of New England character and tradition on which
her vision steadily dwelt. She was satisfied with nothing short of the
best in her interpretation of New England life. The form of creative
writing in which she won her highest successes—the short story—is the
form in which Americans have made their most distinctive contributions
to English literature: and her place with the few best of these writers
appears to be secure.

“If the familiar portrait typifies her work, it is equally true to the
person herself. The quick, responsive spirit of youth, with all its
sincerity, all its enjoyment in friendship or whatever else the day
might hold, was an immutable possession. So were all the other qualities
for which the features spoke. Through the recent years of physical
disability, due in the first instance to an accident so gratuitous that
it seemed to her friends unendurable, there was a noble patience, a
sweet endurance, that could have sprung only from an heroic strain of
character.”

For nearly six years Mrs. Fields survived Miss Jewett, bereaved as by the
loss of half her personal world, yet indomitable of spirit and energy,
so long as her physical forces would permit any of the old accustomed
exercises of hospitality and friendship. The selection and publication
of Miss Jewett’s letters was a labor of love which continued the sense
of companionship for the first two of the remaining years. Through the
four others there was a failing of bodily strength, though not at all of
mental and spiritual eagerness; and in her outward mien through all the
later years, there was that which must have recalled to many the ancient
couplet:—

    No Spring, nor summer’s beauty hath such grace
    As I have seen in one autumnal face.

Towards the end there was a brief return to the keeping of a sporadic
diary. Its final words, written January 25, 1913, were these: “The days
go on cheerfully. I have just read Mark Twain’s life, the life of a man
who had greatness in him. I am now reading his ‘Joan of Arc.’ I hope to
wait as cheerfully as he did for the trumpet call and as usefully, but I
am ready.”

When Mrs. Fields died and the Charles Street door was finally closed, at
the beginning of 1915, the world had entered upon its first entire year
of a new era. It is an era as sharply separated from that of her intimate
contemporaries, the American Victorians, as any new from any old order.
The figures of every old order take their places by degrees as “museum
pieces,” objects of curious and sometimes condescending study. But let
us not be too sure that in parting with the past we have let it keep
only that which can best be spared. We would not wish them back, those
Victorians of ours. They were the product of their own day, and would be
hardly at ease—poor things—in our twentieth-century Zion. Even some of us
who inhabit it gain a sense of rest in reëntering their quiet, decorous
dwelling-places. As we emerge again from one of them, may it be with a
renewed allegiance to those lasting “things that are more excellent,”
which belong to every generation of civilized men and women.




FOOTNOTES


[1] _A Shelf of Old Books_, by Mrs. Fields (1894), pictures many aspects
of the house and its contents.

[2] About two months later, Mrs. Fields wrote in her diary: “Emerson
says Hawthorne’s book is ‘pellucid but not deep.’ He has cut out the
dedication and letter, as others have done.”

[3] The greater part of this chapter appeared in the _Yale Review_ for
April, 1918.

[4] George Tyler Bigelow, of the Harvard Class of 1829.

[5] Harvard festivals were frequently noted. After the great day on which
Lowell gave his _Commemoration Ode_, Mrs. Fields wrote (July 22, 1865):
“What an ever-memorable day, the one at Harvard! The prayer of Phillips
Brooks, the ode of Lowell, the address of Dr. Putnam and the Governor,
and the heartfelt verses of Holmes, and the lovely music and the hymns.
But Lowell’s Ode!! How it overtops the whole of what is preserved on
paper beside! Charles G. Loring presided. ‘Awkwardly enough done,’ said
O. W. H.; ‘It is a delicate thing to introduce a poet, he should be
delivered to the table as a falconer delivers the falcon into the air,
but Mr. Loring puts you down hard on the table—ca-chunk.’”

[6] This anecdote of the revision of _The Last Leaf_, written in 1831, is
told a little differently in the annotations of Holmes’s Complete Works.

[7] See _Yesterdays with Authors_, p. 98, and _The Atlantic Monthly and
Its Makers_, p. 46.

[8] _The Dolliver Romance._

[9] Fields drew upon this paragraph for one in _Yesterdays with Authors_,
p. 112.

[10] Only a month after making this entry, Mrs. Fields wrote in her
journal: “A note came from Longfellow saying he had received a sad note
from Hawthorne. ‘I wish we could have a little dinner for him,’ he says,
‘of two sad authors and two jolly publishers—nobody else.’”

[11] In Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s _Memories of Hawthorne_ the relation
between the two households is indicated in a sentence containing
the nicknames of Mr. and Mrs. Fields: “My father also tasted the
piquant flavors of merriment and luxury in this exquisite domicile of
Heart’s-Ease and Mrs. Meadows.”

[12] Thoreau’s younger sister.

[13] In 1865 Alcott printed privately and anonymously the essay,
_Emerson_, which appeared later in his acknowledged volume, _Ralph Waldo
Emerson, an Estimate of his Character and Genius_ (Boston, 1882). This
was evidently _The Rhapsodist_.

[14] Thoreau’s older sister.

[15] Josiah Phillips Quincy.

[16] An allusion to the controversy over the claims of Dr. Jackson and
Dr. Morton to the discovery of ether.

[17] Daughter of the Rev. William Henry Furness, of Philadelphia, and
translator of German novels.

[18] One of Lowell’s reminiscences at the Saturday Club, recorded two
years earlier by Mrs. Fields, suggests his essential youthfulness of
spirit. Apropos of a story told by Dr. Holmes, “Lowell said that reminded
him of experiments the boys at his school used to make on flies, to see
how much weight they could carry. One day he attached a thread, which he
pulled out of his silk handkerchief, to a fly’s leg, and to the other
end a bit of paper with ‘the master is a fool’ written on it in small
distinct letters. The fly flew away and lighted on the master’s nose; but
he, regardless of all but the lessons, brushed him off, and the fly rose
with his burden to the ceiling.”

[19] After an evening of high discussion at Mrs. Howe’s in an earlier
year, Mrs. Fields wrote in her journal (October 4, 1863): “The talk grew
deep, and after it was over, she [Mrs. Howe] recalled the saying of Mrs.
Bell, after a like evening, when she called for ‘a fat idiot.’”

[20] If Mrs. Fields had lived to see _The Early Years of the Saturday
Club_ (Boston, 1918), she would have found that I drew from the notes in
her own diary a large portion of the memoir of James T. Fields which it
contains.

[21] This was in the midst of Aldrich’s occupancy of Elmwood, during
Lowell’s two years’ absence in Europe.

[22] The greater part of this chapter appeared in _Harper’s Magazine_ for
May and June, 1922.

[23] A few passages from it, relating to Dickens, are included in _James
T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches_. When they are
occasionally repeated here, it is in their original form, and not as Mrs.
Fields edited them for publication.

[24] On this very day Lowell wrote in the course of a letter to Fields:
“James tells me you had a tremendous _queue_ this morning. Don’t fail
to get me tickets, and for the first night. I should like to see his
reception. It will leave a picture on the brain. And why should I not be
there to welcome him, as well as Tom, Dick, or Harry?”

[25] Even after Dickens’s return to England, his sayings found their way
into Mrs. Fields’s journal; as, for example:—

“_July 4, 1868._—J. made me laugh this morning (it was far too hot to
laugh) by telling me that Dickens said of Gray, the poet, ‘No man ever
walked down to posterity with so small a book under his arm!’”

[26] See Forster’s _Life_, III, 368, for the same story told by Dickens
in a letter to Lord Lytton, without naming Longfellow as the narrator.

[27] In _Yesterdays with Authors_ (see pp. 230-31), Fields made use, with
revisions and omissions, of this portion of his wife’s diary.

[28] Mrs. Stowe’s unhappily historic article on “The True Story of Lady
Byron’s Life” appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for September, 1869.

[29] On April 20, 1870, Longfellow wrote to Fields (See _Life of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow_, etc., edited by Samuel Longfellow, III, 148):—

“Some English poet has said or sung:

    ‘At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still,
    And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove.’

“I wish Hamlet would be still! I wish I could prove the sweets of
forgetfulness! I wish Fechter would depart into infinite space, and
‘leave, oh, leave me to repose!’ When will this disturbing star
disappear, and suffer the domestic planetary system to move on in the
ordinary course and keep time with the old clock in the corner?”

[30] A contemporary definition of Cincinnati.

[31] Dr. J. Baxter Upham, the moving spirit in the building of the Music
Hall and the installation of the organ. He presided at its dedication.

[32] See _ante_, page 111.

[33] “A Newport Romance,” published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for
October, 1871.

[34] Probably _Gabriel Conroy_ and _Two Men of Sandy Bar_.

[35] See _The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers_, pp. 73-75.




INDEX


Page numbers set in =bold-faced type= indicate, generally speaking, the
more important references to the persons concerned. As a complete list
of the pages on which Mr. or Mrs. Fields, or both, are mentioned would
include substantially the whole book, only a few of the more significant
references to them have been selected for inclusion under their names.

    Adams, Annie, marries =J. T. F.=, 11. And _see_ Fields, Annie.

    Adams, Charles F., Jr., 278.

    Adams, Lizzie, 20.

    Adams, Zabdiel B., 11.

    Agassiz, Alexander, 256, 257, 258.

    Agassiz, Elizabeth C., 159.

    Agassiz, Louis, 48, 93, 105, 141.

    Alcott, A. Bronson, 63, =72-77=, 81, 82, 95.

    Alcott, Mrs. A. Bronson, 63.

    Alcott, Louisa M., 73.

    Alden, Henry M., 57, 89.

    Aldrich, Lilian (Woodman), 126, 203, 229, 290.

    Aldrich, Thomas B., 11, 116, 126 and _n._, 127, =197= _ff._,
    =226-229=, 290, =291-293=.

    Andrew, John A., 11, 36 _n._, 302.

    Andrew, Mrs. John A., 28, 213, 214.

    Appleton, Thomas Gold, 115, 116, 126, 152, 154, 209, 211, 212,
    213, 216, 246, 253.

    Aristotle, 133.

    Arnold, Matthew, 288.

    Astor, John Jacob, 76, 77.

    _Atlantic Monthly_, 6, 13, 14, 107, 111, 191 _n._, 209, 233,
    252, 281, 282, 302.


    Bacon, Francis, Lord, 112.

    Baker, Sir Samuel, 149.

    Barbauld, Anna L. A., 101.

    Barker, Fordyce, 151, 185.

    Barlow, Francis C., 61.

    Barrett, Lawrence, 240.

    Bartol, Cyrus A., 114, 215, 239.

    Beal, James H., 143.

    Beal, Louisa (Adams), 42, 143.

    Beal, Thomas, 199.

    Beecher, Henry Ward, 89, 224, 263, =267-269=, 270.

    Bell, Helen (Choate), 98, 143, 288.

    Bellows, Henry W., 199.

    Bentzon, Th. _See_ Blanc, Marie T.

    Bigelow, George T., 36.

    Bigelow, Mr. and Mrs., 143, 144.

    Blagden, Isa, 260.

    Blake, Harrison G. O., 89, 90.

    Blanc, Marie Thérèse, 288, 289, 293.

    Blessington, Countess of, 274.

    Blumenbach, Johann F., 128, 129.

    Boccaccio, Giovanni, 58.

    Booth, Edwin, 28, =198-203=, 210, =240-241=.

    Booth, J. Wilkes, 28, 198, 199.

    Booth, Junius Brutus, 196.

    Booth, Mary (Mrs. Edwin), 241.

    Booth, Mary A. (Mrs. J. B.), 198.

    Boswell, James, 60.

    Boutwell, George S., 89.

    Bradford, George, 81, 82, 90.

    Bright, John, 177.

    Brontë, Charlotte, 131, 266.

    Brooks, Phillips, 36 _n._, 94, 288.

    Brown, John, _Pet Marjorie_, 59.

    Browne, Charles F., 21.

    Brownell, Henry Howard, 29.

    Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 270.

    Browning, Robert, 43, 142, 260, 269.

    Brunetière, Ferdinand, 288.

    Bryant, William Cullen, 239, 257.

    “Buffalo Bill.” _See_ Cody, W. F.

    Bugbee, James M., 126.

    Bull, Ole, 225.

    Burr, Aaron, 270, 271.

    Butler, Benjamin F., 95.


    Cabot, Mrs., 236.

    Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 110.

    Carleton, G. W., 233.

    Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 75, 142, 220.

    Carlyle, Thomas, 73, 75, 79, 89, 141, 142, 165, 167, 190, 191,
    220.

    Channing, W. Ellery, 81, 98, 114.

    Cheney, Arthur, 216.

    Cheney, Ednah D., 114.

    Child, Lydia M., 265, 266.

    Childs, George W., 64.

    Choate, Rufus, 288.

    Cicero, 45.

    Clapp, Henry, 185.

    Clarke, James Freeman, 72, 114.

    Clarke, Sara, 205.

    Clemens, Samuel L., 232, 233, =244-257=, 305.

    Clemens, Mrs. S. L., 245 _ff._

    Cobden, Richard, 177.

    Cody, William F., 294.

    Colchester (medium), 168, 169, 170.

    Collins, Charles, 168.

    Collins, Mrs. Charles (daughter of Dickens), 190.

    Collins, W. Wilkie, 145, 189.

    Collyer, Robert, 215.

    Conway, Judge, 219.

    Cooke, George W., 120.

    Crabbe, George, 186.

    Crawford, Thomas, 264.

    Crawford, Mrs. Thomas, 264, 265.

    Cubas, Isabella, 22, 23.

    Curtis, George William, 14, 33, =184=, 188.

    Curtis, Mrs. G. W., 14.

    Cushing, Caleb, 266, 267.

    Cushman, Charlotte, 123, =219-222=.


    Dana, Charlotte, 161.

    Dana, Richard H., Jr., 93, 95, 116, 144, 250, 278.

    Dana, Mrs. R. H., Jr. 92, 93.

    Dana, Sallie, 161.

    Daniel, George, 95.

    Dante Alighieri, 258.

    Davidson, Edith, 99.

    Davis, George T., 19, 20.

    Dennet, of the _Nation_, 127.

    De Normandie, James, 81.

    Dewey, Dr., 219.

    Dickens, Bessy, 194.

    Dickens, Catherine (Hogarth), 160.

    Dickens, Charles, in America, 138-188; his readings, 140, 144,
    145, 152, 157, 171, 172, 181, 182; letters of, to =J. T. F.=,
    150, 191; 12, 32, 33, 118, 119, 120, =135-195=, 209, 210, 211,
    212, 223, 240.

    Dickens, Charles, Jr., 194.

    Dickens, John, 175.

    Dickens, Mary: quoted, 193; 140, 164, 169, 194.

    Dickinson, Lowes, 232.

    Dodge, Mary Abigail, 144, 220, 221.

    Dolby, George, 136, 138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 149, 150, 161,
    162, 165, 166, 171, 173, 178, 180, 185, 189, 190.

    Donne, Father, 102.

    Donne, John, 95.

    Dorr, Charles, 149, 209.

    Dorr, Mrs. Charles, 35, 149, 150, 209, 215.

    Dryden, John, 109.

    Dufferin, Earl of, 163.

    Dumas, Alex., 211.

    Dumas, Alex., _fils._, 211.

    Du Maurier, George, 300.

    Dunn, Rev. Mr., 122.


    Ecce Homo, 167.

    Eliot, Charles W., 41.

    Eliotson, Dr., 182, 183.

    Ellsler, Fanny, 24.

    Emerson, Edith, 89, 91. And _see_ Forbes, Edith (Emerson).

    Emerson, Edward W., 94, 103, 104.

    Emerson, Ellen, 88, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104.

    Emerson, Lilian (Jackson), letter of, to =Mrs. F.=, 88; 61, 62,
    89, 94, 95, 99, 101, 203.

    Emerson, Ralph Waldo, letter of, to =J. T. F.=, 87; 14, 15
    _n._, 24, 61, 62, 67, 73, 74, 79, 83, 84, =86-105=, 130, 131,
    141, =158=, 161, 165, 203, 206, 238, 239, =289=.

    Emerson, W. R., 219.

    England, Hawthorne on, 59, 60.

    Everett, Edward, 116, 270, 271.

    Everett, William, 270.

    _Every Saturday_, 197.


    Falstaff, Sir John, 110.

    Fechter, Charles, 139, 146, 148, 149, 159, 179, 190, 191, =209=
    _ff._

    Field, John W., 124.

    Field, Kate, 152, 259, 260, 261.

    Fielding, Henry, _Tom Jones_, 110, 111.

    Fields, Annie, disposition of her papers, 3; her Journals, 4,
    12; H. James quoted on, 5; marriage, 11; her neighbors, 11;
    and Leigh Hunt, 15, 16; letter of Holmes to, on her memorial
    volume, 50, 51; her books, 53; H. James, Sr., quoted on,
    85; “Thunderbolt Hill,” 101; her character as revealed in
    her diary, 132-134; her championship of Dickens, 156, 157;
    the variety of her friendships, 196 _ff._; her ode for the
    installation of the Music Hall organ, 219, 220, 221; with =J.
    T. F.=, visits Mark Twain at Hartford, 246 _ff._; and the cause
    of equal rights for women, 275, 278; her skill in digesting
    reports of conversations, 279, 280; her intimate friendship
    with Miss Jewett, 281 _ff._; her poetry, 285, 286; list of her
    published prose works, 286; friends of her later years, 288;
    travelling with Miss Jewett, 289 _ff._; and the President of
    Haiti, 290, 291; visits Mistral, 293-297; visits H. James, Jr.,
    at Rye, 297-301; quoted, on Miss Jewett, 302; her last years,
    301, 305; the last words in her diary, 305; her death, 305.
    _James T. Field: Biographical Notes_, 4, 13, 16, 50; _Authors
    and Friends_, 4, 31, 86, 87, 105, 129, 134, 279; _A Shelf of
    Old Books_, 12 _n._; _Hawthorne_, 54.

    Fields, Eliza J. (Willard), 11.

    FIELDS, JAMES T., early days in Boston, 10, 11, 196; marries
    Annie Adams, 11; their home on Charles St., 11, 12, 137, 138,
    218, 219; editor of the _Atlantic_, 14, 58, 67, 87, 107, 111,
    119, 191 _n._, 233, 282; as _raconteur_, 21; Holmes quoted on
    his position in the literary world, 34; retires from business,
    40; H. James, Sr., quoted on, 85; his love of the theatre and
    stage folk, 196, 197; his death, 280; fosters =Mrs. F.’s=
    friendship with Miss Jewett, 283. _Yesterdays with Authors_, 4,
    54, 55, 62, 137, 176 _n._, 190.

    Fields, Osgood & Co., 10.

    Fiske, John, 48.

    Forbes, Edith (Emerson), 91.

    Forbes, William H., 91.

    Forrest, Edwin, 207, 218.

    Forrest, Mrs. Edwin, 218.

    Forster, John, 154, 160, 163, 171, 213.

    Foster, Charlotte, 259.

    Frothingham, Octavius B., 274.

    Froude, James A., 68, 293.

    Fuller, Margaret, 24, 239.

    Fulton, J. D., 122.

    Furness, William H., 101 _n._, 102, 103.


    Garrett (impressario), 214.

    Gaskell, Elizabeth C. S., 131.

    Godwin, Mrs. William, 16.

    Goethe, Johann W. von, _Wilhelm Meister_, 132, 133.

    Gorges, Sir F., 74.

    Gounod, Charles, 44.

    Grant, Julia Dent, 159.

    Grant, Ulysses S., 159, 262.

    Grau, Maurice, 222.

    Greene, George W., 19, 20, 44, 45, 47, 126, 141, 256, 258, 260.

    Gregory, Lady, 218.

    Guiney, Louise Imogen, 288.


    Haiti, President of, 290, 291.

    Hale, Edward E., 93.

    Hale, John P., 261.

    Hallam, Henry, 89.

    Hamilton, Gail. _See_ Dodge, Mary Abigail.

    Hammersley, Mr., 247.

    _Harper’s Weekly_, 14.

    Harris, William T., 81.

    Harte, F. Bret, 117, =233-243=.

    Harte, Mrs. F. B., 239, 240.

    Harvard College, Commemoration Day at, 36 _n._

    Hawthorne, Julian, 15, 144.

    Hawthorne, Nathaniel, death of, 27, 28, 67; letters of, to =J.
    T. F.=, 54, 55, 56; his last letter, 65-67; =13=, =14=, =15=
    and _n._, =18=, 19, 30, 32, 33, =54-72=, 97, =105=, 127, =236=.

    Hawthorne, Sophia (Peabody), letter to =Mrs. F.= on Hawthorne,
    70-72; 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 91, 144, 246.

    Hawthorne, Una, 15, 97, 221.

    Hawthorne, E. M., sister of Nathaniel, 69.

    Hayes, Isaac I., 33, 34.

    Herbert, George, 95.

    Herrick, Robert, 95.

    Higginson, Thomas W., 114.

    Hill, Thomas, 92.

    Hillard, George S. 17, 18, 19, 143.

    Hoar, Ebenezer R., 37, 90, 91, 141.

    Hogarth, Georgina, quoted, 193, 194; 140, 155, 165, 195.

    Holmes, Amelia (Jackson), 30, 34, 39, 40, 41, 51, 153, 203,
    213, 214, 221.

    Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his relations with the Fieldses,
    generally, =17-52=; letters of, to =J. T. F.=, 17, 49, and to
    =Mrs. F.=, 50; 11, 13, 54, 90, 94, 96, 110, 111 _n_., 115, 116,
    117, 118, 135, 141, 142, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 221, 256,
    257, 273, 288.

    Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 21, 31.

    Home (medium), 163, 168.

    Horace, 238.

    Howe, Julia Ward, =9=, =10=, 61, 90, 114 and _n._, 221.

    Howe, Laura (Mrs. Richards), 150.

    Howe, Samuel G., 219, 273.

    Howells, William D., 38, 116, 166.

    Howes, Miss, 236.

    Howison, George H., 81.

    Hunt, Henry, 48.

    Hunt, Leigh, 15, 16, 58, 122.

    Hunt, T. Sterry, 199.

    Hunt, William M., 96, =97-99=, =230=, =232=.

    Hunt, Mrs. W. M., 96, 98, 222, 230.

    Hyacinthe, Père, 44.


    Ingelow, Jean, 142.


    Jackson, Charles T., 94 and _n._

    James, Alice, 77, 81, 83.

    James, George Abbot, 42.

    James, Henry, Sr., letter of, to =J. T. F.=, 82, and to =Mrs.
    F.=, 83, 85; =72-85=.

    James, Mrs. Henry, 75, 77, 81.

    James, Henry, Jr., quoted, 6, 7, 137, 281; letter of, to
    author, 8, 9; 119, 120, =297-301=.

    Jan (Booth’s servant), 200, 202.

    Jefferson, Joseph, =203-208=, 247.

    Jewett, Sarah Orne, her intimate relations with =Mrs. F.=, 281
    _ff._, 302-304; her early days, 281, 282; her literary work,
    282-284; correspondence with =Mrs. F.=, 288, 289; H. James on
    her work, 300; her death, 302; 12, 50.

    Johnson, Andrew, impeachment of, 159; 261, 262, 263.

    Johnson, Samuel, 60.

    Jonson, Ben, 96.

    Julius Cæsar, 45.


    Keats, John, 43, 68, 206, 207.

    Kellogg, Elijah, 271, 272.

    Kemble, Charles, 196.

    Kemble, Frances Anne, 196, 222, 223, 224

    Kennard, Mr., 267, 268.

    King, Preston, 262, 263.

    Kirkup, Seymour S., 258.

    Knowlton, Helen M., 232.


    Lamartine, Alphonse de, 296, 297.

    Lamb, Charles, 270.

    Landor, Walter Savage, 259-261.

    Langdon, Mr., Mark Twain’s father-in-law, 245.

    Langdon, Mrs., 246.

    Larcom, Lucy, 70.

    Lathrop, George P., 97.

    Lathrop, Rose (Hawthorne), quoted, 67 _n._; 97, 144.

    Lear, Edward, 280.

    Leclercq, Carlotta, 216.

    Lemaître, Frédérick, 178, 179, 180, 211.

    Lincoln, Abraham, assassination of, 28, 198; 55, 56, 77, 262,
    263.

    Livermore, Mary A., 275-278.

    Locke, David R., 33.

    Longfellow, Alice, 42, 96, 224.

    Longfellow, Charles, 128, 216.

    Longfellow, Edith, 42, 213, 214.

    Longfellow, Mrs. Ernest W., 42.

    Longfellow, Henry W., 13, 19, 33, 34, =35=, 39, 42, 43, =44=,
    45, 46, 47, 48, =60= and _n._, 90, 96, =97=, 98, 99, 109, 115,
    116, =117=, =119=, 123, 124, =125=, =126=, 127, =128=, =129=,
    141, 144, 152, =153=, =159=, =160=, =161=, 172, 205, 206, 207,
    =208=, 209, 211, =212= and _n._, =213=, =214=, =215=, 216,
    =222=, =223=, 224, =243=, 256, 257, 258, 273.

    Longfellow, Mrs. H. W., 55, 223.

    Longfellow, Samuel, 42, 212 _n._

    Loring, Charles G., 36 _n._

    Lowell, Frances (Dunbar), 123, 124.

    Lowell, James Russell, letters of, to =J. T. F.=, 107, 108,
    112, 113, 120, 141 _n._; =5=, 13, =33=, 34, 35, =36= _n._,
    =90=, =92=, =93=, =94=, =95=, 104, =105=, =106=, =107= _ff._,
    116, =117=, =123=, =124=, 126, 127, =149=, 159, 163, 164, 166,
    243, 273.

    Lowell, Mabel, 107, 113, 123, 124, 149.

    Lunt, George, 214.

    Luther, Martin, 89.

    Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord, 168, 176, 177.


    Macready, William, 218.

    Maistre, Joseph de, 221.

    Mars, Anne F. H., 210, 211.

    Mathews, Charles, 207.

    Merivale, Herman, 95.

    Miller, Joaquin, 43, 126.

    Milton, John, 74.

    Mistral, Frédéric, 293-297.

    Mistral, Mme. Frédéric, 295, 296, 297.

    Mitchell, Donald G., 185.

    Mitford, Mary R., 98.

    Montaigne, Michel de, 112, 238, 239.

    Morton, W. T. G., 94 and _n._

    Motley, J. Lothrop, 37.

    Mott, Lucretia C., 74.

    Murdoch, James E., 217, 218.

    Music Hall, Boston, great organ in, 219, 220, 221.


    “Nasby, Petroleum V.” _See_ Locke, D. R.

    Nichol, Professor, 90.

    Nilsson, Christine, 214, =224-226=.

    Norton, Caroline (Sheridan), 46.

    Norton, Charles Eliot, 92, 103, 104, 141, 144, 172, 185, 187.

    Norton, Mrs. C. E., 163.


    O’Brien, Fitz-James, 227-229.

    O’Connell, Daniel, 173, 176, 177.

    Orsay, Count d’, 145.

    Osgood, James R., 116, 136, 151, 153, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167,
    185.


    Parker, Harvey D., 206.

    Parkman, Francis, 104, 105.

    Parkman, Mrs. Francis, 35.

    Parkman, George, murder of, 153.

    Parsons, Thomas W., 208, 214.

    Parton, James, 110, 111, 232.

    Peabody, Elizabeth, 82, 119.

    Pedro, Dom, Emperor of Brazil, 127, 128.

    Perabo, Ernst, 224.

    Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 275.

    Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard (1868), 36, 37; 92.

    Phillips, Wendell, 89, 114.

    Phipps, Colonel, 188, 189.

    Pickwick, Mr., 111.

    Pierce, Franklin, Hawthorne’s loyalty to, 13, 14, 15; 57, 58,
    67.

    Pierce, Mrs. Franklin, death of, 57, 58.

    Pierce, Henry L., 229, 290.

    Poore, Ben Perle, 266.

    Pratt, Mrs. Ellerton, 288.

    Prescott, Harriet (Mrs. Spofford), 58.

    Putnam, George, 36 _n._, 213.

    Putnam, John P., 221.


    Quincy, Edmund, 86, 273.

    Quincy, Josiah, 85, 275, 276, 277.

    Quincy, Josiah P., 86, 92, 93.

    Quincy, Mrs. Josiah P., 92.

    Quixote, Don, 110.


    Radical Club, 114.

    Raymond, John T., 253.

    Read, John M., 31, 32.

    Read, T. Buchanan, 44.

    Reade, Charles, 146.

    Rip Van Winkle, 111.

    Ripley, Miss, 88.

    Ripley, Mrs., 91.

    Ristori, Adelaide, 222.

    Rogers, Samuel, 185.

    Rossetti, Christina, 97.

    Rowse, Samuel W., 152.

    Russell, Thomas, 261.


    Sanborn, F. B., 68.

    Saturday Club, 104, 105, 116 and _n._

    Schurz, Carl, 266.

    Scott-Siddons, Mrs., 110.

    Seward, William H., 28, 219, 267.

    Shaw, Lemuel, 232.

    Shaw, Robert G., 14, 24.

    Shelley, Percy B., 16.

    Sherman, William T., 77.

    Shiel, Mr., 173, 176.

    Silsbee, Mrs., 95, 143.

    Smith, Alexander, 17, 19.

    Smith, Samuel F., 47.

    Smith, Sydney, 89, 257.

    Somerset, Duchess of, 46.

    Stanley, Edward G. S. S. (afterward 14th Earl of Derby), 173,
    174, 175.

    Stanton, Edwin M., 267.

    Stephen, Leslie, 95.

    Sterling, John, 75.

    Stone, Lucy, 114.

    Story, William W., 116.

    Stothard, Thomas, 190.

    Stowe, Calvin E., 272.

    Stowe, “Georgie,” 38, 39.

    Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 38, 39, 61, 191 and _n._, 268, 272.

    Sumner, Charles, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 77, 105, 219, =258-267=.


    Taylor, Bayard, 109, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118, 119, 228, 266.

    Taylor, Mrs. Bayard, 109, 110, 111.

    Tennent, Sir Emerson, 153.

    Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 254, 279.

    Tennyson, Lady, 279.

    Terry, Ellen, 218, 300, 301.

    Thackeray, William M., 32, 33, 111, 154, 266.

    Thaxter, Celia, 98, =129-131=, 152, 154, 288.

    Thompson, Launt, 198.

    Thoreau, Helen, 62, 74.

    Thoreau, Henry D., 14, 62, 68, 74, 89, 90.

    Thoreau, Sophia, 68.

    Thoreau, Mrs. (mother of H. D. T.), 62, 68, 74.

    Ticknor, William D., =63= _ff._

    Ticknor and Fields, 10.

    Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 17.

    Towne, Alice, 45.

    Towne, Helen, 45.

    Townshend, Chauncey, 169.

    Trimble, Colonel, 273.

    Twain, Mark. _See_ Clemens, Samuel L.


    Upham, J. Baxter, 221 and _n._


    Vaughan, Henry, 74, 81, 95.

    Viardot-Garcia, Michelle F. P., 225.

    Victoria, Queen, 187, 188.

    Vieuxtemps, Henri, 225.


    Ward, Artemus. _See_ Browne, Charles F.

    Ward, Mary A. (Mrs. Humphry), 288.

    Ward, Samuel, 90.

    Warren, William, 203, 205, 206.

    Washington, George, 259.

    Wasson, David A., 114.

    Waterston, Mrs., 24.

    Watts, Isaac, 101.

    Webster, John W., =153=.

    Whipple, Edwin P., 20.

    White, Andrew D., 92.

    Whitman, Sarah, 288.

    Whitney, Anne, 101, 102, 206.

    Whittier, Elizabeth, 259.

    Whittier, John G., =39=, =40=, 68, 70, 114, =129=, =130=,
    =131=, 161, =222=, 244, 288.

    Willard, Eliza J. _See_ Fields, Eliza J. (Willard).

    MCGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS
    GRAPHIC ARTS BLDG.
    BOSTON