Works of Annie Fields Preface to Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett
For Lovers' eyes more sharply sighted be
Than other men's, and in dear Love's delight
See more than any other eyes can see.
. . . . . . . . . . .
But they who love indeed, look otherwise
With pure regard and spotless true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes
A more refinèd form which they present.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Love thereon fixeth all his fantasie,
And fully setteth his felicitie,
Counting it fairer than it is indeed,
And yet indeed its fairness doth exceed!Spenser's Hymn in Honour of Beauty.**
In the village of South Berwick, Maine, which had always been Miss Jewett's home, she died June 24, 1909. This village has been no exception to the changes inevitably advancing in the life of small towns in New England. The immediate vicinities of villages are becoming more beautiful, more developed, day by day, while the encroachment of manufacturing, especially where there are full flowing water-courses, brings multitudes of mill people into the heart of the little towns, and as the old English descendants die out, they are naturally replaced by men, women, and children, who can run the manufactories. Formerly Berwick was in the "deestrict" of Maine, as Lowell** loved to call it. Portsmouth** then seemed the capital of New England and the governors and clergymen thereof were rulers and potentates, bending the knee only to the King of the Fatherland** and the great God in Heaven; and Berwick was not far from Portsmouth, even in those days. The beautiful river Piscataqua swept good-sized vessels up to the very banks of the village. Here, and among these descendants, Sarah Orne Jewett grew up with hills and waters and a large open country all about her. This wild land she knew and loved well, as her books show.
She was born September 3, 1849, going to the village school and later to the Berwick Academy, and to both rather intermittently, being but a delicate child. Her father was a physician, and when the weather was pleasant he would take his wise little girl into the chaise by his side in the morning, instead of urging her to go to school. These days, out in the open country with her father, became the white mile-stones of her life. In every house where they stopped she knew the people were her father's friends. When she was tired sitting in the chaise, during his long visits, she would climb down and play about the green dooryards by herself, unless some member of the household happened to see her and call her from the side door to give her a bit of gingerbread, saved or made for the doctor's child. Those were happy and never-to-be-forgotten days. But I fear there were days when father, as well as child, was torn between the happiness of such mornings and duty to the school.
As she grew older her interest in her father's work developed, and she began to question him. Little by little, as he found she could understand and remember what he told her, he would give her larger and deeper lessons, until many a young graduating doctor today might well envy that slip of a girl for the knowledge at first hand which had been conveyed to her impressionable mind. After her father's early death she loved to go into his office to consult his diary; she knew his papers, his books, his medicines, -- nothing that belonged to his mind or his work was foreign to her.
Her father's intelligent companionship is made clear to us in her published work. With his death came her first sorrow, --
"The first of all her dead that were to be";**
and soon after began the correspondence contained in this volume. It is a diary in truth and almost unconsciously; reminding one by its lightness touch of the famous journal of Dean Swift to Stella, two hundred years ago.** The same handling of "the little language" is here; the same joy and repose in friendship. This "little language," the private "cuddling" of lovers, of mothers, and children, since the world began, was native also to her. They are the letters, too, of a true lover of nature and of one accustomed to tender communings with woods and streams, with the garden and the bright air. She was no recluse, and loved her world of friends and was a brave spirit among them; using herself to the top of her bent in spite of trammelings of ill health. To one who seldom if ever knew the joy of springing early from her bed, with the thought of a new day, life was contracted and hampered; but in the hours of health allowed her, it was enjoyed with the chastened spirit of one who already knew the sufferings of others and could sympathize with their disabilities. She disliked profoundly all talk of illness and complaining, and demanded no sympathy; but her inherited love of helping the unfortunate led her to study methods of relief, and if she had been a strong person she would have studied medicine in the medical schools. As it was, her gift was undeniable, and the physicians of her acquaintance have borne testimony to her instinctive power of discernment and helpfulness.
Many years later, in 1893, when an illustrated edition of her first book, "Deephaven," was published, we find affixed to the volume a new preface which contains some of her very best and most autobiographical writing. After speaking of the changes creeping over the old village life and the many excellent reasons therefor, she says: "Old farmhouses opened their doors to the cheerful gayety of summer; the old jokes about the respective aggressions and ignorances of city and country cousins gave place to new compliments between the summer boarder and his rustic host. The young writer of these Deephaven sketches was possessed by a dark fear that townspeople and country people would never understand one another, or learn to profit by their new relationship. It seemed not altogether reasonable when timid ladies mistook a selectman for a tramp, because he happened to be crossing a field in his shirt-sleeves. At the same time, she was sensible of grave wrong and misunderstanding when these same timid ladies were regarded with suspicion, and their kindnesses were believed to come from pride and patronage. There is a noble saying of Plato that the best thing that can be done for the people of a state to make them acquainted with one another.** It was happily in the writer's childhood that Mrs. Stowe had written of those who dwelt along the wooded seacoast and by the decaying, shipless harbors of Maine. The first chapters of 'The Pearl of Orr's Island' gave the young author of 'Deephaven' to see with new eyes, and to follow eagerly the old shore-paths from one gray, weather-beaten house to another, where Genius pointed her the way.... There will also exist," Miss Jewett continues, "that other class of country people who preserve the best traditions of culture and of manners, from some divine inborn instinct toward what is simplest and best and purest, who know the best because they themselves are of kin to it. Human nature is the same the world over, provincial and rustic influences must ever produce much the same effects upon character, and town life will ever have in its gift the spirit of the present, while it may take again from the quiet of the hills and fields and the conservatism of country hearts a gift from the spirit of the past."
If the high end and purpose of her work gave her joy, so also did the recognition of it by others on the way give her pleasure; as when T. B. Aldrich** once wrote: "A great many thanks for your very kind note about the July 'Atlantic.'** Whenever you give me one of your perfect little stories the whole number seems in bloom!" A letter, too, from Rudyard Kipling** gave her unending pleasure, in which he says, speaking of the "Country of the Pointed Firs": "I am writing to you to convey some small instalment of our satisfaction in that perfect little tale. It's immense -- it is the very life. So many of the people of lesser sympathy have missed the lovely New England landscape, and the genuine New England nature." He adds jovially in the postscript, "I don't believe even you know how good that work is."
A certain sweet dignity of character distinguished Miss Jewett; one which never put a barrier between her and any one else, but was a part of her very self; with all her wit and humor and kind ways there was no suggestion leading to sudden nearness nor too great intimacy.
Her metier was, to lay open, for other eyes to see, those qualities in human nature which ennoble their possessors, high or low, rich or poor; those floods of sympathy to be unsealed in the most unpromising and dusty natures by the touch of a divining spirit. Finding herself in some dim way the owner of this sacred touchstone, what wonder that she loved her work and believed in it?
After a severe carriage accident once, she wrote to me: "I was strongly tempted to say yes about Wednesday.... I long to see you more than I can say, but I am almost afraid to make a break just now lest I couldn't get going again, and there are three chapters at least that I must get done before I feel really certain about anything. When I have them safe landed like little fishes, I can take my time. Oh, if I can only get this work done so that you will be pleased and a little proud about it, it seems to me that I shall ask for nothing more. I am so afraid that I can't give it breadth and largeness enough, and that it will have a dull kind of excellence and not real life and vitality."
She was not born to a large city and was unaccustomed to public business and stir, but she was always ready to do what she could. When meetings of societies were called in the village, and Miss Jewett was asked to receive two or three delegates as guests, she was always glad to do so. She interrupts one of her notes to say: --
"I must look sharp after Miss Rickett and the rest. They were at their meetings all day yesterday, getting home in the evening at eleven at night, or a few minutes before, but they would not like to be called dissipated, I am sure."
Her eagerness to make life a little easier for others was always on the alert, as when she burst out in one of her notes: "Oh, do let us always tell people when we like their work -- it does do so much good." Mrs. Meynell, writing of Miss Jewett, in a late letter, says: "I always thought of her as the most selfless creature I had ever known; a few hours in her dear company convinced me of that; and her letters are inevitably like her."
But these fragments from her letters carry us too far afield. They shall be given freely in the following pages, in order to show her life as in a mirror, while the days sped on. They will show, above all, the portrait of a friend and the power that lies in friendship to sustain the giver as well as the receiver. They are in the easy undress of every-day life, wearing a grace which lies beyond all thought of the larger world.
Notes
Spenser: Edmund Spenser (1552-1599).
Lowell: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was an American poet and literary critic, well remembered for his humorous poetry, such as "The Biglow Papers" (1848).
Portsmouth: a seaport in New Hampshire.
King of the Fatherland: The fatherland is Great Britain.
"The first of all her dead that were to be": This quotation has not been identified. Help is welcome.
the famous journal of Dean Swift to Stella: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the Irish satirist is best known for Gulliver's Travels (1726). Stella was his close friend, Esther Johnson, to whom he addressed Journal to Stella (1710-13).
noble saying of Plato: Plato (about 428-347 BC) was a Greek philosopher, author of numerous dialogues featuring Socrates, his teacher. The quotation comes from Book V of "Laws," in which Socrates does not appear: "for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another." (Research: Jack V. Wales, Jr. of the Thacher School, Ojai, CA.)
Mrs. Stowe ... 'The Pearl of Orr's Island': Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) is best known for Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); she published The Pearl of Orr's Island in 1862.
T. B. Aldrich: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was editor of Atlantic Monthly 1881-1890. Author of fiction and poetry, Aldrich and his wife were close friends of Jewett and Fields.
'Atlantic': Aldrich refers to the magazine; see the previous note.
Rudyard Kipling: Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1819-1875) was an English fiction writer and poet, and an admirer of Jewett's work. He is well-known for his children's books, such as The Jungle Book (1894) and Just So Stories (1902), and for his novel of India, Kim (1901).