Jewett Texts


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SARAH ORNE JEWETT
LETTERS

ENLARGED AND REVISED EDITION

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
RICHARD CARY

WATERVILLE ~ MAINE

Copyright by COLBY COLLEGE PRESS ~ 1967

LETTER TEXTS

1 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902), biographer of James Russell Lowell and Bayard Taylor, started as manuscript reader in 1866 and remained to the end of his life in supervisory editorial positions with the publishing firms which eventually developed into Houghton Mifflin Company. Editor of the Riverside Magazine for Young People from 1867 to 1870, and of the Atlantic Monthly from 1890 to 1898, he displayed critical acumen and unfailing kindness in his dealings with fledgling authors. Of Miss Jewett's numerous relationships with editors, this was the longest and most fruitful.

     November 15, 1869
    Dear Sir:
     I beg your pardon for troubling you again but this is quite important to me. Is it too late to change the signature to my story "The Shipwrecked Buttons?"¹ For that is signed 'S. Jewett,' and I thought a while ago that I would adopt that instead of the one I have used hitherto -- 'Alice Eliot.' I see that a story of mine in the December Atlantic² is credited to the latter (Alice Eliot),³ and it would be a very great satisfaction to me if the story you have, could be the same. I hope it's not too late, and if you can have it changed I shall be more obliged than ever to you.
     Thank you for your note which I received last week.
     Most respectfully,
     'Alice Eliot'
     NOTES:
     ¹By Alice Eliot, Riverside Magazine for Young People, IV (January 1870), 30-35; collected in Play Days.
     ²"Mr. Bruce," by A. C. Eliot, Atlantic Monthly, XXIV (December 1869), 701-710; collected in Old Friends and New.
     ³The origin of Miss Jewett's nom de plume Alice Eliot and its variant A. C. Eliot is a matter of speculation. It may have derived from the nearby town of Eliot, Maine, which she visited often as a child, or from George Eliot, whose life and worA Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett [Waterville, Maine,1949], 29-30.) Miss Jewett's own explanation for these mutations is to be found in "Looking Back on Girlhood," Youth's Companion, LXV (January 7, 1892), 6: "I was very shy about speaking of my work at home, and even sent it to the magazine under an assumed name." Scudder could see no wisdom in this nimble name-changing and in a letter dated May 21, 1870, advised her to "drop all use of . . . pseudonym." (Houghton Library, Harvard.)

2 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     November 30, 1869
     Dear Sir:
     Thank you for your kind note and especially for your criticisms on my two stories.¹ They will help me, I know. You were right about "Mr. Bruce" and if I were talking instead of writing I would tell you of ever so many things that might have been very different. I couldn't expect it to be perfect. In the first place I couldn't write a perfect story, and, secondly, I didn't try very hard on that. I wrote it in two evenings after ten, when I was supposed to be in bed and sound asleep, and I copied it in part of another day. That's all the work I 'laid out' on it. It was last August and I was nineteen then, but now I'm twenty. So you see you are 'an old hand' and I 'a novice' after all. Do you remember in "Mr. Bruce" I made Elly say that, like Miss Alcott's Jo,² she had the habit of 'falling into a vortex?' That's myself, but I mean to be more sensible. I mean to write this winter and I think you will know of it.
     I like the Riverside M[agazine] so much, and what you have written, and you are delightful to have dear old Hans Andersen. I don't see the Riverside regularly though. I'm not a bit grown up if I am twenty and I like my children's books just as well as ever I did, and I read them just the same. I'd like to see the "Buttons" in print; you said the 18th, I think. It's a dreadful thing to have been born very lazy, isn't it, Mr. Scudder? For I might write ever so much; it's very easy for me, and when I have been so successful in what I have written. I ought to study -- which I never did in my life hardly, except reading, and I ought to try harder and perhaps by and by I shall know something I can write really well.³
     There was no need for me to write this note and I'm a silly girl. I know it. But your letter was very nice and you are kind to be interested in my stories. So I beg your pardon and will never do so any more.
     You said you had seen my name before. It was some verses -- "The Old Doll"⁴ -- two ~~or three~~ years ago, I think. I must hunt them up. I believe they were very silly.
     Yours very respectfully and gratefully,
     'Alice Eliot'
     NOTES:
     ¹ "Mr. Bruce" and "The Shipwrecked Buttons."
     ² Jo March, the unconventional heroine of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868).
     ³ Miss Jewett's schooling consisted of sporadic attendance for several years at Miss Olive Raynes's school in South Berwick and four years at Berwick Academy, from which she was graduated in 1865. Her real education came through association with her father, Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett (see Genealogical Chart and Letter 4, note 7). In her early teens Miss Jewett began to suffer from acute attacks of rheumatism. Believing that her health would improve out-of-doors, Dr. Jewett took her with him on his professional rounds. ("I used to follow him about silently, like an undemanding little dog.") At each backland farm and coastline fishing shack she absorbed invaluable impressions of people and households; between stops she observed the particularities of nature; and as they rode along he transmitted to her an abiding knowledge and love of good books. Miss Jewett dedicated Country By-Ways "To T. H. J., my dear father; my dear friend; the best and wisest man I ever knew; who taught me many lessons and showed me many things as we went together along the Country By-Ways." A man of simple tastes who "was impatient only with affectation and insincerity," he recognized long before she did the direction her life was taking, and advised her, "Don't try to write about people and things, tell them just as they are!" (See Letters 25 note 2; 68, note 2; 99.) The first two poems in Verses are poignant memorials "To My Father," and in 1901 Miss Jewett presented a stained-glass window in his memory to Bowdoin College, of which he was an alumnus and former faculty member.
     ⁴ Miss Jewett had evidently submitted this poem to Riverside Magazine and had received a rejection. "The Old Doll" subsequently appeared in the Independent, XXV (July 24, 1873), 933.

3 LUCRETIA FISK PERRY
     Lucretia Morse Fisk Perry of Exeter, New Hampshire, was the wife of Dr. William Gilman Perry, Miss Jewett's maternal uncle (see Genealogical Chart). A chronic victim of asthma, which restricted her traveling and visiting, she compensated by writing lively, descriptive letters, and entertaining a steady stream of friends who sometimes called for the day and stayed for a week. "A wise and constant lover of good books," she conveyed her approval of Dickens, Browning, and a score of others to her eager young niece. Miss Jewett attributed much of her desire to improve intellectually to this aunt.

     Sunday evening
     January 28, 1872
    Dear Aunty:
     Thank you for your letter which came in good time, for we were all depending upon hearing from you. I was glad to find out about the essay. You will be surprised to hear that Father¹ is going to New York tomorrow, that is, if his cold is well enough. He has been quite ill all the week and I knew from former experiences that he would not refuse going to see people now he is better -- and so he would be tired out and miserable for weeks to come. Anything is better for him than being here -- and Mother² and I have given him no peace and silenced every argument -- and Mary³ has written appealingly and he has consented to go, and now quite enjoys the idea. I know it will do him good. It will if he is at all like me, for when I last went to Boston I was scarcely able to sit up the day before and had not been 'outside the door' for a week with a bad cold 'on my lungs' and that same afternoon was out shopping minus any extra wrappings and stayed out until dark in the midst of a December drizzle and half snowstorm and have continued in good health to the present time!
     I can scarcely wait until Saturday to see Mary, though I gave up missing her long ago. I 'want to see her' in the same fashion that I do Kate or Grace⁴ -- only more so. It will be very lonely without Father this week but I have planned a great deal that is to be done. I do hope Georgie⁵ will not send for me to pass next Sunday with her. I promised surely to go down as soon as she came home, and of course I wouldn't go this week. I have written her a letter to guard against the invitation's being sent, if possible. I did not go the other time that I promised and hardly like to disappoint her plans again. I am to go Friday and stay until Tuesday, and that would be out of the question when Mary has just arrived. Of course though, now I have written her she will not think of such a thing, but I feared I should have a letter from her before she got mine.
     I am overwhelmed at Miss Mathewson's ignorance of Miss Austen! How much pleasure she has to anticipate -- no -- I don't believe she would enjoy her stories much, do you? Particularly if she has Dumas and George Sand⁶ for her intimates. I don't think I remember Miss Austen very well, in spite of my fondness for her.⁷ It all comes back to me as I read, but I had forgotten the stories almost entirely and the last time I read them I do not remember so well as a year or two before and after. I think one reason was that they were nearly all the same kind of books (novels) and there is no effort about reading them. All the reasoning is done for you and all the thinking, as one might say. It seems to me like hearing somebody talk on and on and on, while you have no part in the conversation, and merely listen. I had a clear idea in my head when I started to tell you my 'views' but I find myself rather involved and consider that I had best leave it! But I have quite a grown-up feeling when I try to re-read some story I remember being absorbed in four or five years ago, and find I cannot get up any interest in it. Not that I have objections to a good novel now, by any means, but I do like other things too and am glad of it. I am glad Fannie⁸ likes 'the Alice book'⁹ -- it made a great impression on my mind, and I am anxious to read it again.
     We all dined at the Does'¹⁰ last Wednesday and had such a jolly time. The Judge is at home after quite a long absence. There is a prospect of another 'hostility' after Mary comes. Mrs. Edith is as anxious to see her as any of us.
     I am not very brilliant this evening, though Uncle William¹¹ was here to tea and Charlotte and 'Lisha¹² have been in since, and they were all agreeable. Oh dear! if one could only remember those letters one composes in bed o' nights! I know mine would be so entertaining that my friends would insist upon their 'being preserved in a volume!'¹³
     Carrie¹⁴ was glad you liked the mats. I am delighted that they are in fashion again, I always thought them so pretty. You know I do not usually appreciate fancy work!
     Love to Grandpa¹⁵ and 'our cousin' Prim.
     Yr. very aff.
     Sallie
     NOTES
     ¹ See Letters 2, note 3; 4, note 7.
     ² Caroline Frances Perry Jewett (see Genealogical Chart). In contrast to the many epistolary and literary tributes Miss Jewett paid her father, she said remarkably little about her mother outside of citing her illnesses and death.
     ³ Miss Jewett's elder sister Mary Rice (see Genealogical Chart), to whom she dedicated A White Heron and Other Stories.
     ⁴ Katherine Parker Gordon, wife of the postmaster of Boston, and her daughter Grace, who later married the Reverend Treadwell Walden, for many years rector of St. Paul's in Boston. Miss Jewett was a recurrent guest in the Gordon home at 5 Walnut Street during her teens and twenties.
     ⁵ Georgina Halliburton (1849-1910), a lifelong friend of Miss Jewett from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was the daughter of Mrs. George Wallis Haven by her first husband, James Pierrepont Halliburton.
     ⁶ Miss Jewett's adulation of the Frenchwoman lasted over the years. In May 1888 she ordered a copy of Mme. Sand's letters from a New York dealer (see Letter 31); in December she declared, "I am willing to study French very hard all winter in order to read her comfortably in the spring!" (Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett [Boston, 1911], 38); in 1890 she cried out ecstatically, "I really know Madame Sand," after reading her letter to Mme. d'Agoult (Fields, Letters, 75); and in 1893 she quoted from Sand's Légendes Rustiques to support her impassioned defense of provincial values (Preface to Deephaven).
     ⁷Miss Jewett's attitude toward Jane Austen oscillated. In childhood she dodged her father's thoughtful recommendations of Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, and Cervantes for "the pleasant ways of Pride and Prejudice" ("Looking Back on Girlhood," Youth's Companion, LXV [January 7, 1892], 6). At the present juncture, Austen's attraction seems to have faded. In her fifties, the tug of nostalgia brought about another change of heart. "Yesterday afternoon I amused myself with Miss Austen's Persuasion. Dear me, how like her people are to the people we knew years ago! It is just as much New England before the war -- that is, in provincial towns -- as it ever was Old England. I am going to read another, Persuasion tasted so good!" (Fields, Letters, 185.)
     ⁸ Frances Fiske Perry, daughter of Aunt Lucretia (see Genealogical Chart) was ten years old at this time and an omnivorous reader. Of serious tendency, she earned the soubriquet "Miss Prim," by which Miss Jewett alludes to her in the last line of the letter.
     ⁹ In Frances Perry Dudley, The MidCentury in Exeter (Exeter, New Hampshire, 1943), Fannie observed that "The first copy of Alice in Wonderland to arrive in town was read by young and old until its binding was broken."
     ¹⁰ The Honorable Charles Doe (1830-1896), appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire at 29, retained his rustic clothes and manners during sessions. A raconteur of uncommon facility, he punctuated his stories with earth-born phrases and laconic flashes of philosophic insight. Behind his rugged humors lay a vast kindliness and tolerance.
     His wife, Edith Haven Doe (1840-1922),formerly of Portsmouth, was the daughter of Mr. George Wallis Haven, and the stepsister of Georgia Halliburton. Of superior intelligence and engaging personality, she was renowned as a helpmeet and hostess. The Doe home at Rollinsford, a frequent anchorage for the Jewett sisters, was about a mile from their own.
     ¹¹ William Durham Jewett (1813-1887), her father's brother, conducted a diversity of business enterprises in South Berwick, dabbling in real estate, banking, law, and running a drugstore. A childless widower, he kept bachelor hall in the family dwelling which he inherited from his father, and generously indulged the three Jewett girls.
     ¹² Elisha Hanson Jewett (1816-1883), first cousin of Miss Jewett's father, was a prominent railroad and building contractor, a bank director and state senator from South Berwick. His first wife, also named Sarah Orne Jewett, was the daughter of his uncle and business associate. His current wife was Charlotte Tilton Cross.
    ¹³This was not the first of Miss Jewett's faint intimations of immortality. Five years before she had speculated whimsically, "I think it would be funny if, a hundred years from now, some girl like me should find this diary somewhere and wonder about me. I guess I will write my journal with a view to your getting some improving information, young woman!" (Manuscript diary, Houghton Library, Harvard.)
    ¹⁴Caroline Augusta, Miss Jewett's younger sister, who married Edwin C. Eastman, a South Berwick pharmacist (see Genealogical Chart). A Native of Winby and Other Tales is dedicated "To my dear younger sister, C. A. E."
     ¹⁵ Dr. William Perry (see Genealogical Chart and headnote, Letter 21).

4 LUCRETIA FISK PERRY
     South Berwick, Maine
     May 12, 1872
    Dear Aunty:
     Thank you so much for your letter which I read twice with great speed and interest and have referred to since, at intervals. I think you must have been sent into the world with a natural gift for writing letters!
     I have enjoyed myself today very much, for the Bishop¹ preached in Dover this morning and Mary and I drove over to hear him, and were repaid by a very fine sermon -- and this afternoon he preached in Salmon Falls² at the little old Episcopal church -- and everybody went to hear him and was delighted with him, and I was very proud of my Bishop. We had a nice talk with him after church and I think he will come over tomorrow to see us. He promised to do so if he had time.
     Only think of Uncle John's³ going abroad! If it were my Uncle Will⁴ I should 'put in' to be taken along. (Don't you think he would like to take charge of a party of ladies?) I wish very much to go travelling, and all the English history which I have been reading this winter makes me wish to go to England more than I ever have before. The Walworths sail next month and are to go directly to England and spend a great deal of time there, because Ella⁵ went there last, when she was abroad before, and could not see so much as she wished. She is coming down for a day or two before she goes. I shall not miss her particularly because she is always up to the mountains or somewhere in the summer and I never think of seeing her. And she will write me just as often, and much more interesting letters probably, so I am to be the gainer after all.
    Monday
     I did not finish my letter last evening as I intended because Uncle William⁶ and Father arrived from a journey to Wells, and I had to assist in giving them their late tea. Father went to Portsmouth this morning and then I went to Great Falls with him, and he was just on the point of starting for North Conway when he discovered the train does not go farther than Ossipee except in the morning, and so he must wait.⁷ I wish I could go with him -- for I am so fond of the mountains -- and it is so delightful to have them only three hours away, now this railroad has been extended. Mary and I mean to go up to Conway by and by.⁸
     I treasure up all you tell me about studying, and I really have accomplished a great deal lately. I have been translating a French novel, and find I had not forgotten so much as I feared. It was very entertaining and one night I threw down my dictionary; you see, I made a rule to 'look out' every word I didn't know, and read until very late at night, for it grew very exciting! I had great misgivings as to whether I ought not to go back and translate it all as literally as I began, but I had not the necessary strength of mind! Then I read a very nice book about ancient Iceland which I have finished, and I have now Ray's Mental Hygiene and Froude's History of Elizabeth, and a book on Instinct in Animals and Men which is one of the most interesting things I ever read, and I have learned so much from it. I wonder if I have told you that I allow myself a certain number of pages every day, of course exceeding if I like. I find the English history goes off very fast at fifty pages a day, at any rate, and sometimes a hundred, and I read one of the lectures on Instinct. Last week I had also, Loyola and the Jesuits,⁹which enlightened my mind a good deal. I am beginning at this late day to see the immense advantage of being systematic. Even the small success I have achieved in my 'lessons' has encouraged me, and I mean to keep on.
     Ellen Mason's¹⁰ busy ways made me ashamed of myself when I was with her, for she seemed to accomplish so much and I -- nothing. She appears both delighted and amazed at finding out that she has had an influence for good over me, for she says it is one of the defects of her character to be restless and 'on the go' all the time, and so her using her time more than other people do is more a weakness than anything else -- and it is so strange that she should have done me good. The girl doesn't take into consideration, you see, that she uses her time better than other people, only that she uses it more! I am having a very pleasant correspondence with her just now. I don't know whether it will be permanent but I enjoy it very much and she seems to, also. She sent me a very sweet letter at Easter which I answered and we have gone on flourishingly since -- though to be sure there have been one or two subjects under consideration, not very important subjects perhaps, but still we wished to communicate.
     I was in Portsmouth one day a week or two ago, and have been expecting Georgie up to Mrs. Doe's, but I believe Mrs. Haven¹¹ has had visitors. Mary had quite a long letter from Uncle John today. There was no news in it except about some of Mary's and my friends there. I was quite astonished to find it was the fifteenth of June that he is to sail. I thought it was the fifteenth of May -- Wednesday! Mother has been better for the last two days and I hope she will have no return of her neuralgia but it has come on twice, after letting her alone for a day or two, which is very discouraging. She has been expecting to see Grandpa. We enjoyed Willy Fiske's¹² little visit very much. I do think he is one of the nicest boys in the world.
     I had a note from Mr. Howells^l3 one day last week asking me to have patience with him, and saying that he should print "The Shore House" as soon as he possibly could. If he had not been so kind and seemed so sorry to keep me waiting I should have been provoked at waiting so long, but he has had good reasons all the time. But I know other people are kept waiting too, and people whom one would imagine would be 'served first.'¹⁴
     I have written you a long letter, but I am afraid not a very interesting one! Goodby my love to Fanny, and Grandpa, and Uncle Will, and yourself.
     Affly,
     S.O.J.
     Mary has just informed me that she wrote you today! You will have all the news! No matter!
     NOTES
     ¹ William Woodruff Niles (1832-1914), Canadian-born clergyman, became the second Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire in 1870. He demonstrated literary capacity as joint editor of the Churchman and as a member of the commissions for revising the prayer-book and the marginal readings in the Bible. Although born in a Congregationalist family, Miss Jewett was baptized and confirmed an Episcopalian in her twenty-first year.
     ² Dover, New Hampshire, is about five miles west of South Berwick; Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, about one-quarter of a mile from South Berwick, across the Salmon Falls River.
     ³ John Taylor Perry was another of Miss Jewett's maternal uncles (see Genealogical Chart). After twenty-five years as editor and part owner of the Cincinnati Gazette, he returned to his birthplace, Exeter, New Hampshire, where he resided until his death. A shrewd judge of his niece's capacities, he wrote her on June 11, 1885: "Your forte lies in description. You can hardly improve there. Invention, on the other hand, is not your strongest point." Miss Jewett was well aware of this weakness, nevertheless let Charles Dudley Warner persuade her to write The Tory Lover, a novel notoriously deficient in "invention."
     ⁴ Dr. William Gilman Perry, husband of Aunt Lucretia.
     ⁵ Ella Walworth [Little] was one of Miss Jewett's young coterie of Boston friends which included Cora Clark, Elizabeth Fairchild, Grace Gordon, the Horsford sisters, and the Mason sisters.
     ⁶ William Durham Jewett.
     ⁷ Dr. Jewett practiced medicine in South Berwick and vicinity for many years. A graduate of Jefferson Medical College, he became professor of obstetrics at Bowdoin College, consulting surgeon to Maine General Hospital, President of the Maine Medical Association, and contributor of distinguished articles to the scientific journals. Miss Jewett recreated him affectionately in A County Doctor.
    ⁸ Wells is on the southern coast of Maine; Portsmouth is New Hampshire's famous seaport and summer resort; Great Falls, a small mill city on Salmon Falls River, is (since 1893) Somersworth, New Hampshire, connected by bridge with Berwick, Maine; Conway, North Conway, and Ossipee are in the heart of the White Mountain range in New Hampshire (for more about this region see Letter 55, note 2).
     ⁹ The book about ancient Iceland is possibly The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs (London, 1870), translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris. The other books are Isaac Ray, Mental Hygiene (Boston, 1863); James Anthony Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth (London, 1856-1870, 12 vols.; P. A. Chadbourne, Instinct: Its Office in the Animal Kingdom and its Relation to Higher Powers in Man (New York, 1872); Stewart Rose, Ignatius Loyola, and the Early Jesuits (London, 1870).
    ¹⁰ Ellen Francis Mason (1846-1930) and her sister Ida resided at the corner of Walnut and Beacon streets. Of substantial means, Miss Mason was seriously devoted to charitable purposes and promoted Boston culture through her patronage of music and musicians. The sisters shuttled between Beacon Hill and Newport, often inviting Miss Jewett to their homes in both places.
     ¹¹ Susan Hamilton Peters Haven (Mrs. George Wallis Haven), mother of Georgina Halliburton, was a descendant of the John Haggins who built and originally occupied the Jewett house in south Berwick.
    ¹²Mrs. Perry's nephew William Perry Fiske was the son of her brother Frank Fiske, who had married Abigail G. Perry (see Genealogical Chart). Some members of this family used the final e in the cognomen, some did not.
    ¹³William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1871 to 1881. An assistant to James T. Fields, Howells was "the Editor with the fine handwriting" who accepted Miss Jewett's "Mr. Bruce," her first story to appear in the Atlantic. Later he urged her to make a collection of her stories and gave her an introductory letter to James R. Osgood, publisher-partner of Fields. The result was Deephaven. Miss Jewett often called at the Howells' Boston menage on Berkeley Street and was a familiar dinner guest. Howells became enamored of Maine after spending a summer at York harbor, built a cottage at Kittery Point, and exchanged visits with Miss Jewett in summer and fall, going by way of the now extinct Portsmouth, Dover & York trolley line.
    ¹⁴The sketch appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, XXXII (September 1873), 358-368. Upon reading it, Aunt Lucretia wrote: "I do not think I ever have told you how much I enjoyed your lifelike 'Shore House.' It was as full of good things as a Christmas pudding, of plums, and I liked nearly as well your very graphic account of your visit to the old women in Kittery, in Mary's letter. You have that charm of naturalness in telling your stories, which seems so easy, yet is so impossible to catch if one is not to the manner born. I hope you will always stick to your own style."

5 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     July 1, 1873
    My dear Mr. Scudder:
     You have always been so kind to me that I cannot help thinking of you as one of my friends, and I have a question to ask which I am sure you will be able to answer. So I ask it without making elaborate apologies. Will you tell me about keeping the copyright of my stories? Someone asked me not long ago if I would like to have them published in book form, and, though I did not care to tell him 'yes,' it has suggested to me that perhaps I might like to have someone else take them one of these days. And I know there is something about a thing's being 'copyrighted' or not, which may hinder their being used over again. At any rate, I should like to know if there is anything for me to do about it.
     I have been writing for the Independent since I saw you.¹ Not very much, however, for I don't think I need the practice of writing so much as I need study, and care in other ways. I think you advised me long ago not to write too much, or to grow careless? I am getting quite ambitious and really feel that writing is my work -- my business perhaps; and it is so much better than making a mere amusement of it as I used.
     I sent you some sketches I gave a paper published at our Hospital Fair in Portland, not long ago.² I am really trying to be very much in earnest and to do the best I can, and I know you will wish me 'good luck.' I have had nothing to complain of, for the editors have never proved to be dragons, and I even find I have achieved a small reputation already. I am glad to have something to do in the world and something which may prove very helpful and useful if I care to make it so, which I certainly do. But I am disposed to long-windedness! If you will tell me with the least possible trouble to yourself how I can have my stories copyrighted, or 'keep the copyright' I believe one should say -- or if it is not necessary, I shall thank you exceedingly, both for that and for your other kindnesses.
      Yrs very sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Between September 14, 1871, and May 8, 1873, Miss Jewett contributed nine pieces to the Independent (see Weber & Weber, Bibliography, 30-31).
    ²Three sketches appeared in The Tonic (Portland, Maine) in 1873: "Birds' Nests," June 11, page 3; "Doctors and Patients," June 12, page 3; "Protoplasm and House-Cleaning," June 17, page 3.

6 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     July 13, 1873
    My dear Mr. Scudder:
     In the first place, I think this letter will need no answer. Does not this announcement help you to begin to read it with a pleasanter feeling? The truth is I wish to talk to you a little about my writing. I am more than glad to have you criticise me. I know I must need it very much and I realize the disadvantage of never hearing anything about my stories except from my friends, who do not write themselves, and are not unexceptionable authorities upon any strictly literary question. I do know several literary people quite well, but whenever they read anything of mine I know that they look down from their pinnacles in a benignant way and think it very well done 'for her,' as the country people say. And all this is not what I want. Then it is a disadvantage that I should have been so successful in getting my nonsense printed!
     I am so glad to have you show me where I fail, for I wish to gain as fast as possible and I must know definitely what to do. But Mr. Scudder, I think my chief fault is my being too young and knowing so little! Those sketches I sent you were carefully written. Of course they were experiments and I could perhaps have made them better if they could have been longer. Those first stories of mine were written with as little thought and care as one could possibly give and write them at all. Lately I have chosen my words and revised as well as I knew how; though I always write impulsively -- very fast and without much plan. And, strange to say, this same fault shows itself in my painting, for the more I worked over pictures the stiffer and more hopeless they grew. I have one or two little marine views I scratched off to use up paint and they are bright and real and have an individuality -- just as the "Cannon Dresses"¹ did. That is the dearest and best thing I have ever written. "The Shore House," which Mr. Howells has,² reminds me of it and comes next. I wrote it in the same way and I think it has the same reality. I believe the only thing he found fault with was that I did not make more of it. 'The characters were good enough for me to say a great deal more of them.'
     But I don't believe I could write a long story as he suggested, and you advise me in this last letter. In the first place, I have no dramatic talent. The story would have no plot. I should have to fill it out with descriptions of character and meditations. It seems to me I can furnish the theatre, and show you the actors, and the scenery, and the audience, but there never is any play! I could write you entertaining letters perhaps, from some desirable house where I was in most charming company, but I couldn't make a story about it. I seem to get very much bewildered when I try to make these come in for secondary parts. And what shall be done with such a girl? For I wish to keep on writing, and to do the very best I can.
     It is rather discouraging to find I lose my best manner by studying hard and growing older and wiser! Copying one's self has usually proved disastrous. Shall not I let myself alone and not try definitely for this trick of speech or that, and hope that I shall grow into a sufficient respectability as the years go on? I do not know how much real talent I have as yet, how much there is in me to be relied upon as original and effective in writing. I am certain I could not write one of the usual magazine stories. If the editors will take the sketchy kind and people like to read them, is not it as well to do that and do it successfully as to make hopeless efforts to achieve something in another line which runs much higher? You know the spirit in which I say this, for you know my writing has until very lately been done merely for the pleasure of it. It is not a bread and butter affair with me, though such a spendthrift as I could not fail to be glad of money, which has in most instances been lightly earned. I don't wish to ignore such a gift as this, God has given me. I have not the slightest conceit on account of it, indeed, I believe it frightens me more than it pleases me.
     Now it has been a great satisfaction to have said all this to you. Please look upon it as a slight tribute to your critical merits which no one can appreciate more heartily than I, and remember that I told you in the beginning there would be no questions which would need answering.
     Thank you for telling me of your engagement, though I had heard of it long ago from some Boston friend and I had half a mind to speak of it when I was writing you. I am very glad now to send you my best wishes. I shall like exceedingly to see Miss Owen,³ and I congratulate you both with all my heart.
     Yours most sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ "The Girl With the Cannon Dresses," Riverside Magazine, IV (August 1870), 354-360.
     ² At long last the story found its way into the Atlantic Monthly, XXXII (September 1873), 358-368; collected in Deephaven.
     ³ Miss Grace Owen (1845-1926) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, whom Scudder married later in the year.

7 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     August 12, 1873
    My dear Mr. Scudder:
     Your kind note reached me yesterday, and I thank you most heartily for telling me that you liked "Deephaven Cronies."¹ You have always been exceedingly helpful and kind to me and I assure you I am not disposed to be unmindful of it, or to forget how much interest you have shown in my work. I am so glad that the sketch pleases you and so glad that you cared to tell me so! I mean to do the best I can and I am growing more and more interested in my writing every week. I have not seen the sketch yet, but no doubt the magazine will be published in a few days.
     I should be very glad to see you again and I wish I knew Mrs. Scudder. When I am in Boston next winter I shall be glad to accept your kind invitation and shall certainly 'make a point' of calling at No. 3 Berkeley St.
     It is very pleasant to have your praise but I should be equally glad to be warned and reproved when you find occasion. I am glad you are writing again, as glad as I was sorry that you stopped.
     Yours most sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹Atlantic Monthly, XXXVI (September 1875), 316-329; collected in Deephaven.

8 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     September 14, 1876
    My dear Mr. Scudder:
     My name is Sarah Orne Jewett, if you please; and when you are arranging the Index, can you credit a story to me which was called "Mr. Bruce" and printed in the Atlantic for December 1869?¹
     So much for business which properly ought to come before my saying how much pleasure it has given me to hear from you again and to know something about you. Indeed I do wish very much to see you sometime in Cambridge and I hope to manage it this autumn certainly, but hitherto I have just gone out from Boston with not half enough time for what I had to do, and I have been meaning to make certain calls and have unfailingly put them off, for a long time. I was not in town last winter except for very short visits.
     Shirley² must be very pleasant, but what do you do in that small room of yours when you are tired with writing and wish to stretch your arms, or don't you appreciate the satisfaction of that? I am sorry your little girl has been ill, and I hope she is already a great deal better.
     No, I haven't dug a clam all summer, for what with the Centennial³ and a visit to N. Y. in June, and the house filled with visitors ever since we came home in July, I have only been down to the Shore half a dozen times and only for the day, which doesn't count with me. But I am going down directly to spend a week, and then I know where to go for those clams and where to get an old dory with as many leaks as a basket, and I know where the cunners hold county conferences out in the harbour, where two other little boys and I caught a hundred and thirty in just no time at all one day last summer. This is all in York which reminds me of my dear Deephaven though that was 'made up' before I had ever stayed overnight in York, or knew and loved it as I do now. Since "The Shore House" was written I have identified Deephaven with it more and more. Still I don't like to have people say that I mean York when I say Deephaven.⁴
     I should like to see you and have a long talk and I hope I shall one of these days.
     I am having such a good time just now out of doors: this morning I have been rowing down river, yesterday I went up Agamenticus and could see seventy miles of seacoast and all the White Hills, and two days ago I went to the Cliff,⁵ which is a place you ought to see.
     Please give my regards to Mrs. Scudder whom I am hoping to know.
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹The Atlantic Monthly Index, 1857-1876 was being prepared and Miss Jewett, having outgrown her passion for pseudonyms, wished to set the record straight (see Letter 1, note 3).
     ² Near Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where Mrs. Scudder spent the summer in a house owned by the Shakers. Scudder joined her from time to time as work would allow.
     ³ The Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, which served as a basis for "The Flight of Betsey Lane."
     ⁴ Miss Jewett's "Deephaven" corresponds roughly with York County, Maine's southernmost triangular tip, but she consistently resisted exact identification. See also her prefaces to Deephaven, editions of 1877 and 1893; M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess (Boston, 1922), 300; and Letters 30; 96, note 3.
     ⁵ Mount Agamenticus is the highest hill in the relatively low region of southern Maine between Cape Neddick and Ogunquit; White Hills is a localism for the White Mountain range of New Hampshire; Bald Head Cliff is at Ogunquit on the southern coast of Maine.

9 JAMES R. OSGOOD
     James Ripley Osgood (1836-1892), of Fryeburg, Maine, was first a clerk for Ticknor & Fields, then by several steps partner and owner of the publishing house -- James R. Osgood & Company -- which eventually became Houghton Mifflin Company. In 1885 Osgood went to England as agent of Harper & Brothers, but soon founded his own firm there. Active and enterprising, Osgood published nearly all the outstanding American and British authors of his time. He had a hand in the issuance of Miss Jewett's first three books.

     South Berwick, Maine
     April 9, 1877
    My dear Mr. Osgood:
     I think Deephaven¹ is very pretty, a great deal prettier than I had thought it was going to be! Don't you like it? I like especially the little 'die' on the back which I had not seen before.²
     I send you a notice which came from the Christian Union and the longer one from the N. Y. Herald. At least I suppose it came from that, for it is exactly the same type &c. Someone sent it to me in a letter. Will you be good enough to keep it for me with the other notices, for I should like to save them. I think it would be a good plan to send an advance copy to the Cincinnati Gazette, to Mr. Perry who is my uncle,³ and who ought to speak a good word for Deephaven, indeed I'm pretty sure he will! The paper has a large circulation in that part of the country. I find I appreciate my relationship to an Editor, in a marked degree just now!
     Was not a copy to be sent to the Advertiser early? or to Miss Preston?⁴ I know you told me that Mr. Whitney spoke of some plan. I never have asked Miss Preston to write a notice, but I know her very well and if nothing has been arranged I will send her one of my copies and will ask her.
     I should like the 25 copies very much, and will you please have them sent by Goodwin's Ex., 10 Court Square.
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹Deephaven, Miss Jewett's first work published as a volume, appeared in this year and brought her wide public acclaim as an authentic delineator of her special region.
     ² A triad of cat-tails in gilt on the spine of the first edition between her name and the publisher's device.
     ³ John Taylor Perry (see Letter 4, note 3).
     ⁴ Harriet Waters Preston (1836-1911), a scholar in the field of Provençal poetry, a translator, novelist, and editor of considerable ability. She wrote reviews and critiques for numerous periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly. Miss Jewett's enthusiasm for Matthew Arnold had its origin in Miss Preston's appraisal of his poems. Their friendship was renewed when their itineraries crossed in Florence during Miss Jewett's first trip to Europe in 1882.

10 CHARLES ASHBURTON GILMAN
     Charles Ashburton Gilman (1859-1938), son of Charles Jervis and Alice Dunlap Gilman, was a cousin of Miss Jewett who lived in Brunswick, Maine. A gregarious, happy-go-lucky youth, he sought no profession, dabbling lightly in local politics, and remained a community favorite to his last days.

    South Berwick, Maine
     May 9, 1877
    My dear Charlie:
     I have just come home from a very pleasant day in Portsmouth with Miss Halliburton, who told me to tell you with her kind regards how very sorry she was to miss your call yesterday. I am so sorry too that you did not see her, for I know you would have had a pleasant call, and have certainly found her very glad to see you.
     We went to Newcastle today and had such a jolly time, I wish you had been with us. It is not nice weather for a picnic, but we went to a house which Mr. Haven¹ owns and had a big fire in a fireplace and a very good time, with a walk along the rocks and beach after dinner.
     I hope you had a good time in Boston and you must tell me about it. I received your postal card and should have answered it, but I have been busy and there was not very much news. I have nearly finished the survey of the Sunday-school books. The new ones have been very entertaining for we have had them here in the dining room for a week or two. I gave Susy Jewett² your goodbye message, and she was sorry not to have seen you again, and said many pleasant things about you. Carrie is better but not nearly well yet. We all enjoyed your visit and you don't know how much I missed you Charlie!³
     With love to Cousin Fanny.
     Yours always sincerely & affly,
     Sarah
     NOTES
     ¹ George Wallis Haven, scion of an old Portsmouth family, and described as "a scholarly gentleman of leisure and some means," was the father of Edith Haven Doe and stepfather of Georgina Halliburton.
     ² Susan Jameson Jewett of South Berwick was the daughter of Elisha Hanson Jewett (see Letter 3, note 12).
     ³ The next day Miss Jewett wrote to Anna Laurens Dawes about her cousin: "He's such a nice fellow, and we are great friends. I used not to like him, and it is delightful to find him so nice as he grows up. He would not thank me for giving you the impression that he is young. It falls very sweet upon his ear to be called Mr. Gilman and I never shall tell that he is at home an underrated younger brother and only 'Charley.' " And on October 11: "I made a little visit down at Brunswick and had a lovely time with my young cousin Charley - dear little fellow (or big fellow!). He has grown so this summer and he is trying very hard to be a good man." (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

11 IDA AGASSIZ HIGGINSON
     Ida Agassiz Higginson (1837-1935) was the daughter of Jean Louis Agassiz, the naturalist. Primarily interested in education and music, she was associated with her stepmother, Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, in the establishment and development of Radcliffe College (see Letter 103, note 2), and with her husband, Henry Lee Higginson, founder-patron of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Miss Jewett enjoyed the hospitality of the Higginsons at their summer home, Sunset Hill, in West Manchester, Massachusetts, and often sailed with them off Cape Ann.

     South Berwick, Maine
     June 2, 1877
    My dear Mrs. Higginson:
     You have not the least idea how much pleasure your letter has given me. Thank you with all my heart for your kindness in writing me. I hoped you would like little Deephaven, but I do not know what to say when you give it such high praise. I am very glad to have pleased you, that is certain! It is all vague enough when I read about the book in the newspapers but it is a real delight to know that my friends like what I have done, and some of the letters which have come to me lately I shall always keep among my dearest treasures.¹
     You said one thing in your letter which made me very glad: that you thought I had not made country people ridiculous. I should have been so sorry if I had done that, for I have always liked my outdoor life best, and in driving about ever since I can remember with my father, who is a doctor, I have grown more and more fond of the old-fashioned countryfolks. I have always known their ways and I like to be with them. Deephaven is not the result of careful study during one 'summer vacation,' as some persons have thought, but I could write it because it is the fashion of life with which I have always been familiar. I think no part of New England can possibly have kept more of the last century's way of thinking and speaking than this. Berwick itself is growing and flourishing in a way that breaks my heart, but out from the village among the hills and near the sea there are still the quietest farms, where I see little change from one year to another, and the people would delight your heart.²
     And as for the sailors, I have always known them. Nobody knows how I love the sea, and many of my friends have been and are sailors in either the navy or the merchant service, and until a few years ago we had much to do with ships. When I was a child the Captains used to come to see my grandfather³ and I thought if I could go off on a voyage I should be perfectly happy.
     Deephaven seems as real to me as Berwick or Newport. I know all the roads and all the houses there, and I believe I could answer all the questions about it that anyone could ask.
     I beg your pardon for this letter, dear Mrs. Higginson, because it is altogether too long. I wished to write you at once, and I think of so many things to say. I have always remembered my two calls with the greatest pleasure. Please let me thank you again for your kindness and interest, and believe that I am always
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ True to her sentiment, Miss Jewett did preserve this early letter which is now in Houghton Library. Mrs. Higginson enjoyed particularly the description of the old church in this "delicious little book" which reminded her of Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, except that she considered Deephaven "very superior to it."
     ² Basically conservative and in love with the old ways and days, Miss Jewett deplored the drastic change that was affecting the once idyllic Berwick area. South Berwick was originally an inland riverport to which fleets of quaint, flat-bottomed gundalows brought cargoes of rum, molasses, sugar, and tea from the huge West Indies vessels docked at Portsmouth. Lumber, fish, hay, and country produce hauled by oxen from as far away as Vermont were taken in exchange. During the Civil War period and thereafter, this atmosphere of barter gradually gave way to the smoke and clangor of cotton and woolen mills. By 1877 shipping was no longer the major occupation of the region.
     ³ Theodore Furber Jewett (see Genealogical Chart), "a citizen of the whole geography," led a life of affairs and hazards which appealed to Miss Jewett's early romantic drift. Bound out as a boy, he ran away and shipped aboard a whaler. With only two companions, he was left for over eight months on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean to guard stores and secure seals. He returned to New England, became a sea captain, ran a vessel to the West Indies at the height of the Embargo, was captured by the British and confined on the infamous Dartmoor Prison Ship. He turned to the less turbulent occupation of shipbuilding, married four times, and finally retired as a merchant. In his declining years he maintained the "W. I. Store" on Main Street in South Berwick, a multifarious general store replete with potbelly stove and cracker barrel. Here gathered daily the Captain's cronies, veterans of the seven seas, to spin the prodigious yarns which the child Sarah absorbed with undiminishing wonder.

12 JAMES R. OSGOOD
     South Berwick, Maine
     August 16, 1877
    Dear Sir:
     Cannot I have the rest of the notices of Deephaven now if you are done using them? There are a great many that I have not seen and I shall thank you very much if you will take the trouble to send them.
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett

13 ALICE DUNLAP GILMAN
     Mrs. Alice Dunlap Gilman (1827-1905), the mother of the Brunswick Gilman family, was related to Miss Jewett through the marriage of Sarah's grandfather Dr. William Perry to Abigail Gilman (see Genealogical Chart). Alice Gilman counted a college president, one of George Washington's generals, and a governor of Maine in her lineage.

    South Berwick, Maine
     October 10, 1877
    Dear Cousin Alice:
     Isn't it a good day for the fair?¹ and don't I wish I were there!
     I reached home all right but in the midst of a pouring rain. Mary was to have been here at three, but she did not show herself, so we are looking for her this morning. Father and mother are very well but I think they have been rather lonely, and we sat up late last night talking for I had so much to tell about my visit. You don't know how much I enjoyed it, or how much I thank you and all the rest for your very great kindness to me. I shall have so many pleasant things to remember, and I hope you will all come here before very long, and that I can do something for you.
     As for the horse, in which I take it for granted you have some interest, I am sorry to say he is not here yet so I have to wait another day. It is not much matter because it is so muddy today, but I want to see how he looks.²
Father is away today and I think I shall give the horses a little exercise after I unpack my trunk. I wish Charlie was here for I owe him some splendid drives and I shouldn't mind paying up at all. Tell Liddy³ that I have lost some valuable time this morning because I had to sit right down and read the Mother's Magazine.⁴ I had a lot of letters to read last night and one was from the editor of a new magazine⁵ asking me to write for it, so I don't believe I am likely to want business this winter with all the rest I have to do!
     Tell Aunty that she shall have the poem in a few days.
     I keep thinking of the fair and wishing I could go. I am so glad it doesn't rain, and I shall look anxiously for the Telegraph. Mother says the receipt for the "pepper-tomato" is to take the tomatoes and put them in hot water a little while so they will peel very easily and then put them in a kettle without any water and the proportion is three pounds of sugar to four pounds of fruit. Boil them until they get dark and thick (almost all day, I guess) and put in cayenne pepper as strong as you like it. Mother is in the midst of grape jelly and there are some things for me to do for her, so I must say goodby with ever and ever so much love to you and all the family.⁶
     From your sincere and aff
     Sarah
     NOTES
     ¹ The annual Sagadahoc County Fair at Topsham, Maine.
     ² Miss Jewett's interest in horseflesh had a long history, beginning with her childhood admiration for the horses that drew her father's buggy in his rounds of backwoods and seacoast patients. As soon as she was old enough she instituted regular afternoon drives, leading to association with a long series of spanking equines. She even contemplated driving from South Berwick to Boston, but there is no record that she ever consummated this project. It is somehow portentous that her death was brought about indirectly by a beloved horse who unseated her in a moment of clumsiness or panic.
     ³ Mrs. Gilman's daughter Elizabeth (see headnote, Letter 97).
     ⁴ Mother's Magazine, published in New York from 1833 to 1888, was at this time edited by a minister and bore heavily upon the Sabbath and scripture. Although it printed periodical reports of the Maternal Association, it was "not for mothers any more than for women in general," and was widely read for its stories, poems, and special features.
     ⁵ The Sunday Afternoon, published in Springfield, Massachusetts, and edited in its first year by Washington Gladden. Miss Jewett contributed four stories and two poems to its pages between January 1878 and July 1879. Two more of her stories appeared after its name was changed to Good Company.
    ⁶ For additional data on the Gilman family, see Richard Cary, "Jewett's Cousins Charles and Charlie," Colby Library Quarterly, V (September 1959), 48-58; and "Jewett and the Gilman Women," V (March 1960), 94-103.

14 CHARLES ASHBURTON GILMAN
     South Berwick, Maine
     October 16, 1877
    Dear Charlie:
     I have been meaning to write to you ever since I came home but I have not found time. I went to Boston the second morning after I left Brunswick and bought the chestnut horse which I like very much. Mary says she likes it better than the others she saw, and, so far, everything seems right about it. I don't know that I ever saw a prettier creature -- she's a thoroughbred and it was a great piece of good luck that Mr. Chamberlain happened to get her. I found out all about her, and who had owned her, etc. She knows me already and follows me all round after apples and sugar. I just wish you were here and could go out to see her for yourself. I think I shall enjoy her ever so much.¹
     I did have such a good time in Boston. I went to see Mr. Osgood, and did some other errands and then went up to the Gordons, where I found that Ellen Mason and several other friends of mine were in town from Newport and were all at Ellen's. You can guess that I whisked in and that I was persuaded to send a telegram home and to stay overnight. I stayed with Grace but I spent the evening with the other girls and we had a jolly time. I wish you had been with us! We went to see Heller the magician and you never saw such things as he did! I hurried home the next day at noon for I thought that Miss Preston was coming but I found she was obliged to put it off until a week or so later, and that neither Mrs. Ellis nor Mrs. Furber could come so soon as we had planned, and that even the dressmaker was belated! So we are alone this week after all, but I find a good deal to do.
     Yesterday I went to York With John² to get the old chair I told you about, and I had a very nice time. We 'took' our dinner and went over on Cape Neddick exploring the pastures and in one place we drove over a stone wall! We had General in the little open buggy, and the wall had fallen down considerably just there! I should like to take you where we went, some day. It was not quite so wild as Orr's Island but it was wild enough. York is such a nice old place -- I mean to go down again for the day, before cold weather. I hope you will 'happen along' soon.
     It was too bad there was so much rainy weather in 'fair time' but I hope it didn't hinder all the pleasure and that you had no end of fun. I thought of you ever so much while I was in Boston. I long to see the Telegraph to hear about the premiums.³
     I did have such a nice time in Brunswick. I remember it every day, and especially Orr's Island, and you will not be surprised to hear that I have been reading The Pearl over again to refresh my memory.⁴
     By the way, Charlie, did you ever read a book called Tom Brown at Rugby? It is one of the books I like best, and I think you would. Perhaps you won't like the first chapter very well, but you get Tom started at school, and you see if you don't read all the rest! I don't know a jollier or a better book.⁵
     I wish I could spend this afternoon at your house. Do give my love to all the family. I suppose Cousin Alice got my letter but I want to say again what a good time I had and how kind you all were. Now write to me as soon as you can and remember you are coming to see us.
     Yours lovingly,
     Sarah
     I just had a letter from Mrs. Claflin⁶ asking me to make her a visit with Miss Phelps the authoress.⁷ Wouldn't it be nice? but I can't very well accept, and my friends want me again to come down to Newport, which would also be great fun if I could leave home.
     I send these patterns of a dress I got, to your mother -- not to you!
     NOTES
     ¹ On October 11 Miss Jewett had written to Anna Laurens Dawes: "In Boston I bought myself a lovable saddle-horse, a chestnut thoroughbred that goes like the wind, and is so far satisfactory in every way. I call her Sheila for the Princess of Thule -- is it not a good name?" (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress) Later Miss Jewett averred that she pronounced it Shy-la "because she occasionally shies."
     ² John Tucker (1845-1902), of Kittery, Maine, came to work for Dr. Jewett as "temporary" hostler in 1875 and remained until his death. A loyal and trustworthy man, he was granted increasing responsibility in household affairs and became practically indispensable to the entire family.
     ³ In point of fact the opening day of the Sagadahoc County Fair was postponed on account of inclement weather, and attendance on the following morning was disappointingly slim. However, there was compensation in the awards Mr. Gilman accumulated: two first prizes in the cow and heifer competitions, a first and second prize for full-blooded sheep, and a second prize in poultry for his Plymouth Rock.
     ⁴ Orr's Island is off the Maine coast, some twelve miles from Brunswick. Miss Jewett first read Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel The Pearl of Orr's Island (Boston, 1862) when she was thirteen or fourteen, and on a number of occasions in print avowed the influence that it had on her own literary career.
     ⁵ Miss Jewett's recommendation of Thomas Hughes's 1857 novel of English school life and "muscular Christianity" -- Tom Brown's School Days -- is in line with her solemn monitions to this gay-hearted young cousin (see Letter 15).
     ⁶ Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin (1825-1896), second wife of Governor William Claflin of Massachusetts, published three books of belles-lettres on New England life, and Personal Recollections of John G. Whittier.
    ⁷ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (see Letter 62, note 3).

15 CHARLES ASHBURTON GILMAN
     South Berwick, Maine
     December 23, 1877
     Dear Charlie:
     I send you this little lettercase hoping you will find it as useful as I have found one just like it. Mine is nearly worn out now. I was very glad to get your letter and wish I could send you a long one in reply but I must put off writing anything but a note, for I have several notes to write today and not much time.
     I hope you will have a 'Merrie Christmas' and a most happy one too, dear Charlie, and that you will try to make it a pleasant day for somebody else. I am very sure you will do this, for I think you do not forget other people. I should like to see you and to hear all about what you are doing, your lessons and your friends and what is going on. I was very glad to get your letter, and I wish you could write oftener, but I know it is hard to find time for letters.
     We were very sorry to hear of David's¹ accident and hope he is gaining very fast. Mother and Carrie have been in Exeter this week but returned yesterday. Thursday was Grandpa's eighty-ninth birthday.
     Please give my love and good wishes to all the family and with a great deal of love for yourself.
     I am always your sincerely and affectionately,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹ David Dunlap Gilman (1854-1914), Charles's elder brother, was a paymaster at the Cabot mill.

16 CHARLES ASHBURTON GILMAN
     South Berwick, Maine
     May 14, 1878
    My dear Charley:
     I hope you do not think I have forgotten I owe you for that nice letter which I received just after I went to Washington. I was so glad to hear from you and I have meant to answer it a good many times but, as you will imagine, I have had very little chance for writing while I was away and since I came home I have been very busy.
     You do not know what splendid times I have had. All my visits were very pleasant, but I enjoyed so much being in Washington. There is so much to interest anybody and I was going all the time from morning until night and pretty late at night too! I was there nearly two months and I would not have missed it for anything. How much I shall enjoy telling you of my frolics when I see you, which I hope will not be a great while hence.
     Amt Helen¹ was here the other day and I told her of the plan we made to meet in Portland at the time of the Poultry Show. She laughed and said she hoped we would sometime. I wonder if you really went and if you had a good time?
     You don't know how glad I was to get home again, and I believe home never seemed so pleasant. My horse goes splendidly and I have had some splendid long rides after I finish writing in the afternoon.² I went to work again as soon as I could and have already done a good deal of writing, though the first week I was at home it was so cold and damp that it played the mischief with me and I had the rheumatism, which seemed very natural indeed!
     I have so much to tell about and I am not nearly talked out yet either.
     Please tell your mother how sorry I am not to have been at home when she made her visit, for all the family enjoyed it so much. Carrie has been writing Lizzie and I suppose she told all the news. Do write soon, and with love to Lizzie and Dave, believe me your loving cousin
     Sarah
     Have you heard any news from Orr's Island, and how is Miss Ballard? Please give her my love.
     NOTES
     ¹ Mrs. Helen Williams Gilman (1817-1905), daughter of the noted Maine lawyer and U.S. Senator, Reuel Williams, was esteemed for her philanthropies, civic activity, and personal congeniality.
     ² On the same day Miss Jewett wrote to Anna Laurens Dawes: "You don't know how much I enjoy 'Sheila' who is better than ever -- and high as a kite. I began to think she had gone back to her colthood and must be disciplined and broken anew. But I am luckily very strong and Sheila knows I mean to be captain." (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

17 HENRY MILLS ALDEN
     Henry Mills Alden (1836-1919)was managing editor of Harper's Weekly from 1863 to 1869, and editor of Harper's Magazine from 1869 to his death.

     South Berwick, Maine
     June 21, [1879]
    Dear Sir:
     I enclose some verses¹ though I think you may say you have enough of my writing already.
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹"A Night in June," identified by a notation on page 4 of the letter. Alden rejected the poem and it was later published in the Christian Union, XXII (July 7, 1880), 4.

18 HENRY MILLS ALDEN

     South Berwick, Maine
     February 19, 1880
    My dear Mr. Alden:
     I am going to do something which I never did before and which if I had thought about it at all I should have said I could not do, but I wish you would print that sketch.¹ Of course, in a general way an author is always supposed to be in an anxious state to have such a thing happen but I beg you will not believe that I am sensitively confident of my rights! or that I am begging for the money my work will bring. For I have money enough and I suppose I could get the sketch printed elsewhere -- in fact, I am very sure of that.² But it is just here: I wish to keep the two together, they have always belonged to each other³ -- which feeling I am sure you will understand -- and I read them at two clubs which united them still more closely, and though one club was in Portsmouth, which dear old town is not distinguished as being literary!
     I found to my surprise that almost everybody liked the horse sketch¹best, people whom I thought (to tell the truth) I might be boring with it. And I don't believe it would be out of place in Harper's. I have been brought up to read Harper's, and I wouldn't have sent it to you in that case, though I hesitated at first from knowing that you already had two of my sketches, and though I meant at first to ask you to send me back "The Jacqueminot Rose"⁴ and take this instead because it is so much better.
     I don't believe I have the usual authorly feeling about what I write. I think about my sketches very much as I do about other people's. And I wish you would change your mind, for I am pretty sure you would not be sorry for it.⁵ I know that at least a hundred people told me how much they liked it, or told others so, and I think they were a fair sample of your readers. I am very glad you like it yourself, and I thank you for your letter which was very kind. And I hope I am not annoying you now, but I couldn't help speaking as I have because I believe it so heartily.
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ "An October Ride."
     ² Miss Jewett had already appeared over fifty times in newspapers and magazines, and had had three books published: Deephaven, Play Days, and Old Friends and New.
     ³ "An October Ride" and "Miss Daniel Gunn."
     ⁴ She had evidently submitted two prose sketches, "The Jacqueminot Rose" and "Miss Daniel Gunn." Alden presently sent the "Rose" back and Miss Jewett seems never to have succeeded in getting it published. When she received the rejected manuscript, she sent Alden a third sketch entitled "An October Ride." This too he declined but printed the "Gunn" story under the title "An Autumn Holiday," Harper's, LXI (October 1880), 683-691; collected in Country By-Ways.
     ⁵ Across the corner of the first page of Miss Jewett's letter, Alden wrote: "I ask to reconsider," and appended his initials.

19 HENRY MILLS ALDEN
     South Berwick, Maine
     February 23, 1880
    Dear Mr. Alden:
     I send you the sketch,¹ though I have been thinking that it would be better not, and I must say that you are very good to take so much trouble about it. I have been reading it over for I thought I might not remember it exactly, and seeing it now might change the old impression of it. But I must say honestly that I like it still! and I think in some ways it is one of the very best bits of writing I have ever done. There is more in it to remember and though there are no 'characters,' it has the spirit of this part of the country. But the question is, I can see, whether it will give pleasure to a sufficiently large proportion of the people who would read it.²
     There is one point in its favour which I never thought of before: and that is, a sketch which has something to say about a girl's 'rough-riding' is a little of a novelty in magazine literature. This has at least the virtue of being true, of my horse,³ the 'farm' and the old parsonage -- which is more than I can say for my sketches usually. Isn't it a curious thing that most people who read the two would probably call this made-up, and the one which you already have, drawn from life?
     I am afraid I said some odd things in my first letter about my two small audiences, but I meant that I was not trusting alone to my highly critical friends in Boston, because what many of those would like would be pretty sure not to be 'popular.' But the second time I read the sketch, my friends were mostly people who like to be entertained better than to be puzzled, and I thought both together would be a fair example to judge by. And I couldn't be 'taken in' by the polite speeches which anybody tried to make to me out of kindness alone! But I have made my 'last appearance on any stage' unlike my New York namesake.⁴
     I hope to be in New York for a day or two either just before or just after Easter, and I should be very glad indeed to see you, and I hope nothing will happen to prevent it. I am glad just now that we never have met, for I should be sorry if I ever thought that any personal feeling hindered the sway of justice (which ought to have been written with a very big J!).
     Yours sincerely,
     S. O. Jewett
     Indeed my heart will not break this time and you must not think of that at any rate!⁵ I am so glad that Mrs. Alden likes my stories! I am always forgetting that anyone reads them except the people I know, and it is always a delight and surprise to find a new friend. I hope you will pardon this postscript to my long and unbusiness-like letter.
     NOTES
     ¹ "An October Ride."
     ² Alden duly reconsidered the sketch, fortified his opinion that it would not do for Harper's and declined it again. But Miss Jewett, equally convinced that it deserved to be printed, included it as one of the eight chapters in Country By-Ways.
     ³ Miss Jewett's horse Sheila was her principal means of transportation on journeys of up to fifty miles. She drove as far as Exeter, New Hampshire, to visit her aunts, and to Amesbury, Massachusetts, to talk to Whittier.
     ⁴ Sara Jewett (1847-1899)was the leading lady of Augustin Daly's Union Square Theatre company. Miss Jewett of South Berwick recounts drolly that upon several occasions during her travels she was mistaken for Miss Jewett of New York, then considered one of the most beautiful women in America. In an ironic extension of the parallel, illness and enforced retirement became the lot of both thespian and literary Jewett. Sara Jewett's last appearance as an actress took place in the spring of 1883.
    ⁵ Alden's editorial judgment was not swayed by Miss Jewett's eloquence. Although they met soon after the date of this letter and became friends -- he was one of the group that saw her off on her first trip to Europe in the spring of 1882 -- he accepted no more of her sketches for nearly five years. He printed five of her poems, but no prose until "Farmer Finch" in January 1885.

20 SUSAN HAYES WARD
     Susan Hayes Ward (1838-1924), writer on religious topics, was an art critic and office editor of the Independent, of which her brother William Hayes Ward was editor. In earlier days the Wards visited frequently with a friend of Miss Jewett, their Aunt Mary Hayes, who lived in the house next to Berwick Academy. The Wards were alumni of the Academy, as was Miss Jewett.

     The Brunswick
     New York
     Friday [February 1881]
    Dear Susy Ward:
     I am here for a very few days and I went to your friend Mrs. Watson's this morning to see if you might chance to be in town, and I heard that you were planning to come in tomorrow. If it is to be in the morning and you are anywhere in this neighbourhood, I wish that you would be so kind as to come and see me -- me and also Mrs. Fields!¹ I shall be here between 10 and 10:30 or eleven o'clock certainly.
     I have not time to get out to see you and dear Hetta² and I hated to ask you to come in on purpose, but I make bold on the score of Mrs. Watson's knowing your plans.
     With love to you both.
     Yours ever affectionately,
     S. O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Annie Adams Fields (1834-1915), wife of the publisher James T. Fields, earned her own fame as poet and biographer. After Fields's death in 1881, Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields became inseparable companions, visiting extensively at each other's homes, and traveling together in the United States, on four European tours, and a Caribbean cruise. Miss Jewett dedicated The Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore "To A. F.," and Mrs. Fields edited the Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett.
     ² Hetta Lord Hayes Ward (1842-1921), sister of Susan and William, reported on architecture, exhibitions of painting, the applied and domestic arts for the Independent, as well as publishing delightful stories and verses for children.

21 WILLIAM PERRY
     Dr. William Perry, Miss Jewett's maternal grandfather from Exeter, New Hampshire (see Genealogical Chart), was universally acknowledged an original character. A farm boy, he struck out resolutely on his own and achieved his objective, a degree from the Harvard Medical School. At 80 he was still testing mettlesome horses by racing them pellmell along the beaches, and at 92 still performing surgery. A man of tart, intransigent tongue and liberal disposition, he abhorred indecision and constantly devised colorful admonitions to spur his relatives and patients to positive action. He saw talent in his granddaughter at an early date and urged her to give it "proper attention." Miss Jewett dedicated The Story of the Normans "To my dear grandfather, Doctor William Perry, of Exeter."

     Dublin
     June 12, [1882]
    Dear Grandpa:
     This is only a note to tell you how well we are getting on and what a good time I am having. It is worth crossing the sea if it were twice as wide, just to have had these ten days in Ireland, and Mrs. Fields and I have enjoyed every day and only wish we could stay longer.
     I was so much interested in seeing more of Dublin today than we had time for when we were here last week, and it certainly is a beautiful old city. The colleges and hospitals arc splendid buildings. I think a doctor would be very proud of them. We went to St. Patrick's Cathedral to see Dean Swift's monument and found so many others that we were interested in. It was my first sight of an old cathedral. In the time we have been ashore we have been at Cork, Glengariff, Killarney, Enniskillen, Portrush, and the Giants Causeway, and a night in Belfast beside two nights here. Tomorrow we go to London where I am hoping to have a very good time indeed. But I can't have the delight and strangeness of this week but once.
     I write long letters home and after I get settled down a little I hope to write to my other friends, but of course a good deal had to be crowded into this week, and I have been too tired to touch a pen at night. I am learning so much every day, and I am so glad I am here. It is late and I will send you more love than letter, and say good night, and promise to do better next time.
     Love to Uncle Will and Aunty and Fanny and much for yourself from
     Sarah
     Tell Elizabeth¹ I liked Enniskillen very much. It is really a most beautiful place.²
NOTES
     ¹ Elizabeth Watkin was Dr. Perry's cook, one of a long succession of native Irish housemaids who served in the Perry and Jewett homes.
     ² On this first of four European tours, each taken in company with Mrs. Fields, Miss Jewett touched on England, Norway, Belgium, Italy, France, and Switzerland, besides Ireland. Of the people she met, she spoke most enthusiastically of Tennyson, Charles Reade, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and Charles Dickens' family, with whom she had dinner.
     For other trips see Letters 60, note 2; 94, note 4; 112, note 1.

22 FRANCIS JACKSON GARRISON
     Francis Jackson Garrison (1848-1916), son of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, served as "confidential clerk" to H. O. Houghton and, after his death in 1895, continued in the same capacity to George H. Mifflin. Garrison's main responsibility was the import-export business, but he also set rates to be paid authors and supervised manufacturing orders. He became secretary of the firm when it was incorporated in 1908.

     [December 1882]
    Dear Mr. Garrison:
     I enclose this note which has a message for H. M. & Co.¹ I thought it was best to let the story be reprinted in the little paper.² I have been asked for it before, and from other quarters, and they might be right in thinking that it will do some good in reaching that special audience.
     Yours sincerely,
     S. O. Jewett
     Do not take the trouble to return the letter.
     NOTES
     ¹Houghton, Mifflin & Company, which was organized in 1880, succeeded Houghton, Osgood & Company. All but three of Miss Jewett's books were published by this firm and its predecessors, reflecting, as it were, the motto on the Jewett coat of arms: Toujours Le Même.
    ² The story may be "Jack's Merry Christmas," which appeared in the Independent, XXXIII (December 15, 1881), 31-32; in which case "the little paper" is the Maine Sentinel (Biddeford), which reprinted the story in vol. XI (January 2, 1883), 45.

23 HORACE E. SCUDDER
     South Berwick, Maine
     March 3, [1883]
    Dear Mr. Scudder:
     I ought to have told you that Mr. Warner¹ wished to have the manuscripts returned to 148 Charles St. instead of to Hartford, in case you do not wish to use them,² but I forgot this when we were talking yesterday.
     Yours ever sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900), co-author with Mark Twain of The Gilded Age, was editor of the Hartford Courant from 1861 to 1900, and contributing editor of Harper's from 1884 to 1898. Tireless in his encouragement of female writers, he visited Miss Jewett at South Berwick and she, in turn, stopped regularly at the Warner household in Hartford.
     ² Miss Jewett may be referring to some sketches or poems she sent to Warner, with the request that he relay them to Scudder if they were not suitable. Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly published Miss Jewett a total of six times this year.

24 JESSIE McDERMOTT [WALCOTT]
     Jessie McDermott (b. 1857)began to appear as an illustrator of juvenile stories and poems in magazines around 1878 as JMcD. In 1891she married Charles Hosmer Walcott, Concord lawyer and historian of the town. After his death in 1901 she appended her marriage name to her professional signature. She most often embellished the children's tales and jingles of Margaret Johnson in St. Nicholas, and not infrequently provided drawings for her own verses.

     South Berwick, Maine
     May 23, 1883

     Dear Miss McDermott:
     I have looked at the picture which you drew for my little story in the June Wide Awake¹with so much pleasure that I wish to thank you. I think it is charmingly done, and the doleful little girl in the chair is so like the Katy whom I 'made up,' that it seems quite wonderful.
     Yours is really a most careful and satisfactory piece of work, but I wish I could say the same of my sketch which somehow missed being read in the proof, and which ought to have been revised by its guilty writer. However! -- and I will do my part better next time.²
     Yours sincerely and with many thanks.
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ "Katy's Birthday," Wide Awake, XVII (June 1883), 36-40; collected in Katy's Birthday by Sarah O. Jewett with Other Stories by Famous Authors (Boston, 1883).
     ² Miss Jewett may have felt sheepish over the fact that on page 40 the word in was printed instead of and.

25 LAURA E. BELLAMY
     Laura E. Bellamy (1847-1897),of Kittery Point, Maine, wrote sheaves of poems and published a dozen or so in local newspapers. She was the sister of John Haley Bellamy, one of America's foremost carvers of ships' figureheads, sought out by such diverse men as Charles Eliot Norton, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, and Edwin Booth.

     South Berwick, Maine
     August 31, 1885
    My dear Miss Bellamy:
     I am sorry that I have not been able to answer your letter sooner, but I was glad I had not written you when I found this little essay yesterday in the Sunday Herald.¹ It says many things, which you will appreciate, much better than I could say them, and, I think, gives us a simple straightforward explanation of the fact that some books are for a time and some for no time and some for all time. It isn't for me to decide whether you must keep on writing; that belongs to your own heart and conscience. But I know one thing -- that you will not be left in the dark about it. Do not be misled either by a difficulty or a facility of expression. If you have something to say, it will and must say itself, and the people will listen to whom the message is sent.
     I often think that the literary work which takes the least prominent place nowadays is that belonging to the middle ground. Scholars and so-called intellectual persons have the wealth of literature in the splendid accumulation of books that belong to all times, and now and then a new volume is added to the great list. Then there is the lowest level of literature, the trashy newspapers and sensational novels, but how seldom a book comes that stirs the minds and hearts of the good men and women of such a village as this, for instance. One might say that they are not readers by nature or that they do not get their learning in this way, but the truth must be recognized that few books are written for and from their standpoint. That they have read certain books proves that they would read others if they had them. And whoever adds to this department of literature will do an inestimable good, will see that a simple, helpful way of looking at life and speaking the truth about it -- "To see life steadily, and see it whole," as Matthew Arnold says -- in what we are pleased to call its everyday aspects must bring out the best sort of writing. My dear father used to say to me very often, "Tell things just as they are!"² and used to show me what he meant in A Sentimental Journey! The great messages and discoveries of literature come to us, they write us, and we do not control them in a certain sense. From what I know of your wishes in regard to your work, I am sure you will not neglect any chance of forwarding it, and if it proves that you must make something else first, and put the great gift and pleasure of writing second in your life, you will live none the less helpfully and heartily, and try to find God's meaning and purpose for your work and give it to the world again in whatever you do.
     I try to remember very often a bit from a criticism upon one of Miss Thackeray's novels which I saw in Harper's long ago: "It is, after all, Miss Thackeray herself in Old Kensington who gives the book its charm."³
     I fear that I cannot help you much, but I hope and believe that you are equal to helping yourself, for it is what we ourselves put into our own lives that really counts. Thank you for letting me see Mr. Ward's⁴ letter which pleased me very much. I only wish that I could be as kind a friend to younger writers as those friends whom I found when I was beginning. But they all said, "Work away!"⁵
     With best wishes, believe me
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Tests in Literature," Boston Sunday Herald (August 30, 1885), 12; an unsigned discussion of the successful versus the unsuccessful book, using for illustration the works of Shakespeare, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Keats, Dana, Ticknor, Browning, Tennyson, and Whitman.
     ²This maxim Miss Jewett quoted on several occasions and in usually variant form. Her published version in "Looking Back on Girlhood," Youth's Companion, LXV (January 7, 1892), 6, is probably closest to his exact words. See also Letters 2, note 3; 68, note 2; 99.
     ³Review of Anne Thackeray Ritchie's Old Kensington in the "Editor's Literary Record," Harper's, XLVII (June 1873), 131. Henry Mills Alden, then editor, actually wrote: "It is Miss Thackeray in Old Kensington which makes it so delightful a story."
     ⁴ William Hayes Ward (see headnote, Letter 62).
     ⁵ For other letters to aspiring writers see Fields, Letters, 245-250 (to Willa Cather), and letters to Andress S. Floyd and John Thaxter in this volume.

26 FRANCIS JACKSON GARRISON
     South Berwick, Maine
     November 20, [1885]
    Dear Mr. Garrison:
     I have been wishing to thank you for your kind and delightful letter, which brought me real pleasure and a sense of friendly companionship, and for the book, a beautiful memorial to your father.¹ The Words are "still vital with spiritual insight" and all the heavenly gifts your preface claims. I had sent it -- or ordered it to be sent -- to David Douglas² for he always seems to me akin to these things, and to another old friend who lives near Manchester and who will soon have this book by heart, though he followed the maker of it through all the old days. Somehow it gave me a great delight in imagination to follow the two volumes on their way.
     Your letter sounds as if the summer's journey had done you good. It is good to have new things to think of, and such freshening makes one see the old things with new eyes. I hope that it will be long before you get so very tired again; it was too bad!
     When I get to town by and by I shall hope to see you and dear Mrs. Garrison. Tell her that I get very hungry and thirsty sometimes for some music.
     Yours most sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ With his brother Wendell Phillips Garrison, Francis Jackson wrote William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; The Story of his Life as told by his Children (New York, 1885-1889), 4 vols. Francis also edited The Words of Garrison (Boston, 1905).
     ² David Douglas (1823-1916), of Edinburgh, editor of the Journal of Sir Walter Scott (New York, 1890), and the Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (Boston, 1894). Miss Jewett enjoyed the wholesome domesticity of Douglas' household and made a point of visiting him on her trips abroad.

27 GERTRUDE V. WICKHAM
     Gertrude VanR. Wickham was commissioned by St. Nicholas, a children's magazine, to write a series of three articles on "Dogs of Noted Americans," which appeared in the issues of June, July 1888 and May 1889. The account of Miss Jewett's dog, closely paraphrasing this letter, was published in the last (XVI, 544-545).

     Richfield, New York
     August 29, 1886
     My Dear Mrs. Wickham:
     Indeed I have a dog¹ and a very dear one of much and varied information and great dignity of character. His name is Roger and he is a large Irish setter with a splendid set of fringes to his paws and tail, and two eyes that ask more questions and make more requests than dogs I know. And it is nearly impossible to refuse his requests that he is quite in danger of being spoiled or would be if he were not so sensible. Once the Reverend J. G. Wood,² who understands dog life as well as anybody in the world, asked us reproachfully while Roger lay before the library fire on a very soft rug, if he ever had to do anything he didn't like. And I felt for a long time afterward that I might be neglecting the dear dog's moral education.
     Roger spends his winters in Boston, where luckily he has a good-sized garden to run about in on the shore of the Charles River, but he likes to be taken out for a long walk and follows me so carefully and politely that I feel very much honoured and obliged. It is such a delight and such a touching thing to see what pleasure he gives the people in the shops, and I quite forget my errands sometimes in talking about him. Roger himself cannot help feeling how tired faces light up when he comes by on his four paws with wagging tail, and I am sure that he is very grateful to the tired hands that pat him -- and knows that he rouses a too uncommon feeling of common humanity and sympathy.
     But any mention of Roger without a word of his best friend, Patrick Lynch,³ would be incomplete. All his best loyalty and affection show themselves at the sound of Patrick's step -- for this means all outdoors, and the market, and long scurries about town and splashes in the frog-pond, and, more than that, it means one person that understands what Roger wants and why he wants it. Whether Patrick has learned dog-language or Roger knows how to whine English I really cannot tell, but it must be one or the other. All day Roger is expecting some sort of surprise and pleasure with this most congenial of his friends, but every evening he condescends to spend quietly with the rest of the family and comes tick-toeing along the hall floor and upstairs to the library, as if he were well aware that he conferred a real benefaction. Alas, there are sometimes bonnets outward bound which give him a great sorrow if he finds that, as often happens, he must stay at home. But if he is invited to go, what leaping and whining in noisy keys! What rushing along snowy streets! What treeing of unlucky pussies and scattering of wayfarers on account of his size and apparent fierceness!
     But the best place to see this dog is in the summer by the sea, where he runs about in the sunshine, shining like copper, and always begging somebody for a walk or barking at the top of a ledge for the sake of being occupied in some way! Mrs. Fields is more than ever his best mistress there, for she oftenest invites him to walk along the beach and chase sand peeps. Strange to say, this amusement never fails though the sand peeps always fly to seaward and disappoint their eager hunter.
     I hope that I have not said too much. I think your plan a charming one, and wish you great success.
     Yours sincerely,
     S. O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Miss Jewett was seldom without at least one house pet. See "Sara Orne Jewett's Dog," St. Nicholas, XVI (May 1889), 544-545; "Some Literary Cats," St. Nicholas, XXVII (August 1900), 923-926; Fields, Letters, 46, 62, 66, 75, 101, 147; and Letters 130, 131 in this volume.
     ² John George Wood (1827-1889) wrote some thirty books on botany, zoology, natural history, and Biblical animals, in which he studied minutely common objects of the country and seashore. In Man and Beast: Here and Hereafter (1874)Reverend Wood combined his vocation and avocation.
     ³ In the employ of Mrs. Fields.

28 "DEAR MADAM"
     One of the anonymous horde of autograph-seekers that Miss Jewett accommodated, usually without comment, here with a touch of modesty tinged with irony.

     July 1, 1887
    Dear Madam:
     I am sorry that I have no indelible ink at hand, and I am afraid that you can make no use of this autograph written in ordinary ink.
     However, I send it.
     Yrs very truly,
     S. O. Jewett

29 F. HOPKINSON SMITH
     Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915), artist, engineer, and architect, turned to literature when he was nearly fifty. Like Miss Jewett, he concentrated on regional characteristics, often supplying the illustrations for his attractive volumes.

     South Berwick, Maine
     September 24, 1887
    My dear Mr. Smith:
     I must send a word to tell you that I was perfectly delighted to find that you have really published the new edition of Well-Worn Roads. I sent for a copy at once and here it is; a truly charming little book for which I wish all the good fortune it deserves.¹
     With best regards to Mrs. Smith, I am
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹Well-Worn Roads of Spain, Holland, and Italy (Boston, 1887), adequately described by its subtitle "Traveled by a painter in search of the picturesque," achieved sufficient popularity to be reprinted in 1898.

30 MARIA H. BRAY
     Unidentified.

     March 1, 1888
    Dear Mrs. Bray:
     The scene of A Marsh Island is somewhere within the borders of the town of Essex but even I have never succeeded in finding the exact place! Choate Island suggested the island itself, but I never went there until a year ago -- long after the story was finished. It was seeing it in the distance or perhaps earlier still noticing an 'island farm' near Rowley from a car window on the Eastern railroad, that gave me my first hint of the book.¹
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹ The area of Massachusetts which Miss Jewett here invokes is the coastal stretch between Newburyport and Manchester in the county of Essex, a region of creeks, channels, and salt marshes much traveled and thoroughly familiar to her; the trains of the Boston & Maine Railroad (Eastern Division) ran along this route. The marsh island in her novel is situated in "Sussex" County, not far from the town of "Sussex," similarly marked by tidewater inlets and unreclaimed marshland.
     This is another example of Miss Jewett's reluctance to be pinned down to a specific source of her scenes (see Letters 8, note 4; 96, note 3).

31 WALTER R. BENJAMIN
     Walter Romeyn Benjamin (1854-1943), historian and antiquarian, was coeditor until his death of The Collector, "A Magazine for Autograph and Historical Collectors."

     South Berwick, Maine
     May 15, 1888

     Mr. Benjamin will please find enclosed a cheque for the letters of Sainte-Beuve and Mme. George Sand, advertised in the May no. of The Collector.¹
S. O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹Miss Jewett had a marked predilection for volumes of collected letters. Her library included those of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Madame de Sévigné, Voltaire, Dickens, FitzGerald, Lady L. Duff-Gordon, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, William Cowper, Edward Lear, Lady Louisa Stuart, William Thackeray, and three volumes of British Letters edited by Edward T. Mason. In addition, she mentions reading those of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Scott, Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Celia Thaxter, Julie de Lespinasse, Saint Teresa, Queen Victoria, and others.

32 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
     Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835-1921), born in Calais, Maine, was a prolific contributor of poems, stories, and articles to popular magazines. She was at her best in presenting picturesque New England locales, but she also ventured into literary criticism; her appreciative review of Miss Jewett's work appeared in The Book Buyer for August 1894. She spent many winters in Boston, became a member of the literary circle there, and was customarily called "Hally." In her memoir of ten female contemporaries, A Little Book of Friends (Boston, 1916), the first two chapters are devoted respectively to Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett.

     148 Charles Street¹
     Boston
     February 17, [1889]
    Dear Mrs. Spofford:
     This morning I had an unexpected delight in a first reading of two new poems of yours! I was soberly reading some St. Nicholas proofs when I saw at the bottom of one of the slips the impression of uninked type, and I began to puzzle it out and found your most beautiful "The King's Dust" and "A Worm,"² and by getting a very good light I managed to read them to Mrs. Fields. I cannot tell you how exquisite we both thought them or how we enjoyed finding them in such curious fashion. I had to send them back but we shall be looking for them again in print presently. I suppose this slip lay under another on which your proof was printed. I wish I could tell you what A. F. said while she was praising them, but indeed she thought them most exquisite and full of truth. They were somehow a true joy this rainy day, your great little poems, and I could not help sending a line to say so.
     Yours most sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ Annie Fields's Boston home, overlooking the Charles River. Miss Jewett considered this her second home and for almost three decades made a long annual visit during the winter. The two friends spent their time together reading, writing, entertaining, taking in concerts, exhibits, and the theatre, and engaging in philanthropic enterprises. Mrs. Fields's Saturday Afternoon, in the long Victorian drawing room crowded with books, pictures, and framed autographs of famous authors, attracted the best-known artists, writers, and wits of the day. Lowell, Holmes, Aldrich, Whittier, and Whipple were among those in frequent attendance. Foreign authors on an American tour usually dropped in for readings and conversation. For a full account see Mrs. Spofford's A LittleBook of Friends, 3-17.
    ² "The King's Dust" was published in St. Nicholas, XVI (June 1889), 585,the same issue which contains the third and final installment of Miss Jewett's "A Bit of Color," later titled Betty Leicester in book form. "A Worm" was not printed until July 1890 and then under the caption "Wings."

33 F. HOPKINSON SMITH
     148 Charles Street
     Boston
     February 24, 1889
    Dear Mr. Smith:
     The little book is here and I thank you for so delightful and unexpected a gift! and for the kindness of some words written on the flyleaf. When I go down to Berwick to see the large paper illustrated edition, it will look surprisingly small to my eyes fresh from a sight of this. Mrs. Fields's copy of the same edition is quite an everyday sort of book, and my own stories are strangers and foreigners compared to this particular copy of Well-Worn Roads. Well-Worn Leaves are these to be where you have put your story-pictures and they will lop open always to the story of the nun and the hint of rose-madder.
     The river is frozen over today and the gulls, all breakfastless, are flying about to keep themselves warm, and flapping their wings like coachmen there is such icy air a-blowing.
     I must thank you again for the pleasure you gave us the other evening. I hope that you can manage to come on again for the Authors' Reading.¹
     Yours ever sincerely (with best regards to Mrs. Smith),
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹ In his James Russell Lowell (Boston, 1900), 11, 333-334, Scudder declared drily that by the winter of 1886 "the rage for Author Readings had set in, and under the guise of charity of one sort or another, society compelled its favorites to stand and deliver their old poems." During this period, however, the Readings were held for the benefit of the Copyright League, which was busily campaigning for international recognition of authors' rights.
     Miss Jewett seldom participated in large public functions of this sort. A notable exception occurred during the winter of 1887 when she consented to act as secretary to the committee which arranged an impressive Authors' Reading in the Boston Museum for the purpose of raising a Longfellow Memorial fund (see Lilian W. Aldrich, Crowding Memories [Boston, 1920], 255-262, and Colby Library Quarterly, VII [March 1965], 36, 40-42).

34 F. HOPKINSON SMITH
     148 Charles Street
     Boston
     April 20, 1889
     Dear Mr. Smith:
     The day your new book came into my hands, I was going down to the country and I did not have your address with me. Then I came back to town and said a great deal about the White Umbrella¹ to my friends, but quite forgotten that thinking about a letter of thanks doesn't put it into the postbox and send it. Forgive me for such ungrateful carelessness for indeed I enjoy your stories more and more and I am one of the first to thank you for what you write. Nothing could be more charming than the dress of these Mexican sketches - you make the little book as pretty as a picture!
     With best regards to Mrs. Smith from Mrs. Fields and myself, I beg you to believe me always
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTE
     ¹A White Umbrella in Mexico (Boston, 1889), one of Smith's typical sets of exotic travel sketches with illustrations by the author.

35 J. APPLETON BROWN
     John Appleton Brown (1844-1902), a painter of serene flower gardens, cheerful landscapes, and marine scenes. He was one of the coterie of artists who spent a good part of each year at Appledore Island, Celia Thaxter's home. A delicate engraving of a river scene, dated June 29, 1886, and inscribed by Brown to Miss Jewett, hangs in her bedroom at the Memorial House in South Berwick.

     148 Charles Street
     Boston
     May 6, [1889]
     Dear Mr. Brown:
     I was so delighted with the picture of you and Roger when it came that I hate to be so late in thanking you for it. I stood it against the wall and had it for company, with many pleasant remembrances of the doggie and his master.
     I have had a very hard pull of illness and today I went out for the first time for a little drive and felt as if I had gone through with the battle of Waterloo and had not beaten either! In a day or two I am going to Berwick and there I shall pick up faster, where one can get out of doors without preliminary arrangements! Mrs. Fields is going down with me, but when she comes back she hopes to see you and Mrs. Brown.¹ The garden is lovely now, and a new double-flowering cherry tree is in bloom for the first time.²
     Will you please tell Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh³ how sorry we were to miss seeing them and how glad we were to see the picture?
     With love to Mrs. Brown, believe me ever
     Yours sincerely,
     Sarah O. Jewett
     NOTES
     ¹ See headnote, Letter 57.
     ² Miss Jewett took especial joy in the extensive garden back of her house. She employed one full-time and one part-time gardener to maintain it in becoming condition. All townspe