Main Contents
Notes
IndexLETTERS OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT
Edited by Annie Fields Copyright 1911, by Houghton Mifflin Company
Published October 1911.
Recipients and Persons Often Named
NOTE The editor regrets that a friendly message from Mr. William Dean Howells offering letters from Miss Jewett for publication arrived too late to insert them in these pages.
For Lovers' eyes more sharply sighted be
Than other men's, and in dear Love's delight
See more than any other eyes can see.
. . . . . . . . . . .
But they who love indeed, look otherwise
With pure regard and spotless true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes
A more refinèd form which they present.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Love thereon fixeth all his fantasie,
And fully setteth his felicitie,
Counting it fairer than it is indeed,
And yet indeed its fairness doth exceed!Spenser's Hymn in Honour of Beauty.**
Recipients and Persons Often NamedFurther information about most of these people appears in the notes.
Aldrich, Lilian (d. 1927) -- The Duchess of Ponkapog
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey (1836-1907) -- The Linnet, the Duke of Ponkapog
Blanc, Madame Thérèse (Th. Bentzon) (1840-1907)
Cabot, Mrs. Susan Burley (1822-1907), and Isabel
Cather, Willa (1873-1947)
Chase, Mary Ellen (1887-1973)
Douglas, David (1823-1916), Publisher of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dresel, Louisa (1864-1958) -- Loulie
Eastman, Theodore (1879-1931) -- Stubby, nephew of Sarah, son of Edwin and Caroline Jewett Eastman.
Fields, Annie Adams (1834-1915) -- A. F., Mrs. Fields
Howe, Alice Greenwood (Mrs. George D.) (1835-1924)
Huntington, A. O. -- a Miss Huntington is mentioned in an August 18, 1896 letter to Louisa Dresel. See "Jewett to Dresel: 33 Letters" by Richard Cary in Colby Quarterly 1 (March 1975): 45. Any further information would be welcomed.
Jewett, Mary Rice (1847-1930) -- Mary, Jewett's younger sister.
Jewett, Caroline A. (1855-1897), Jewett's younger sister; married Edwin C. Eastman.
Jewett, Theodora Sarah Orne (1849-1909) -- Pinny to Fields; Owl or Owlet to Thaxter; Sadie Martinot to the Aldriches
Jewett, Dr. Theodore (1815-1878) -- Jewett's father.
Lamb, Rose (1843-1927) -- a Boston painter, pupil of Morris Hunt.
Lodge, Mary (Mrs. James) (1829-1889) -- Marigold
Loring, Louisa Putnam (1854-1923)
McCracken, Elizabeth (1876-1964)
Meynell, Alice Thompson (1847-1922)
Morse, Frances Rollins -- Fanny (See Silverthorne 208 and Blanchard 323; further information would be welcomed)
Norton, Charles Eliot (1827-1908)
Norton, Sara (1864-1922) -- Sally, niece of James Russell Lowell, daughter of Charles Eliot Norton.
Parkman, Mary Frances (Mrs. Henry) (1855-1942)
Spofford, Harriet Prescott (1835-1921), Hally
Thaxter, Celia (1835-1894) -- Sandpiper
Thompson, Charles Miner (1864-1941)
Ward, Dorothy (b. 1876), daughter of Mrs. Humphrey Ward
Wheelwright, Sarah Cabot, (1835-1917) -- artist, married to Andrew Cunningham Wheelwright, mother of Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958).
Whitman, Sarah Wyman (1842-1904) -- S. W.
Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892) -- thy Friend
Woodberry, Mr. George E. (1855-1930)
In the village of South Berwick, Maine, which had always been Miss Jewett's home, she died June 24, 1909. This village has been no exception to the changes inevitably advancing in the life of small towns in New England. The immediate vicinities of villages are becoming more beautiful, more developed, day by day, while the encroachment of manufacturing, especially where there are full flowing water-courses, brings multitudes of mill people into the heart of the little towns, and as the old English descendants die out, they are naturally replaced by men, women, and children, who can run the manufactories. Formerly Berwick was in the "deestrict" of Maine, as Lowell** loved to call it. Portsmouth** then seemed the capital of New England and the governors and clergymen thereof were rulers and potentates, bending the knee only to the King of the Fatherland** and the great God in Heaven; and Berwick was not far from Portsmouth, even in those days. The beautiful river Piscataqua swept good-sized vessels up to the very banks of the village. Here, and among these descendants, Sarah Orne Jewett grew up with hills and waters and a large open country all about her. This wild land she knew and loved well, as her books show.
She was born September 3, 1849, going to the village school and later to the Berwick Academy, and to both rather intermittently, being but a delicate child. Her father was a physician, and when the weather was pleasant he would take his wise little girl into the chaise by his side in the morning, instead of urging her to go to school. These days, out in the open country with her father, became the white mile-stones of her life. In every house where they stopped she knew the people were her father's friends. When she was tired sitting in the chaise, during his long visits, she would climb down and play about the green dooryards by herself, unless some member of the household happened to see her and call her from the side door to give her a bit of gingerbread, saved or made for the doctor's child. Those were happy and never-to-be-forgotten days. But I fear there were days when father, as well as child, was torn between the happiness of such mornings and duty to the school.
As she grew older her interest in her father's work developed, and she began to question him. Little by little, as he found she could understand and remember what he told her, he would give her larger and deeper lessons, until many a young graduating doctor today might well envy that slip of a girl for the knowledge at first hand which had been conveyed to her impressionable mind. After her father's early death she loved to go into his office to consult his diary; she knew his papers, his books, his medicines, -- nothing that belonged to his mind or his work was foreign to her.
Her father's intelligent companionship is made clear to us in her published work. With his death came her first sorrow, --
"The first of all her dead that were to be";**
and soon after began the correspondence contained in this volume. It is a diary in truth and almost unconsciously; reminding one by its lightness touch of the famous journal of Dean Swift to Stella, two hundred years ago.** The same handling of "the little language" is here; the same joy and repose in friendship. This "little language," the private "cuddling" of lovers, of mothers, and children, since the world began, was native also to her. They are the letters, too, of a true lover of nature and of one accustomed to tender communings with woods and streams, with the garden and the bright air. She was no recluse, and loved her world of friends and was a brave spirit among them; using herself to the top of her bent in spite of trammelings of ill health. To one who seldom if ever knew the joy of springing early from her bed, with the thought of a new day, life was contracted and hampered; but in the hours of health allowed her, it was enjoyed with the chastened spirit of one who already knew the sufferings of others and could sympathize with their disabilities. She disliked profoundly all talk of illness and complaining, and demanded no sympathy; but her inherited love of helping the unfortunate led her to study methods of relief, and if she had been a strong person she would have studied medicine in the medical schools. As it was, her gift was undeniable, and the physicians of her acquaintance have borne testimony to her instinctive power of discernment and helpfulness.
Many years later, in 1893, when an illustrated edition of her first book, "Deephaven," was published, we find affixed to the volume a new preface which contains some of her very best and most autobiographical writing. After speaking of the changes creeping over the old village life and the many excellent reasons therefor, she says: "Old farmhouses opened their doors to the cheerful gayety of summer; the old jokes about the respective aggressions and ignorances of city and country cousins gave place to new compliments between the summer boarder and his rustic host. The young writer of these Deephaven sketches was possessed by a dark fear that townspeople and country people would never understand one another, or learn to profit by their new relationship. It seemed not altogether reasonable when timid ladies mistook a selectman for a tramp, because he happened to be crossing a field in his shirt-sleeves. At the same time, she was sensible of grave wrong and misunderstanding when these same timid ladies were regarded with suspicion, and their kindnesses were believed to come from pride and patronage. There is a noble saying of Plato that the best thing that can be done for the people of a state to make them acquainted with one another.** It was happily in the writer's childhood that Mrs. Stowe had written of those who dwelt along the wooded seacoast and by the decaying, shipless harbors of Maine. The first chapters of 'The Pearl of Orr's Island' gave the young author of 'Deephaven' to see with new eyes, and to follow eagerly the old shore-paths from one gray, weather-beaten house to another, where Genius pointed her the way.... There will also exist," Miss Jewett continues, "that other class of country people who preserve the best traditions of culture and of manners, from some divine inborn instinct toward what is simplest and best and purest, who know the best because they themselves are of kin to it. Human nature is the same the world over, provincial and rustic influences must ever produce much the same effects upon character, and town life will ever have in its gift the spirit of the present, while it may take again from the quiet of the hills and fields and the conservatism of country hearts a gift from the spirit of the past."
If the high end and purpose of her work gave her joy, so also did the recognition of it by others on the way give her pleasure; as when T. B. Aldrich** once wrote: "A great many thanks for your very kind note about the July 'Atlantic.'** Whenever you give me one of your perfect little stories the whole number seems in bloom!" A letter, too, from Rudyard Kipling** gave her unending pleasure, in which he says, speaking of the "Country of the Pointed Firs": "I am writing to you to convey some small instalment of our satisfaction in that perfect little tale. It's immense -- it is the very life. So many of the people of lesser sympathy have missed the lovely New England landscape, and the genuine New England nature." He adds jovially in the postscript, "I don't believe even you know how good that work is."
A certain sweet dignity of character distinguished Miss Jewett; one which never put a barrier between her and any one else, but was a part of her very self; with all her wit and humor and kind ways there was no suggestion leading to sudden nearness nor too great intimacy.
Her metier was, to lay open, for other eyes to see, those qualities in human nature which ennoble their possessors, high or low, rich or poor; those floods of sympathy to be unsealed in the most unpromising and dusty natures by the touch of a divining spirit. Finding herself in some dim way the owner of this sacred touchstone, what wonder that she loved her work and believed in it?
After a severe carriage accident once, she wrote to me: "I was strongly tempted to say yes about Wednesday.... I long to see you more than I can say, but I am almost afraid to make a break just now lest I couldn't get going again, and there are three chapters at least that I must get done before I feel really certain about anything. When I have them safe landed like little fishes, I can take my time. Oh, if I can only get this work done so that you will be pleased and a little proud about it, it seems to me that I shall ask for nothing more. I am so afraid that I can't give it breadth and largeness enough, and that it will have a dull kind of excellence and not real life and vitality."
She was not born to a large city and was unaccustomed to public business and stir, but she was always ready to do what she could. When meetings of societies were called in the village, and Miss Jewett was asked to receive two or three delegates as guests, she was always glad to do so. She interrupts one of her notes to say: --
"I must look sharp after Miss Rickett and the rest. They were at their meetings all day yesterday, getting home in the evening at eleven at night, or a few minutes before, but they would not like to be called dissipated, I am sure."
Her eagerness to make life a little easier for others was always on the alert, as when she burst out in one of her notes: "Oh, do let us always tell people when we like their work -- it does do so much good." Mrs. Meynell, writing of Miss Jewett, in a late letter, says: "I always thought of her as the most selfless creature I had ever known; a few hours in her dear company convinced me of that; and her letters are inevitably like her."
But these fragments from her letters carry us too far afield. They shall be given freely in the following pages, in order to show her life as in a mirror, while the days sped on. They will show, above all, the portrait of a friend and the power that lies in friendship to sustain the giver as well as the receiver. They are in the easy undress of every-day life, wearing a grace which lies beyond all thought of the larger world.
Little Compton, R. I., 8 September, 1880.
Dear Mrs. Fields, -- This is not a land where it is easy to write letters. I can't help being idle, except in thought, and I think I never knew so quiet a country. It is all like the places one goes to on the way to sleep. There aren't any high hills, but you look over the fields which are so like moors, and you look and look, and there is nothing you have to stop and wonder about, the big round-headed windmills are all still, and today is a grey day which can't make up its mind to take the trouble to rain, and here we are sitting by the fireplace, and I was busy watching the smoke until I thought I would write a letter or two. And whether I drive or sail I am the most placid and serene of all your friends, and I forget that I ever was a girl who couldn't go to sleep at night.
After this first letter the days passed without any record which has been preserved, until bits of diary occur written during her life at South Berwick in the following years.
2"The country is beautiful to look at, but it is such clear cold weather that you feel as if you were under a great block of clear, shining ice, instead of air and sky. There is a grey cloud-bank hanging over the sea all along the eastern horizon and I think it is going to snow again, or rain. The wood-sleds are creeping out of the woods and into the village, and the oxen are like rocks from the pastures, or the tops of ledges, they look so hard and tough and frosted over.
You are like my monkey and the jack-in-the-box with your meetings. Some day you will get up a big one that will scare you to death."
Tuesday, 1882. 3I hate to keep sending you letters instead of going to you myself, but by and by there still be no letters at all. Your little word of last night has just come and I wish I were going to be there to welcome you home from the perils of Bridgewater.* It is a hot, tiresome day, and I did not get up until very Late, and what book do you think 1 read in bed? A hand-book of Anatomy, and I found it very interesting. Sometimes I think I should like to give up the world, the f -- ,and the d -- , and be a doctor, though very likely I am enough of one already to get the best of it for myself, and perhaps I have done as much as I ever could for other people.
Fields's note
*Bridgewater State Farm, which was then a most unpalatable place. (Fields's note)
Saturday morning, 1882. 4I have just seen the notice of Longfellow's death,** and while it was hardly a surprise, still it gave me a great shock. Are not you glad that we saw him on that pleasant day when he was ready to talk about books and people, and showed so few signs of the weakness and pain which troubled us in those other visits? It will always be a most delightful memory, and it is all the better that we did not dream it was your last good-bye. I can't help saying that I am glad he has gone away before you had to leave him and know it was the last time you should see him. I dreaded your getting the news of this after we were on the other side of the sea, darling! After all, it is change that is so hard to bear, change grows every year a harder part of our losses. It is fitting over our old selves to new conditions of things, without the help of the ones who made it easier for us to live, and to do our best that is so hard! I have just been thinking that a life like that is so much less affected by death than most lives. A man who has written as Longfellow wrote, stays in this world always to be known and loved -- to be a helper and a friend to his fellow men. It is a grander thing than we can wholly grasp, that life of his, a wonderful life, that is not shut in to his own household or kept to the limits of his every-day existence. That part of him seems very little when one measures the rest of him with it, and the possibilities of this imperfect world reach out to a wide horizon, for one's eye cannot follow the roads his thought and influence have always gone. And now what must heaven be to him! This world could hardly ask any more from him: he has done so much for it, and the news of his death takes away from most people nothing of his life. His work stands like a great cathedral in which the world may worship and be taught to pray, long after its tired architect goes home to rest.
I cannot help thinking of those fatherless daughters of his. I know they were glad and proud because he was famous and everybody honored him, and they are being told those things over and over in these days, and are not comforted. Only one's own faith and bravery help one to live at first.
March 24. 5Today is father's birthday. I wonder if people keep the day they die for another birthday after they get to heaven? I have been thinking about him a very great deal this last day or two. I wonder if I am doing at all the things he wishes I would do, and I hope he does not get tired of me.
After a long season, passed chiefly in England and France, Miss Jewett wrote from South Berwick in the autumn: --
Thursday, 6 October, 1882. 6Here I am at the desk again, all as natural as can be and writing a first letter to you with so much love, and remembering that this is the first morning in more than seven months that I have haven't waked up to hear your dear voice and see your dear face. I do miss it very much, but I look forward to no long separation, which is a comfort. It was lovely in the old house and I did so wish you had come down, too, it was all so sweet and full of welcome, and Hannah and Annie and John and Hillborn and Lizzie Pray** all in such a state because I had got home!
[1883.] 6AI shall be with you tomorrow, your dear birthday. How I am looking forward to Thursday evening. I don't care whether there is starlight or a fog. Yes, dear, I will bring the last sketch and give it its last touches if you think I had better spend any more time on it. I am tired of writing things. I want now to paint things, and drive things, and kiss things, and yet I have been thinking all day what a lovely sketch it would he to tell the story of the day we went to Morwenstow,** with bits of "Lorna Doone" and "The Vicar"** intertwined with the narrative.
I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences -- the Jane Welsh Carlyle, as you may suppose.** How could people have made such a fuss about it. It seems to grow more and more simple and beautiful and human, and Carlyle is like a "great stone face"** on a mountain top. Good-night, and God bless you, dear love.
Monday evening, 1883. 7Today I have been reading hard, in Thierry** chiefly, with some other big books alongside, and I feel as if I had been over-eating with my head!!! I try to think how fortunate it is that I should be well paid for learning a thing that I ought to know at any rate, but all that period is very difficult for any one to straighten out who has not been a student of history. It is so important and such a key-note to later English history, that I think of the early Britons all sound asleep under the green grass of Salisbury Plain,** and feel as if they would have been quite within my grasp! When I read the "Saturday Review" and "Spectator"** I find myself calling one politician a Saxon and the next a Norman! Indeed I can pick them out here in Berwick!
The wet weather has kept us in, but we did manage to get a drive yesterday among the green fields and trees. Do you think the country ever looked so lovely as it does this summer? I seem to have brought new eyes home from last year's travels! My mind is vexed with "Clarissa Harlowe."** Zola** is not half so unpleasant, we are not worse, but better, when he writes as he does and we read. But the shrewdness of workmanship, the clever maintenance of interest are amazing. It fools my mind in a way that naughty books of the French sort never do. So much for Clarissa, a person of many misfortunes, but I learn a good deal and profit much from the old novel, it accounts for so much in literary traditions.
Sunday, 24 June. 8Dearest, -- More than once I have really been with you on the piazza, looking out to sea, but the rest of me was here in church, waiting for a very long sermon to be done. It was such an old-fashioned discourse that it "carried me back" more than it is likely to carry me forward, I fear. I don't know who the old minister was, but the day is so hot that the congregation was a very sleepy one.
I am thinking and planning my stories over and over, and first of all seems to come the gray man.** It was very funny; I had the solitary man whom I talked about at first, and then came the "man who never smiled," and I coquetted over these two estimable characters for some days, when suddenly without note or warning they turned a double somersault and one swallowed the other, and I found they were really one person! The Gray Man was masquerading a little, that was all, and by this time I have ever so many notes about him and I long to write him all down before I see you again.
Sunday evening. 9I wonder if your pine boughs smell as sweet as mine tonight? Also I wonder if it is going to rain! I went to church this morning, and have been reading all the afternoon, chiefly the last volume of Dickens' Letters,** and I thought of you at every turn. What a lovely spirit there is in them! I think his letters to his sons, as they went away to the army or to Australia, are wonderfully beautiful. It was good to have the book fresh in my mind again. Now, dear, I have at last, after much grumbling and groaning, got my next two numbers of the "Marsh Island" ready for the printer, and I take a long breath, being free until February. The second of the two was not half so bad as I expected, and some day or two in town will work wonders with the rest. If I had another week I would write the McClure story,** and what a triumphant Pinny* that would be, ladies.
Mother is reading the Parson Hawker book,** with seeming joy, and I don't think she will mind in the least being left alone. I begin to feel dreadfully confused about Christmas now that the story is off my mind for a little while, but we shall soon talk about things, shan't we? and in this next week I shall come quite to my senses.
Does Sandpiper* play with you, or has she married a ghost** and therefore she cannot come? (Marigold** being "excused" on account of following after Clark and Brown's Oxen.) Did you see the interview with "thy friend"* and the remark that the best parlor was stiff and prim? I think that was quite an unnecessary comment, but a very observing interviewer, ladies.
I wonder how far you have got in the Swedenborg book?** I keep a sense of it under everything else. How such a bit of foundation lifts up all one's other thoughts together, and makes us feel as if we really stood higher and could see more of the world. I am going to hunt up some of the smaller books of extracts, etc., that Professor Parsons gave me. Oh! the garden is so splendid! I never dreamed of so many hollyhocks in a double row and all my own!
Fields's Notes
Pinny: She was called "'Pinny,' Ladies," she once wrote, "because she was so straight and thin and her head no bigger than a pin's."
Sandpiper: Her pet name for Celia Thaxter.
thy friend: Whittier.**
Thursday night, 1884. 10This morning I read Mr. Arnold's "Nineteenth Century" paper** with great joy. What a great man he is! That holds the truth of the matter if anything does. It is all very well to say, as Mr. Blaine does, "What business has England?"** The association of different peoples is after all beyond human control: we are "mixed and sorted" by a higher power. And looked at from the human side, what business has one nation to keep another under her authority, but the business of the stronger keeping the weaker in check when the weaker is an enemy? It had to be settled between England and Ireland certainly -- for the two races were antagonistic, and England could not have said "no matter, she may plague me and fight me as she pleases." Law and order come in, and Ireland has a right to complain of being badly governed, -- so has a child or any irresponsible person, but we can't question the fact that they must be governed. Ireland is backward, and when she is equal to being independent, and free to make her own laws, I suppose the way will be opened, and she will be under grace of herself, instead of tutors and governors in England. Everybody who studies the case, as Mr. Arnold has, believes that she must still be governed. I don't grow very sentimental about Ireland's past wrongs and miseries. If we look into the history of any subject country, or indeed of any country at all, the suffering is more likely to be extreme that length of time ago, and I think as Mr. Arnold does, and as Mr. Lowell did, that the mistake of our time is in being governed by the ignorant mass of opinion, instead of by thinkers and men who know something. How great that was of Gladstone, "He has no foresight because he has no insight" Mr. Arnold never said a wiser thing, and when he says that Gladstone will lead his party (after describing what the party lacks) by watching their minds and adapting his programme and using his ease of speech to gain the end -- He is a party leader, and not a statesman. Doesn't it seem as if it must fret a man like Arnold to the quick to go on saying things as he has and seeing people ignore them, then dispute them, then say that they were God's truth, when the whole thing has become a matter of history and it is too late to have them do the immediate good be hoped to effect?
Sunday night, November, 1884. 11I am getting sleepy, for I must confess that it is past bedtime. I went to church this morning, but this afternoon I have been far afield, way over the hill and beyond, to an unusual distance. Alas, when I went to see my beloved big pitch-pine tree that I loved best of all the wild trees that lived in Berwick, I found only the broad stump of it beside the spring, and the top boughs of it scattered far and wide. It was a real affliction, and I thought you would be sorry, too, for such a mournful friend as sat down and counted the rings to see how many years old her tree was, and saw the broad rings when good wet summers had helped it grow and narrow ones when there had been a drought, and read as much of its long biography as she could. But the day was very lovely, and I found many pleasures by the way and came home feeling much refreshed. I found such a good little yellow apple on one of the pasture trees, and I laughed to think how you would be looking at the next bite. It was very small, but I nibbled it like a squirrel. I found a white-weed daisy** fully blown, but only an inch high, so that it looked as if somebody had snapped it off and dropped it on the ground; and I was in some underbrush, going along the slope, and saw a crow come toward me flying low, and when I stood still he did not see me and came so close that I could hear his wings creak their feathers -- and nearly in the same spot I thought I heard the last of the "creakits." I wished for you so much, it was a day you would have loved.
Friday evening, South Berwick [1885]. 12Today has been very hot and I have read with great delight the book of Edwin Arnold's,** which I didn't send back after all, and I am most glad to have it. More than that I want you to read parts of it, for it is charmingly done, so modest and manly and wise, and when to gets to Ceylon all the Buddhists turn out to do him honor. He has a grave conference with an old priest, who thanks him for what he has done for Buddhism, and then Arnold asks him if there are any Mahatmas, to which the priest answers no, none at all! If we had better interpreters of Buddha's teaching we might reach heights and depths of power and goodness that are now impossible; but we have fallen from the old wisdom and none of us today are so advanced. There are all sorts of interesting things in this "India Revisited"; one is that the Mayflower was chartered for the East Indian trade after her Pilgrim experiences, and was sunk on her last voyage with a cargo of rice!!** I don't know why I found that so wildly interesting!!
June, 1885. 13Such a hot and agreeable day as yesterday was! We played on the beach at Wells, but not quite so hard as at York, the sun being hotter. I got pretty tired, but enjoyed it all vastly, and met with many old and fond friends at the fish-houses, -- R -, M -- and F --, whom I wrote the story about, and old D -- B --, who can't go out fishing any more, so that he sits at home and knits stockings and thinks on his early days as an able seaman in foreign parts. His wife died two or three years ago and he calls her "Poor dear!" when he talks about her.** And there was big C. D. and big H. R., who pulled him out of the waves in an adverse squall at the Banks once,** so that they, are famous pals; all the old fishermen whom I have known since these many years; and A -- and L -- P -- and younger fry, who were also cordial and yet not so dear. I lagged along from one fish-house door to the next, and thought I wasn't going to see D -- B --, the knitter, but early in the afternoon he rolled along as if he trod a quarter-deck all the way, and mentioned after a time that he saw me driving down -- he saw a team and got his glass and found out it was I. My heart was quite touched when I found that he hadn't been over to the moorings but once before this spring! I don't think from the looks of him that he will be missing "Poor dear" a great while longer. Yet he asked for some good books of stories, detective ones, none of your lovesick kind, which he couldn't go! I must betake me to Wells again before long with a selection of literary offerings, G -- H -, the elder, being a great reader, but of another stamp and really one of the best-informed men I ever knew, never forgetting anything apparently; and when I tried to tell him about being at St. Augustine,** he told me the Indian names at the Fort, and much else that had slipped my mind. The drive home was as lovely as it could be, the country so green and the farms all so tidy, and the sheep and cattle thick in the pastures, with such a sunset across all the western sky.
This morning I have been to church, and this afternoon I rested and read, chiefly the "Alchemist," which is a great story, all the early part of it. I think that Balzac** got tired of it toward the end -- there where he makes Margaret regain her lost fortune over and over, as a lobster grows a new claw.
Thursday afternoon, 23 July, 1885. 14Now comes the news of General Grant's death,** which is a relief in a way. I think nothing could be more pathetic than the records of his last fight with his unvanquishable enemy. No two men I have ever seen came up to Grant and Tennyson** in Greatness. Tennyson first, I must say that. Good heavens, what a thing it is for a man of Grant's deliberate, straightforward, comprehending mind, to sit day after day with that pain clutching at his throat, looking death straight in the face! and with all his clear sight he was no visionary or seer of spiritual things. It must have made him awfully conscious of all that lay this side the boundary. And now he knows all, the step is taken, and the mysterious moment of death proves to be a moment of waking. How one longs to take it for one's self!
Thursday evening, 1886. 15This table is so overspread with the story of the Normans that I can hardly find room to put my paper down on it. I started in for work this afternoon, having been on the strike long enough, as one might say; but I only did a little writing, for I found that I must read the whole thing through, I have forgotten so much of it.
Do read Miss Preston's paper about Pliny the younger in the "Atlantic." It is full of charming things, and as readable as possible. It sent me to my old favorite, the elder Pliny's "Natural History," but I couldn't find it in any of the book-cases downstairs, and I was too lazy to go up for it. Oh, you should see the old robin by my bed-room window a-fetching up her young family! I long to have you here to watch the proceedings. She is a slack housekeeper that robin, for the blown-away ruffles that she wove into her nest have suffered so much from neglect, combined with wind and weather, that they ravel out in unsightly strings. But oh, the wide mouths of the three young ones, -- how they do reach up and gape altogether when she comes near the nest with a worm! How can she attend to the mural decorations of her home? I am getting to be very intimate with the growing family. I hate every pussy when I think what a paw might do. I waited by the window an hour at tea-time, spying them.
I have finished "Pendennis" with deep regret, for I have enjoyed it enormously. It is truly a great story, more simple and sincere and inevitable than "Vanity Fair."** It seems as much greater than Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina"** as it is more full of true humanity. It belongs to a more developed civilization, to a far larger interpretation of Christianity. But people are not contented at reading "Pendennis" every few years and with finding it always new as they grow more able to understand it. Thackeray is so great, a great Christian. He does not affect, he humbly learns and reverently tries to teach out of his own experience. "Pendennis" belongs to America just now more than it belongs to England, but we must forget it and go and read our Russian. Yes, he has a message too, but most people understand it so little that he amuses them and excites their wonder like Jules Verne.**
I am writing before breakfast. I have finished "Hugh Wynne"** and loved it, with its fresh air and manliness, and -- to me -- exquisite charm. Don't you know what Tennyson said: "I love those large still books!"
Monday morning. 16Little old Miss Elizabeth C. is dead at ninety-two,** after a miserable year or two when all of her has been dead but her small body. I went down to see her nephew, and found him as bereaved as possible. I don't go into the old house very often, but yesterday I was so moved by the sight of certain things, and especially of an ottoman on which I used to sit very high in the air and perilous, both with a sense of the occasion, and being off soundings as to the floor Such pound-cakes as I have eaten on that ottoman! Somehow all the hospitality of those days came back in touching contrast to the empty, womanless rooms yesterday. Miss C. has always been a recluse. I have seldom seen her on the street and but a few times at church. She would have been a nun in early days. The bustling world was always too much for her. Dear, kindly soul that she was, with a pair of beautiful childlike blue eyes, which seemed forever young, though I can't remember when her thin bent little figure didn't look old. She always hid away from the gayeties of the house. Her mother was a kind of little old duchess with great social faculty, a friend of Lafayette in the war times, so that on his royal progress he took pains to come to see her. I used to hear the call related with great particularity when I was a little girl. These were Boston Cushings originally, and were for a long time newcomers, having moved to Berwick in 1795, when Berwick, though small, was as proper a place to live in as Boston, "at least so thinks" Madam Cushing. I must not forget to tell you that Miss Elizabeth said a year or two ago, when that base-looking Methodist Church was building near by, "Charles, is that a ship I see? when are they going to launch?" It was curious memory of her childish visits at the old Wallingford house, her grandfather's, which stood across the river from the Hamilton house, when ships were built there and the river, so quiet now, was a busy place. Too much of Miss Elizabeth, says a patient friend, but I am always delighting in reading the old Berwick, picturesque as it was, under the cover of the new life which seems to you so dull and unrewarding in most ways. "Where every prospect pleases," etc.,** ought to be your hymn for Berwick, the which I don't suggest unmercifully, but rather compassionately, and with a plaintive feeling at heart.
I don't know when I have had such a delightful day of reading as I had yesterday. Part of Rousseau's "Confessions"** were perfectly enchanting, -- the bits about his walks; and whatever he writes about, he is never disgusting to me, as many of his age are. I never began to know the "Confessions" before. It was my first time, as Mrs. Bell says.** I also read a good bit in Daniel's poems,** and was so snug and lazy by a big fire in the fireplace. John suggests the furnace, being evidently tired of getting in enough walnut logs for all the fireplaces every morning; but I beg off selfishly. The house never seems half so pleasant when the fireplaces are cold. Give my dear love to Marigold* when you see her.
Fields's note
*Mrs. James Lodge.
Tuesday evening. 17I need not tell you what a joyful homecoming it was. Mother's look as she came running out to meet Mary was something that I never shall forget. it. It was like some old painter's picture of a Bible scene! With her arms out, and her aging face and figure. And such a time all the afternoon, and the unpacking and presents galore, and charming photographs as thick as the fallen leaves without. I kept wishing for you to "be to it," Pinny with such splendour! Burne-Jones' photographs,** new ones, and big! and a sealskin cape to her shoulders, and an Edinburgh pin, and a new ivory brush (needed!), and a beautiful piece of best lace, and some new undergarments, and stockings, and a best white petticoat, and Oh such a lot of things! I ought to be Sandpiper to properly enumerate and describe!
Wednesday night. 18I have had a lovely day. I felt tired and flustered with things to do, so I took John and two horses and skipped to "York Long Sands," and feel the better for it The road was muddy after the rain and the country was so green and fresh. I was really anxious to see old Miss. Barrell,** having heard that she very feeble. When I arrived, the house was orderly and so lonesome, and the good woman who takes care of the poor soul told me that she had not been sleeping for night after night, that her mind was gone and she could hardly speak. She asked if I would go up, and I said yes. There was the sunshiny great bedroom, looking out on the river, and the most minute, attenuated figure of my poor old friend in her great chair with her dinner, -- such a careful, good dinner! -- spread before her, and she seemed to be playing with it without eating, like a child. I went close to her and spoke to her, sad at heart with the change I saw, for she has evidently had a stroke which has dulled one side of her face. Then such a lovely flash of recognition! She took hold of me with her poor old bird's claw of a hand and kissed and kissed me and tried to talk; her eyes were full of life and of love, as if I had found her in the prison of her body and would understand. She tried to say things and really did manage a few short sentences, and I guessed at others, but alas I had to miss the rest; but the thought was all there, and she was so full of pleasure at seeing me, having me come to see her in prison, for I can think of it in no other way. Dear quaint little creature, nobody knows how appealing it was. You see I have to write you all about it. I dare say she doesn't always know people, and that often her mind is gone, but she did know me and I knew her, and I hated to take myself away from her at last. She always asked for Mother in the old days, and that was one of the things she said clearest today. All her touching little politenesses and acts of hospitality were evidently in her mind, but it was like listening to an indistinct telephone. I caught one flash of her old manner when I happened to speak of a family she disapproved. "Pack o' fools," she whispered, and we did have such a laugh, the last of all our laughs together, I fear me. It was dreadful when she said things that I couldn't make out, but I took refuge in telling her everything I could think of, that she might like to hear, speaking slowly and clearly, and she almost always knew and tried to answer. Nothing was really alive but her eyes, like Heine's.** I think she has had some new things to think of, in her prison. The good nurse hardly knew what to make of us, but she is very kind and capable. I dare say this was a sudden flicker of her old self, but wasn't it wonderful? Perhaps the shadow fell on her mind again directly, and she has been in the pitiful state they described; but you can't think how I rejoice to think I went to see her.
October.19The two notes you sent me tonight are very dear prints of your footsteps along the path of life. A sentimental Pinny to express herself so, but she feels it to the bottom of her heart. Miss Grant* is in the full tide of successful narration. She described an acquaintance this morning as a "meek-looking woman, but very understanding!" I have not been writing today. I should have been called off at any rate a good deal, so I did some hammering and housekeeping this morning, and "box-pleated" sixteen breadths of silk ruffle this afternoon. (I think we shall have the little lace frock. It is not going to be a great deal of work, and is getting on capitally.)
Fields's note
* the village dressmaker.**
Sunday afternoon, December, 1888. 20I had just been reading Mr. Arnold's essay on George Sand, and finished it with tears in my eyes. How beautiful, and how full of inspiration it is! We cannot be grateful enough to either of them, and yet how little I really know her books! I am willing to study French very hard all winter in order to read her comfortably in the spring!
This morning at church I was dreadfully bored with a sermon, and I made up a first-rate story which will have to be written very soon after Christmas. I must tell you all about it. How soon we shall be talking now, if all goes well, and good-bye to letters for a while. Tomorrow I shall be busy getting my things together, and doing up Christmas bundles. I am not sure whether I shall take the half past ten train or the half past two, so go your ways, dear, and I hope you will find me there when you come home to dinner.
That story of Tolstoi's was such an excitement that I did not sleep until almost morning.** What a wonderful thing it is! I long to talk with you about it, but do let us think a good deal. It startled me because I was dimly feeling the same kind of motive (not the same plan) in writing the "Gray Man." Nobody cared much for it, but it is the same sort of story, it is there. I wish that you would look it over and see. I believed in that story so that I would have published it if I had to make the type. If I can only feel that I am in the right road, in one sense nothing else matters. I have felt something of what Tolstoi has been doing all the way along. I can tell you half a dozen stories where I tried to say it, "Lady Terry,"** "Beyond the Toll-gate" and this "Gray Man." Now and then it came clearer to me. I never felt the soul of Tolstoi's work until last night, something of it in Katia, but now I know what he means, and I know that I can dare to keep at the work I sometimes have despaired about because you see people are always caught by fringes of it and liked the stories if they liked them at all for some secondary quality. I know there is something true, and yet I myself have often looked only at the accidental and temporary part of them.
Another postcard from Mr. Freeman.* He has found about Maurice!! and is more friendly than ever. How can I live up to this correspondence? I am going to head him off and keep him quiet for a while by telling him that I have only a few of my books at hand.
Fields's note
*The historian.**
Friday night, 21I have read most of the nice letters and enjoyed them so much while I sat by the light, talking and listening by turns. Now I have stolen into the office for a word. Here is Eldress Harriet,** who has given up the things of this world and can say stoutly at her letter's end that they, can "hold on fast by God," as the old version of the Psalms** has it, through their Shaker faith!** And dear Mrs. Stowe,** with her new suggestion for my happiness, standing ready like a switchman at the division by the rails. How sweet her letters are, though, -- hers to you most lovely, for it says all we felt, and knew she thought that evening.
[March, 1889.] 22Now this is a hopeful sign. I just looked out of the window and some boys have found a dry spot on the sidewalk and are playing marbles. The mud is still very deep and the snow-drifts very high, but the hills are like big leopards and tigers ready for a pounce at something, with their brown and white spots. I never was more glad to see the brown spots show themselves, and shouldn't you think the: grass would be glad to have the snow go off, so that the sun can shine on it and the wind blow it? Once I should have been in a hurry to go racing off for hepaticas,** but it is too early at any rate, and I say to myself that I never did care very much for those flowers, and I find I am growing old and lazy and can let them bloom and wilt again without any sorrow. Hepaticas are like some people, very dismal blue, with cold hands and faces. I had to stop to think about wild flowers, and I believe there is nothing dearer than a trig little company of anemones in a pasture, all growing close together as if they kept each other warm, and wanted the whole sun to themselves, beside. They had no business to wear their summer frocks so early in the year.
I am bewitched with a story, though I have nothing to say to you about it yet.
Sunday evening, 1889.** 23I have been reading "Pendennis" with such pleasure. What a beautiful story! I long to read some pages to you, for the humanity -- the knowledge of life and the sympathy with every-day troubles is more and more wonderful. It all seems new to me, and to follow Thackeray through the very days when he was at work upon it, as we can in the Scribner letters, is such a joy. I got "Law Lane" in proof yesterday in excellent season for the Christmas number, one would think. Mr. Burlingame hoped that I could shorten it a little,** and I have been working over it. He has great plans for his Christmas number and there are many things to go in. He seems pleased with "Law Lane," so is its humble author, but you are not to tell. I have not been out today, except to the garden to pick myself a luncheon of currants.
Later. 23AI am almost through "Pendennis." I do wish you would read it pretty soon! perhaps next winter! And a story which has been lagging a good while is beginning to write itself. Its name is "A Player Queen,"** and it hopes to be liked. Miss Preston's article looks very interesting in the "Atlantic,"' about the Russian novels,** but I have not found the right half hour to read it. Oh, my dear, it is such a comfort to think of you in the dear house, with the sea calling and all the song sparrows singing by turns to try and make you sing, too.
I was much moved by your news about poor Mr. R--. I am glad that the old man is likely to be released; but there is a little round world of two people going to fall to pieces. All the better for them in some ways, too, but with all their provoking narrowness there is something very appealing in their relation to each other, and she is going to find life very hard alone, simply because it has been so narrow, and she has no great outlook or preparation for unselfish usefulness. I dare say you are going to be able to help her by and by, but now all that anybody can do for her is to try to make her feel that there are a few kind hearts that are truly sorry for her.
Friday night, 1889. 24I thought of you today, for I was over in the fields and found a brookful of delicious crisp water-cresses, but I shall let them grow until you come, for I don't think anybody cares much for them. I pulled two or three and washed them in the brook and thought there never were any so good. Some day we will take a piece of bread and butter and go there and have a banquet.
There is a book I wish you would take to Manchester** for me, or is it there already? The life of Fox and somebody else. Since I read the Warren Hastings essay I have been wishing to pick up more about that time, and about Burke and Sheridan.**
Last night I had a perfect delight rereading Dorothy Wordsworth's Tour in Scotland.** I finished it by hurrying a little at the end, but there is no more charming book in the world. It is just our book, and the way we enjoy things isn't it, when we are footing it out of doors?
I was delighted to find so many birds to-day, golden robins, blackbirds, bobolinks, and only Sandpiper knows what else. It was beautiful in the fields, and so resting.
Saturday morning, 1889. 25I am waiting for your letter to come, and it seems a long half hour. A thriftless person when there are so many things to do, but somehow I did not get to sleep last night, except for two or three naps which were rather too uneasy for comfort. I had one most beautiful time which was after your own heart. It began to be light, and after spending some time half out of the window hearing one bird tune up after another, I half dressed myself and went out and stayed until it was bright day-light. I went up the street and out into the garden, where I had a beautiful time, and was neighborly with the hop-toads and with a joyful robin who was sitting on a corner of the barn, and I became very intimate with a big poppy which had made every arrangement to bloom as soon as the sun same up. There was a bright little waning moon over the hill, where I had a great mind to go, but there seemed to be difficulties, as I might be missed, or somebody might break into the house where I had broken out. Weren't you awake, too, very early? I thought so, and I was equally certain that other people were asleep. Really, so much happened in that hour that I could make a book of it - I had a great temptation to go to writing.**
I have done so many things today that I should like to write down them and see what they were. There was a piece gone off the top of the three gilded feathers on the breakfast room looking-glass, so I carved a feather top out of pine wood and stuck it on and gilded it most satisfactorily, and then I set Stubby** and an impoverished friend who needed money for the Fourth to digging plantains out of the grass at fifteen cents the hundred, whereupon they doubled their diligence until they got $1.65 out of me at dinner time!! And I transplanted a lot of little sunflowers and put hellebore** on the gooseberry bushes and wrote a lot of notes for the "Berwick Scholar" on account of the Centennial arrangements,** and went down street twice and -- but I won't tell you, yes, I will -- the little Beverly doggie came by express! and is ardently beloved by Stubs, and that took time, and after dinner I went to Beaver Dam** with John about a carriage painter and another errand, and then I dressed me all up and went and made two elegant calls, and then I came home and wrote this.
Sunday, 5th July. 26. . . I have been reading the beginning of "The Pearl of Orr's Island"** and finding it just as clear and perfectly original and strong as it seemed to me in my thirteenth or fourteenth year, when I read it first. I never shall forget the exquisite flavor and reality of delight that it gave me. I do so long to read it with you. It is classical-historical-- anything you like to say, if you can give it high praise enough. I haven't read it for ten years at least, but there it is! Alas, that she couldn't finish it in the same noble key of simplicity and harmony; but a poor writer is at the mercy of much unconscious opposition. You must throw everything and everybody aside at times, but a woman made like Mrs. Stowe cannot bring herself to that cold selfishness of the moment for one's work's sake, and the recompense for her loss is a divine touch here and there in an incomplete piece of work. I felt at the funeral that none of us could really know and feel the greatness of the moment, but it has seemed to grow more great to me ever since. I love to think of the purple flowers you laid on the coffin.
I hope the York visit will be worth while. I look forward to seeing Mrs. Lawrence more than anything, and to the funny Indians, and the lights across the harbor at night. I am so glad you have seen the little place and know where I shall be.
Thursday night, 4 December, 1889.** 27Such a day! -- the weather could not be resisted, and I went to York -- you would have truly loved it, for I never knew more delicious weather, as bright and sweet as Indian summer, only more bracing. I had my luncheon out of doors and sat afterward in an old boat on the pebbles and watched the great waves of a high tide. I could not bear to come away. You never saw anything more beautiful than that great stretch of shore, and the misty sea, and the gulls, so lonely, so full, and so friendly, somehow. I went chiefly for the sake of seeing my old friend, and found her in a mood that matched the day, all her wildness and strangeness of last summer quite gone, and a sweet pathos and remembrance come in their stead. She was so glad to see me, that my heart cries to think of her. She said once, "I want you to thank your mother for bringing you into the world, you have been such a pleasure to me."--And then I must go to her closets and find her best cap, and a new double gown, and a better shoulder-shawl, and help her put them on because I had comer She has grown so thin and small, as if she were slowly turning into a fairy, and it was so sweet to see her less troubled, though she remembered perfectly the last time I was there, broken as she seemed to me then. The sunshine filled the quaint old room and we had a delightful long talk, though once in a while she would be little bewildered, and tell me over and over again about her sister's death. "I lay down beside her," she would say, "and I thought she seemed very cold, but I put my arms round her"; and then she would cry, and I would talk about something else, until in a minute or two she would be smiling again through her sad old tears. As long as I could see the house, she was standing at her chamber window and waving her handkerchief to me, and I promised to go down again the first time I came home. She seems very feeble. I had a strong feeling that I should not see her again. I must tell you that she said with strange emphasis, "I have seen Betsey, she came one night and stood beside my bed; it shocked me a good deal, but I saw her, and one of my brothers came with her." As she told me this I believed it was the truth, and no delusion of her unsteady brain. I ought not to write any more, but somehow there is a great deal to tell you.
This morning I was out, taking a drive about town with John and I saw such a coast from way up the long hillside down to the tavern garden, and directly afterward down in the village I beheld Stubby faring along with his sled, which is about as large as a postage-stamp. So I borryed it, as you say, and was driven up to the top of the hill street and down I slid over that pound-cake frosting of a coast most splendid, and meekly went back to the village and returned the sled. Then an hour later in bursts Stubby, with shining morning face: "There were two fellows that said Aunt Sarah was the boss, she went down side-saddle over the hill just like the rest of the boys!"
I have been reading Christopher North's "Genius and Character of Burns"--father's old Wiley and Putnam copy** with such delight, and this evening I got down the poems and longed to have them with you. We don't read Burns half enough, do we? And when I read again the eloquence of the Wilson book,** I wondered at that dull placidity that was lately printed in the "Atlantic," yet I was most grateful to it for freshening my thought of the big Scotsman. Do let us read bits of the Burns together some time, just for the bigness of his affection and praise.
I wrote until after dark this afternoon, and then went out to walk in the early moonlight, down the street by the Academy, and even up on the hill back of the Academy itself.** There was a great grey cloud in the west, but all the rest of the sky was clear, and it was very beautiful. When one goes out of doors and wanders about alone at such a time, how wonderfully one becomes part of nature, like an atom of quick-silver against a great mass. I hardly keep my separate consciousness, but go on and on until the mood has spent itself.**
Madame Sand's mother** is astray out of a Dickens book, but I don't know which one. I wish I knew that kind of people well enough to write about them; they are dreadfully interesting sometimes. Today I am plunged into the depths of the rural districts, and this promised to be one of my dear country stories like the "Only Son."** Good heavens! what a wonderful kind of chemistry it is that evolves all the details of a story and writes them presently in one flash of time! For two weeks I have been noticing a certain string of things and having hints of character, etc., and day before yesterday the plan of the story comes into my mind, and in half an hour I have put all the little words and ways into their places and can read it off to myself like print. Who does it? for I grow more and more sure that I don't!
I am going to grapple with the difficulty of a run-away husband. I wish I could tell you all about it, but I mean to have it done in two or three days. I ought to be preparing the "Dulham Ladies" and "A Gray Man" for "the press," but it is better to get hold of this new one while I can. I send you a "Century." Do read the Virginia girl's paper about the war.** We have often heard bits of talk that match it, but those pathetic days have never been more truthfully and delicately written down.
Saturday. 28I had a perfectly delightful evening from old Dr. Lord last night.** I wished for you. He really is so interesting now. He was talking about his English experiences at the time he lived there three or four years and married his wife. He knew Cardinal Wiseman and Archbishop Whately, and Carlyle, about whom he talked enchantingly. It made me feel as if I had gone to the door in Cheyne Row and had "Mrs. Carlyle herself" come to open it, "a beautiful woman with delightful manners," and Carlyle come scolding downstairs (though he had made the appointment himself) and grumbling that Americans were all bores and he liked the Russians, a sober, thinking and acting people, and then he would grow very good-natured, and after a while take his company for a long walk; -- cross old Dean Gaisford also appeared with that group of Oxford men.** You could have drawn out much more, but indeed it was very interesting to me. Egotism is the best of a man after eighty. He is chiefly valuable then for what he has been, and for the wealth of his personality, and what is silly self-admiration at forty is a treasure of remembrance. The stand-point has changed.
I must say good-bye, but what savings we shall be telling over pretty soon. Don't forget things.
Wednesday evening 29(with a great rain on the roof of the study).
I have been reading Mr. Arnold's "Essays on Celtic Poetry" with perfect reverence for him and his patience and wisdom. How much we love him and believe in him, don't we? Do you know this book and the essay on translating Homer?** I long to read it all with you.
Sunday evening, Autumn. 30I hope that you have had a good day. I have been to church myself for a wonder, since from one reason or another I have not been preached at for some months! This afternoon, after the communion service, I had a great pleasure in seeing the very old church silver which is not often used, and some time I wish to show it to you. One exquisite old flagon is marked 1674, and the cups are such beautiful shapes. They keep it packed away in the bank, -- very properly, -- and usually use a new set bought thirty or forty years ago. I dare say that some of the old came from England, -- it is really so interesting with all the givers' names and inscriptions put on in such quaint pretty lettering.
Yes, it is quite magnificent about the copyright bill,** and I like to have my country honest at last about the Spoliation Claims. I told Mother yesterday that she must buy a piece of plate and have it marked French Spoliation Claims, 1891, and have it handed down.**
You never saw such a lot of snow in your towny life as is now piled up in this single hamlet. It is really a huge lot, and so drifted and tumbled about, and every little while to-day the northwest wind would blow, and the air would be full for awhile. Jocky seems to think it is a very hard winter.**
Mr. Putnam has just got back from London, and I find that I shall probably begin my proofs* within a fortnight. I am forgetting the worrisome detail a little now, and dread taking it up again, but perhaps they will hurry through and shorten my miseries. "Vanity Fair"** is read through, a very great book, and for its time Tolstoi and Zola and Daudet and Howells and Mark Twain and Turgenieff and Miss Thackeray** of this day all rolled into one, so wise and great it is and reproachful and realistic and full of splendid scorn for meanness and wickedness, which scorn the Zola school** seems to lack. And the tenderness and sweetness of the book is heavenly, that is all I can say about it. I am brimful of things to say.
Fields's note
*The story of the Normans.
Monday. 31The big ash tree in front of the house is so nearly dead that it must come down, and the big elm between here and Carrie's, the dearest tree of my childhood and all my days, is all hollow and all the weight of it is toward the house, so that after much consultation we are afraid to let it stand through the winter, and that must be chopped down, too. I shall be glad when they are done and cleared away. I dread it so much that it quite haunts me, but I was shocked to find the other day in what a dangerous state the old tree was. It wouldn't be pleasant to have it prod through the roof; in fact, I begin to feel as if it were holding itself up just as long as it could, in a kind of misery of apprehension, poor old tree! It seems as if it must know all about us. Then one of the spruces is also to be slain to let in more light; that will meet your approval. . . . Today I have been reading, for one thing, Mrs. Oliphant's "Royal Edinburgh,"** a most delightful book, -- particularly the chapter about Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox, and the last chapter about Sir Walter, which we really must read together some time. It is a beautiful piece of work.
You will be much amused to hear that the funny old man in the linen duster whom I caught sight of at Chapel Station has really been the making of the "Atlantic" sketch. I mean to begin him this morning and get well on with him before the girls come. His name proves to be Mr. Teaby,** and he is one of those persons who peddle essences and perfumery and a household remedy or two, and foot it about the country with limp enameled cloth bags. What do you think of Mr. Teaby now? Teaby is the name, and he talks with sister Pinkham about personal and civic matters on a depot platform in the rural districts. Don't you think an editor would feel encouraged?
Tuesday evening. 32Dear, -- Oh, I did have such a good time today! I went to see some huge pine trees down in the edge of Wells, -- an out-of-the-way road, but I always knew that these pines were the biggest in the state and had a great desire to see them. Oh, do go next summer to see the most superb creatures that ever grew! I don't believe that their like is in New England. More than four feet through their great trunks, and standing so tall that their great green tops seem to belong to the next world. In all my life I never was in such glorious woods. I long to take you there. Afterward I went into the farmhouse and had a perfectly beautiful time. I knew they were old patients of father's, and that he used to like to go there, but I was not prepared to find Doris and Dan Lester a dozen years older than when we met them last!!! And they had read works of Pinny and were so affectionate and delightful and talked about father -- and made a little feast for she, and it was a perfectly beautiful good time.
(TO T. B. ALDRICH)** 33South Berwick, Maine.
My dear Friend, -- I am much pleased at hearing of your collegiate honors, and especially (from some one who was present) of the delightful and hearty applause. How I should have clapped my bands and pounded if I had been there!! Did the boys use to pound their feet on the floor in Portsmouth? Only a very great moment on the stage of the village hall wins such expression here. Anything that does you and your lovely work honor wakes something very good and unspeakable in my heart. I should have seen the author of a poem called "Elmwood," and a story called "A Bad Boy," and other poems and other stories, too many to count here, stand up in the Sanders Theatre, and I should have been so glad to think he and I were friends.
I hope that there may be a little better news from your two old invalids -- that these are days of less pain and discomfort. I think so often of you and Lilian waiting and watching there. I am glad you are out in the country and not in town. With love to you both.
(TO MRS. FIELDS) 34Home, Saturday afternoon.
Mr. Howells thinks that this age frowns upon the romantic, that it is no use to write romance any more; but dear me, how much of it there is left in every-day life after all. It must be the fault of the writers that such writing is dull, but what shall I do with my "White Heron"** now she is written? She isn't a very good magazine story, but I love her, and I mean to keep her for the beginning of my next book and the reason for Mrs. Whitman's pretty cover. In the meantime I will simply state that the next story is called "Marsh Rosemary," and I made it up as I drove to the station in Wells this morning. It deals with real life. Somehow dear, dull old Wells is a first-rate place to find stories in. Do you remember how we drove up that long straight road across the marshes last summer? It was along there the Marsh Rosemary grew.
I have been reading an old copy of Donne's poems** with perfect delight. They seem new to me just now, even the things I knew best. We must read many of them together. I must have my old copy mended; it is quite shabby, with its label lost and leaves working out from the binding.
Thursday morning, Decoration Day.** 35There is going to be an unwonted parade in honor of the day and I am glad; for usually everybody trots off to Dover or Portsmouth,** and nothing is done here except to put the pathetic little flags about the burying-grounds. It seems to me that I have just begun to understand how grown people felt about the war in the time of it, -- at any rate it brought tears to my eyes yesterday when John said that over two hundred men went from this little town to the war. You can see how many young sons of old farmers, and how many men out of their little shops, and people who had nobody to leave in their places, went to make up that number. Yesterday I went traveling in my own land, and found the most exquisite place that ever was. We followed a woods road into an old farm where I used to go with father years and years ago (the first time I ever knew anemones, was there, I remember).** It is high on a great rocky hillside and deep in the woods, and what I had completely forgotten was the most exquisite of glens. I am not going to try and describe it except to say that I never have seen a more exquisite spot, and I must certainly take you to see it. It is so far off the road that it might be in the depths of the White Mountains as to loneliness, and it is much less often visited. I remember it vaguely, as a little child, when I saw it often, but I had completely forgotten it.
I did have the most beautiful time yesterday afternoon. I feel as if I had seen another country in Europe. Oh, a great deal better than that, though I only went wandering over a great tract of pasture-land down along the river. You would think it is such a lovely place, and I shall have to write about it one of these days, for I saw so many things. I never had known anything beyond the edges it before. It was the sweetest weather in the world, and Roger went.** But last night there was a dismal time, for the bad bowwows got into the parlor together, and first thing I knew there was a pitched battle, and I was afraid the lamps and everything would be tipped over before I could get hold of anybody's collar, and Roger passed a suffering night with a lame paw and broke my rest all to pieces with his whining, and Browny's ear was damaged, and dogs are at a discount.
Wednesday evening. 36Sometimes, the business part of writing grows very noxious to me, and I wonder if in heaven our best thoughts -- poet's thoughts, especially -- will not be flowers, somehow, or some sort of beautiful live things that stand about and grow, and don't have to be chaffed over and bought and sold. It seems as bad as selling our fellow beings, but being in this world everything must have a body, and a material part, so covers and leaves and publishing generally come under that head, and is another thing to make us wish to fly away and be at rest!
[One day these verses came with the usual bulletin of prose.]
Right here, where noisiest, narrowest is the street;
Where gaudy shops bedeck the crowded way;
Where idle newsboys in vindictive play
Dart to and fro with venturesome bare feet;
Here, where the bulletins from fort and fleet
Tell gaping readers what's amiss today,
Where sin bedizens, folly makes too gay,
And all are victims of their own conceit;
With these ephemeral insects of an hour
That war and flutter, as they downward float
In some pale sunbeam that the spring has brought,
Where this vain world is revelling in power;
I met great Emerson, serene, remote,**
Like one adventuring on seas of thought.
Wednesday morning. 37I wrote hard and fast yesterday morning, and in the afternoon, we all went to drive, and had the most delightful expedition to an old farm up in the wild country between here and the sea, where the rough woods come close to painfully cleared little green fields and pastures. Don't you remember my telling you about a charming waterfall? Well, it was there again that I went, but furthermore, to see a great view from the top of the high hill beyond. Then we took a wide sweep round into another road and so home, as Mr. Pepys says.** I must tell you about that farmhouse at the old place, near the brook and fen. It stands very high, but has no view of the country, in summer at least, and a mile and a half from the main road.
We went in to see old Mr. G., who has been long ill and for a year bedridden, but was sitting up at last yesterday, looking down the lane up which so few people are likely to come; but it seemed a great pleasure because we ensued! and he absolutely cried when he saw mother! He is A good old fellow, who in old days brought the best of walnut wood and other farm-stores, and like all his kind, considered father and mother to be final! He has left, out of a large household, only one son and two orphan grand-children, and there they live in that solitary place. The house is bare and clean and looks as if men kept it, though just as we were coming away a little girl came out of a wood-path, home from school, in a pink dress, like a shy flower. She will soon grow. Listen to this, dear: the man's wife sat in that same bare room looking down the lane, thirty years, and for twenty-five she could not feed herself, a martyr to the worst sort of rheumatism and everything else.** One of the best souls in the world. It makes my heart ache to think of her and of all the rest of them; generations have lived there, and most of them die young. There is a swamp back of the house out of which the beauty of the waterfall comes like a mockery of all the pain and trouble, as if it were always laughing. But those people could hardly be persuaded to put their house in another spot; when the old one wore out thirty years ago or more, they built another on its cellar. There was a white rose-bush within reach of the old man's hand. Indeed,I call that region the White Rose Road,** for every farmhouse has a tall bush by its front door, and yesterday they were in full bloom. I didn't mean to write such a long chapter when I began, and I must fly to my work.
Don't you think it would be nice for us to have the "Revue"* again this summer just for a few months? I have a feeling that I should like it, -- and as if I wished to get as near to France as possible, without going there. I have a curious sense of delight in the fragrance that blows out of Madame Blanc's letter every time I take it out of its envelope, it is so refined, so personal, and of the past.
I have the greatest joy in reading Wordsworth lately. I can't get enough of him, and I take snatches of time for "The Leech-Gatherer," and the other short ones, and feel as if I had lived a week in going through each one of them.
Fields's note
*The Revue des Deux Mondes.
Thursday morning. 38I mourn for poor Crabby -- poor little dog! I hate to think we shall never see him again. I never liked him so much as I have this summer, in his amiable and patient age. However, I had worried much about what should come next when he was blinder and feebler, and it is good to think that his days are done so comfortably. I am sure all the girls felt sorry as we do.
It is a grey day and looks like a cold rain, but John and Theodore, like "Benjy" and "Tom Brown," have gone to the Rochester fair, with smiles on their faces that seemed to tie behind and be quite visible as they walked away!**
I have been reading "Miss Angel." It is a most lovely historical story. If you haven't got it, I want to send my little Tauchnitz one. Venice is so exquisitely drawn in it, and afterward in London, all the life of that day. Dr. Johnson comes along the street as if one's own eyes saw him. I think you have got "Miss Angel," but perhaps you can't put a hand on it.
I took down the two Choate volumes,* yesterday, and read with unforgettable delight, -- not that it was new altogether, but somehow new then.
Fields's note
*The biography of Rufus Choate.**
May. 39This is something I remember at this moment in Voltaire. "He labored at every new work as if he had his reputation still to make!" But oh, his letters! such grace, such "gaieté de cœur"! They are really wonderful, are they not? I only wish that there were more of them, and when I saw an edition of his works for sale in Libbie's catalogue,** I was tempted to bid. I don't dare propose to Mother the bringing in of seventy volumes at one fell swoop! or it might be ninety-seven in the best edition.
Good morning, dear. I begin to set my day and to wonder if I can't spend a week from this coming Sunday with you....
I hope you can get off to Manchester by the fourth or fifth, as you planned, for I can only get a few days there at first, for I find that the County Conference,** dear to my heart, is coming on the eleventh, all the country ministers and their wives and delightful delegates who never appear to go anywhere else -- nice old country women.
(TO MR. AND MRS. T. B. ALDRICH) 40South Berwick, Maine, 23 July, 1890.
My dear Friends, -- I began a letter to you the very week you went away, but I did not finish it, for my mother has been most dangerously ill, and only just now begins to seem as if she were getting well again. We have felt very anxious all these long weeks I really am in a great hurry now to know where you are and what you have been doing. I was so overwhelmed when I got word of the change in the "Atlantic's" fortunes** that I don't feel free to express myself even yet! But this I can say, that I am most grateful for and unforgetful of all the patience and kindness which my dear friend the editor has given me in these years that are past. One day I saw in the "Nation" that "one has learned to look for Miss Jewett's best work in the pages of the 'Atlantic'; but I could read something deeper still between those lines and gladly owned to myself that it was due to many suggestions and much helpfulness that my sketches have a great deal of their (possible) value. I have been taught so many lessons and been kept toward a better direction than I could have found for myself. If I were not looking eagerly for your new work, dear Mr. T. B. A., and were not thankful that your time was your own now for your work's sake, I should lament more loudly than I do over the magazine's loss.
I wonder if you will go to Paris, and if you will see Madame Blanc? I had a delightful letter from her not long ago, written in the South of France, and sounding like one of George Sand's, say from the second volume of her Correspondence!** She sent me a volume of S.O.J. all in French, which caused such pride of heart that no further remarks are ventured upon the subject!
(TO MRS. FIELDS) 41Tuesday morning.
It seems as if two leaves for one had suddenly come out on the trees. Yesterday afternoon I went to the funeral of an old patient of my father on one of the old farms -- where the neighbourhood minister preached and the old farmhouse was crowded with people -- and then we all walked out, two by two, across a broad green field, with old-fashioned pall-bearers carrying the coffin by hand and changing, -- first four would take it, and then four others who went before, just as it must have been in England two hundred years ago. There was such a long procession, a hundred and thirty or forty, and all in little flocks, -- the father and mother and their big and little children, by twos, following them, and then another father and mother and their children. Somehow it looked quite scriptural! and the burying-ground was a little square out in the middle of this great field, with tall high-standing trees shading it. The whole scene was most touching and simple and curiously archaic. Usually the farming people have the hearse come and do all the things that village people do.
I have been reading a really wonderful little book by poor Richard Jefferies. I had never even heard of it - "The Story of My Heart," he calls it, but it is really the expression of his religious growth and aspiration toward higher things.** He finds little in conventional, or rasher formulated religions, but everything in an eager belief in higher forms of life and unrevealed wisdom. He comes closer to these in out-of-door life, as one might expect who knows his other books, but his ability to put into words the consciousness of life and individuality and relationship to eternity is something amazing. I have never known anything just like it. I thought of "thy friend"* as I read it, and of "Phantastes,"** which I haven't read since I was growing up. There is a queer touch of Tolstoi's creeds now and then. This copy was printed in '83, -- how strange that never knew anything of it!
Tonight I saw the dear little new moon through the elm boughs; and have read part of one of Hawthorne's American Journal volumes but didn't care for it as much as I used to. On the contrary, I found the "Rambles about Portsmouth" a mine of wealth. One description of the marketwomen coming down the river, their quaintness and picturesqueness at once seem to be so great, and the mere hints of description so full of flavor, that it all gave me much keener pleasure than anything I found in the other much more famous book. This seems like high literary treason, but you wait and see. This was a volume of Hawthorne's younger journals, a conscious effort after material and some lovely enough notes of his walks and suggestions for sketches; but these last lack any reality or imagination, rootless little things that could never open seed in their turn, or make much of any soil they were put into, so "delicate" in their fancy as to be far-fetched and oddly feeble and sophomorish. You will find it hard to believe this without the pages before you as I have just had them. But oh! such material as I lit upon in the other book! one page flashes into my mind now as 'live as Kipling and as full of fresh air, and all the touches of brave fancy and quiet pathos. Let an old fellow like Brewster keep at it as he did, and he quietly brings you a ruby and a diamond, picked right up in a Portsmouth street.** Such genuine books always live, they get filled so full of life: it's neither Boswell nor Johnson** who can take the credit, but the Life on the pages.
"Too useful to be lonely and too busy to be sad."
That is the most lovely thing that Miss Phelps ever said or wrote.**
Fields's note
*Whittier.
Thursday morning. 42I shall have to write you the same sort of letter as Selborne's White wrote to the Hon. Daines Barrington,** for there doesn't seem to be anything to tell, except how things grow and what birds have come and how things don't grow and what the birds do. There is one adorable golden robin in one of the garden elms, who shouts "Pitty, pitty, pitty!" all day long like a delighted child, -- you will be so pleased to make that cheerful bird's acquaintance when you come. (I don't feel very certain about the time when I shall go to you. It depends upon how much I can do today and tomorrow, and it also depends upon how things are here, and what news I get from Judge Chamberlain,** to whom I have been writing about a desk at the Public Library. But if I don't go Saturday, I certainly must be no later than Monday, for I must get a good deal done next week. I am trying to get to a certain point in the story here, and then be free to forget that part and to do the chapters about the cathedral, etc., while I am away.) I can't say enough about the Ruskin biography.** I can hardly wait to have you know it, too. He is after our own heart in his affection for Dr. Johnson. Next week, if we have some time for reading, do let us take some of Mr. Arnold's papers that we have been putting off, and some of the poems. It seems like cramming, but I was so sorry I was not more familiar with certain parts of his work when I saw him before. But some things of his we know as well as we know anything -- thank goodness!
Yesterday I was busy both morning and afternoon, and got on much better than the day before, and I hope it will be the same to-day. I was reading "Two Years Before the Mast"** in the evening, with new admiration for its gifts. It seems to me as much a classic as anything we have to give, -- it has exceptional charm in the way it is done, with perfectly genuine qualities. There is so little that is usually thought interesting to tell, and yet I could hardly skip a page.
What did you think of G. Sand's letter to Madame d'Agoult,** -- that long letter at the beginning of the book? I couldn't bear to have you read it without standing by and seeing how you liked it. Nothing ever made me feel that I really know Madame Sand as that letter did.
Monday evening. 43Such a heavenly day. I do wish that you could have played out of doors in the sun as I did. After dinner I stole away to my fence-corner and spent a beautiful season of peace and quietness. Jock followed me, but the distant sound of a gun scared him, and so he crept close to my petticoats. I had my little old "Milton's Shorter Poems" in my pocket and read "Lycidas"** with more delight than ever before; and then I did nothing for awhile, and finally took to aimless scribbling, and I don't wonder that you so dearly like to do your work out of doors. You never would believe how beautiful the country looked; and yet after a while I had a consciousness that something strange was going on, and looked up to see a great white and grey trail of fog, like a huge reptile all along the course of the river past the town, and so I knew that there was a noble sea-turn on its way inland, and scrambled to the top of the hill to find all the eastern country a great grey lake, Agamenticus, hidden (for once, you will say), and in fact the edge of the low cold cloud was uncomfortably near, so Jock and I raced it home and beat, for it was only a minute or two before the village was all a mist.**
Madame Blanc's picture came tonight, and I forgot to tell you that a little note from her, heralding it, came yesterday. She must have given it to some friend to bring across. The engraving is signed by Amaury Duval and is very sweet to look at. When it was taken, twenty years ago, she says it took the medal at the Salon.** I think it is a little large to bring to you, but perhaps not.
Sunday evening. 44I have got a little cold, so I stayed in most willingly today, and have finished the Coleorton letters.** I long to have you begin them, or to begin them over again with you. I suppose that some or many of them must be printed elsewhere, I am too ignorant to say; but Wordsworth's and Dorothy's letters are more delightful and wise and like their best selves than any words of mine can say. Coleridge's, too, follow his varying fortunes and ailments over hill and dale. In Wordsworth's there is a delectable account of his planning and overseeing a "winter garden" for the Beaumonts, which I hope we shall go to see, some day, and there are particulars now and then about how the evergreens grow, and he writes inscriptions for it, and it is a great play! But Dorothy! how charming she grows as one grows older and learns to know her better. How much that we call Wordsworth himself was Dorothy to begin with. Wordsworth's letters so often make me think of Mr. Arnold. He would love the book -- but I am in such a hurry to get you at it.
"Existence is the most frivolous thing in the world if one does not conceive it as a great and continual duty." I am so glad you told me to read this, for I might never have gone back to it of my own accord.
I have such a charming new book, the "Life of William Barnes" the Dorset poet, by his daughter.** There is almost too much of his own poetry sandwiched in, which delays the run of the biography (to me) -- not but what I love some of the poems very much. He is like the parish priest in the "Deserted Village," -- [with the wonder] "that one small head could carry all he knew"!** I think it would be a lovely thing to make a paper for the "Atlantic" or some of the magazines. If I had been to his village, how I should love to do it, and there is my priest of Morwenstow waiting yet! Perhaps they will be nice things to do this winter?
(TO T. B. ALDRICH) 45South Berwick, Maine.
You and I are such timid young authors that I can now afford distinct reassurance, and say with deep pleasure how much I like your two new stories! You spoke slightingly of "Shaw's Folly,"** but that was the folly of T. B. It is done with such freedom of hand and brightness of touch that I liked it most uncommonly well, and the only shadow of dissatisfaction that a fond reader can find, is that the writer didn't say what the cure might have been for such a sad failure! I suppose it is the old story, that we can't trust sentimentality to build houses, or rather to keep them running on business principles. The distinction between sentiment and sentimentality is a question of character, and is as deep as one can go in life, and kindness must have a sound tap-root. We are trying to speak of model lodgings, rather than of literature that depicted Mr. Shaw! We must go right to A. F. to get straightened out!** But I love the way that you have written that story. There's realism seen from the humorous point of view: the trouble with most realism is that it isn't seen from any point of view at all, and so its shadows fall in every direction and it fails of being art. "All of which is respectfully submitted," as they say in state papers.
The brilliant tale touches one's imagination the quickest way. I find that it keeps coming to my mind as the "Two Boys in Black" has kept coming these many long years. It puzzles one as if it were one's own experience, and that touch about the handkerchief, on the face, keeps insisting that the lady what did she do if she didn't die? But this is getting to be a painful one-sided talk instead of a letter, and I must end it. I wonder if you are all as happy as you were the other morning? I feel as if I had looked in at the window and seen you all by accident, and as if I mustn't even think about it myself! There is only one word more: please keep on writing!
(TO MRS. FIELDS) 46Saturday morning, 12 October, 1890.
I was busy writing most of the day yesterday, but went up the street for an hour to the funeral of a little grand-child of one of our neighbours. The mother had died of consumption not long ago, and this delicate little thing was brought to the old grandmother to take care of. So it was a blessed flitting, and a solemn little pageant of all the middle-aged and elderly neighbours going to the funeral and sitting in the room where the small coffin was, and that old, wise, little dead face, which made one feel one's self the ignorant child, and that poor baby an ancient wise creature that knew all that there was for a baby to know, of this world and the next.
There is a quaint archaic touch in Louise Guiney's poem to Izaak Walton, and I do so like Craddock, -- * who takes time, and is lost to sight, to memory dear, and writes a good big Harper's story. So does Sister,* with one for the "Atlantic" called Felicia;** so does not S. O. J., whose French ancestry comes to the fore, and makes her nibble all round her stories like a mouse. They used to be as long as yardsticks, they are now as long as spools, and they will soon be the size of old-fashioned peppermints, and have neither beginning or end, but shape and flavor may still be left them, and a kind public may still accept when there is nothing else. One began to write itself this morning called "The Failure of Mr. David Berry"; I have written a quarter, and it goes very well indeed, and seems to have its cheerful points.
I read "Madame Bovary" all last evening, though I only took it up for a few moment) and meant to do some writing afterward. It is quite wonderful how great a book Flaubert makes of it.** People talk about dwelling upon trivialities and commonplaces in life, but a master writer gives everything weight, and makes you feel the distinction and importance of it, and count it upon the right or the wrong side of a life's account. That is one reason why writing about simple country people takes my time and thought. But I should make too long a letter for this short morning. Flaubert, who sees so far into the shadows of life, may "dwell" and analyze and reflect as much as he pleases with the trivial things of life; the woes of Hamlet absorb our thoughts no more than the silly wavering gait of this Madame Bovary, who is uninteresting, ill-bred, and without the attraction of rural surroundings. But the very great pathos of the book to me, is not the sin of her, but the thought, all the time, if she could have had a little brightness and prettiness of taste in the dull doctor, if she could have taken what there was in that dull little village! She is such a lesson to dwellers in country towns, who drift out of relation to their surroundings, not only social, but the very companionships of nature, unknown to them.
Was there ever anything so delicious as Carlyle's calling Margaret Fuller "that strange lilting, lean old maid!" I think "lilting" is too funny, and how many times do you suppose he "laffed" after he wrote her down? I never loved the Carlyles before as I do in this book. Don't you wonder at him more and more? Froude is always the lover of his heroes, but I can't help thinking he is only just to Carlyle.** I wish we may have a chance to go to the Athenæum next month, and see some of the English reviews of the book. I want to read about it. The Carlyle makes other books seem trivial, as books, just now. That cross Scotchman seemed to carry an exact, inexorable yardstick, and to measure with it as if he were a comissioner from the Book of Judgment, though everybody else ran about with too short yardsticks and too long ones.
I think better of the Lord Houghton book, as I see it more, just as you did. What an exquisite letter that is of Tennyson's, when R. M. M. was cross at him, and what a dear kind old pat on the shoulder our reverend Sydney Smith gave him, when R. M. M. thought he had been called names of the "cool of the evening," etc., etc. And I do so like Carlyle's first long letter, from Fryston to his wife.**
Fields's notes
* Charles Egbert Craddock is the nom de plume of Miss Mary N. Murfree.
* Miss Murfree's sister.
Saturday afternoon, 17 January, 1891. 46AThis is a short word for you to read on Monday morning, written at the close of a dark and stormy afternoon. I have been sitting in mother's room, reading your big Rumford book,** which I somehow have taken into my head again. He was such a charioteer! What do you think that he did once but have every beggar in Munich arrested! and then sorted them out after careful examination, giving work to those who needed it, and helping all deserving, and dealing with the naughty ones. There was a huge work-house, for instance, where they were put at trades. You would be much pleased with the accounts, and some time we must talk about it. I have felt a little tired and clumsy-handed, and the Rumford book was just the thing. The count was really such an interesting man. Oh, if this young republic could have had his practical wisdom!
Wednesday night, August 12,1891. 47What sad news from Elmwood, dear! It makes me so heavy-hearted to think of our loss of such a dear friend, and of poor Mabel's sorrow.** What must not this lovely hot, bright day have been to her! I don't know of any one who could feel such sorrow more keenly. I think and think of her, and so must you, I am sure, and how we should talk about dear Mr. Lowell if we were together. Here he is only the "Lowell" of his books, to people, and not a single one knows how dear and charming he was, and how full of help to one's thoughts and purposes in every-day life. I wrote to Mabel most truly that I was as fond of him, almost, as if I belonged to his household and kindred. And I suppose that the last bit of writing for print that he may have done was that letter for me. I have been looking over two or three of his letters or notes to me, which I happen to have here, with such affection and pleasure. How you will like to look over your great package! And how I treasure that last time I saw him, and the fringe tree in bloom, and Mabel gone to Petersham, and he and I talking on and on, and I thinking he was really going to be better, in spite of the look about his face! I suppose you will go up to the funeral; you must remember what people say, and every little thing that we should care about together, to tell me. And yet I say to myself, again and again, how glad I am that the long illness is ended.
Saturday morning, South Berwick. 48And more sad news. Dear old Dr. Peabody gone, too!** but let us be thankful that he could enjoy life so long and so late. Everybody remembers him here with such love and gratitude, for the charming address that he made two years ago. How many of the little New England towns have such pleasant memory!
Don't you remember that somebody, while we were away, -- oh, it was Mr. Alden, told us how exquisite William Watson's "A Prince's Quest" was? Last night, after I came from my tea-party, I read most of it with great delight. I wish that we could read many of the poems together, but I still cling to my first love, the Dedication to James Bromley.** This is Saturday again, and I suppose you will have your dozen of pleasant people come in. I love the Saturday companies dearly.
(TO T. B. ALDRICH) 49Hotel Brunswick, New York.
My dear Friend, -- I am writing this letter to thank you for your beautiful poem in memory of Mr. Lowell, -- but how can I find words to say what I wish to say about it! To me it speaks of him as his own presence used to speak, and brings him back again as if he came back with the old life and the new life mingled, as indeed they are, and then I feel the loss afresh, and somehow wake from the reading of the poem to know how great and how lovely a poem it is, and to be prouder of you than ever, and of your always reverent and happy use of your beautiful gift. I wish that I could indeed tell you how much I thank you, and how straight this last poem has gone to A. F.'s heart and mine.
A. F. is reading "My Cousin the Colonel,"** and bursting into laughter now and then as one seldom hears her. I always say that she is a poor supporter of story-writers, but it is not true now that she can get hold of something of yours again.
We have had a delightful week, and it has been good for both of us. Day before yesterday we had a great pleasure in Mr. Booth's sending for us to come and have tea with him, and then showing us all the Players' Club!** But every-day things have reminded me of you and Lilian. We are to go home on Tuesday. Forgive this bad pen that writes so blunderingly what was in my heart to say, but I cannot tell you with any pen how much I care about "Elmwood."
(TO MR. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY) 50South Berwick, Maine, 1 November, 1891.
My dear Mr. Woodberry, -- I wish to thank you most heartily for your essay upon Mr. Lowell in the "Century."** I do not know when I have read anything with such delight and admiration. I only wish that it had been printed in spring instead of autumn, -- but if it comes too late for his own eyes to see, at least the eyes of other Americans will read it clearer now.
I hope that I shall see you some day. I have always wished to thank you for the pleasure I have had in your use of your beautiful gifts in poetry and prose, but this essay leaves me more grateful than ever.
(TO MRS. T. B. ALDRICH) 51South Berwick, Maine, November.
My dear Lilian, -- When I went to Town for Sunday, I thought that I surely should find you in Mount Vernon Street, and I was so much disappointed when I heard from A. F. that you were still out of town, and especially that you are not quite well yet. I have been expecting to go to Boston and to see you there, so that I have never written you a word! I was so grieved to hear of your illness, and I wish very much to see you. If I possibly could have stayed I should have gone to Ponkapog to spend an hour at least, -- dear Ponkapog! how I should like to have a drive with you again!
I have been busy, as everybody is when she first gets home after seven months and more away, -- answering foolish strangers' letters, and so never having a minute in which to write to wise friends, and trying to get a little writing done, and trying to see all my neighbours, and to remember which bureau drawer anything is in! It was so sweet to get home again and into the old places -- I never shall forget the beauty of that first evening on Charles Street as we sat looking out over the river, and being so glad to be off the steamer; and next day, when I came here to the dear old house and home, it all seemed to put its arms round me. I am always looking forward to having you and T. B. A. here. I wish it were not so late in the autumn.
(TO MRS. FIELDS) 52Saturday afternoon, 1892.
I long to have you get to the chapter in Dr. James's book that I have been reading to-day: "The Value of Saintliness." I "find" it most particularly fine, and penetrating. There is a good page or two about St. Teresa in the chapter before which would do your heart good to quote, -- I mean now the first paragraph as far as "It is a fine summing-up."**
The other day quite out of clear sky a man came to Mary** with a plan for a syndicate to cut up and sell the river bank all in lots, and oh if Mrs. -- only does want to buy it, or her friend, it will be so nice and make such difference to me. Sometimes I get such a hunted feeling like the last wild thing that is left in the fields.
(TO MRS. GEORGE D. HOWE) 53Chailly, 9 July, 1892.
Dearest Alice, -- Now they live in Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau,** under the very eaves I ought to say, and they are having a beautiful good time, and in the day-time they play in the woods, and after dinner they walk out on the great plain and hear (and almost see!) the Angélus.** I wish I had time to write a long letter all about Paris and Madame Blanc who brought us here. I can tell you that I went up her stairs with my heart much a-feared, -- it is an awful experiment to see so old a friend for the first time, - but I found her even more dear and kind and delightful than she has been in her letters for those eight long years. There has been no end to her friendliness, and what I have liked very much, she has taken us to see some of her friends, one ideal French lady, a comtesse of the old school, in the Place Vendôme, whose self and house together were like a story-book. You would simply love the drives here, but I dare say you know them much better than I. Last night we strayed far out on the great plain, and when we were coming back I heard a man with his heavy scythe cutting the wheat, and it was so dark I couldn't see him, and perfectly still, except the noise he made, the sharp swish of the scythe and the soft fall of the grain; one couldn't hear it so by day. When we hear the Angélus we can't help looking all about for two figures with bent heads. Millet's