Part 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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