Part 20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[8] _The Dolliver Romance._

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

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

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

[12] Thoreau’s younger sister.

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

[14] Thoreau’s older sister.

[15] Josiah Phillips Quincy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Some English poet has said or sung:

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

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

[30] A contemporary definition of Cincinnati.

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

[32] See _ante_, page 111.

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

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

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

INDEX

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

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

Adams, Charles F., Jr., 278.

Adams, Lizzie, 20.

Adams, Zabdiel B., 11.

Agassiz, Alexander, 256, 257, 258.

Agassiz, Elizabeth C., 159.

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

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

Alcott, Mrs. A. Bronson, 63.

Alcott, Louisa M., 73.

Alden, Henry M., 57, 89.

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

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

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

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

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

Aristotle, 133.

Arnold, Matthew, 288.

Astor, John Jacob, 76, 77.

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

Bacon, Francis, Lord, 112.

Baker, Sir Samuel, 149.

Barbauld, Anna L. A., 101.

Barker, Fordyce, 151, 185.

Barlow, Francis C., 61.

Barrett, Lawrence, 240.

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

Beal, James H., 143.

Beal, Louisa (Adams), 42, 143.

Beal, Thomas, 199.

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

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

Bellows, Henry W., 199.

Bentzon, Th. _See_ Blanc, Marie T.

Bigelow, George T., 36.

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

Blagden, Isa, 260.

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

Blanc, Marie Thérèse, 288, 289, 293.

Blessington, Countess of, 274.

Blumenbach, Johann F., 128, 129.

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 58.

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

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

Booth, Junius Brutus, 196.

Booth, Mary (Mrs. Edwin), 241.

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

Boswell, James, 60.

Boutwell, George S., 89.

Bradford, George, 81, 82, 90.

Bright, John, 177.

Brontë, Charlotte, 131, 266.

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

Brown, John, _Pet Marjorie_, 59.

Browne, Charles F., 21.

Brownell, Henry Howard, 29.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 270.

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

Brunetière, Ferdinand, 288.

Bryant, William Cullen, 239, 257.

“Buffalo Bill.” _See_ Cody, W. F.

Bugbee, James M., 126.

Bull, Ole, 225.

Burr, Aaron, 270, 271.

Butler, Benjamin F., 95.

Cabot, Mrs., 236.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 110.

Carleton, G. W., 233.

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 75, 142, 220.

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

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

Cheney, Arthur, 216.

Cheney, Ednah D., 114.

Child, Lydia M., 265, 266.

Childs, George W., 64.

Choate, Rufus, 288.

Cicero, 45.

Clapp, Henry, 185.

Clarke, James Freeman, 72, 114.

Clarke, Sara, 205.

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

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

Cobden, Richard, 177.

Cody, William F., 294.

Colchester (medium), 168, 169, 170.

Collins, Charles, 168.

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

Collins, W. Wilkie, 145, 189.

Collyer, Robert, 215.

Conway, Judge, 219.

Cooke, George W., 120.

Crabbe, George, 186.

Crawford, Thomas, 264.

Crawford, Mrs. Thomas, 264, 265.

Cubas, Isabella, 22, 23.

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

Curtis, Mrs. G. W., 14.

Cushing, Caleb, 266, 267.

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

Dana, Charlotte, 161.

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

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

Dana, Sallie, 161.

Daniel, George, 95.

Dante Alighieri, 258.

Davidson, Edith, 99.

Davis, George T., 19, 20.

Dennet, of the _Nation_, 127.

De Normandie, James, 81.

Dewey, Dr., 219.

Dickens, Bessy, 194.

Dickens, Catherine (Hogarth), 160.

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

Dickens, Charles, Jr., 194.

Dickens, John, 175.

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

Dickinson, Lowes, 232.

Dodge, Mary Abigail, 144, 220, 221.

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

Donne, Father, 102.

Donne, John, 95.

Dorr, Charles, 149, 209.

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

Dryden, John, 109.

Dufferin, Earl of, 163.

Dumas, Alex., 211.

Dumas, Alex., _fils._, 211.

Du Maurier, George, 300.

Dunn, Rev. Mr., 122.

Ecce Homo, 167.

Eliot, Charles W., 41.

Eliotson, Dr., 182, 183.

Ellsler, Fanny, 24.

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

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

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

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

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

Emerson, W. R., 219.

England, Hawthorne on, 59, 60.

Everett, Edward, 116, 270, 271.

Everett, William, 270.

_Every Saturday_, 197.

Falstaff, Sir John, 110.

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

Field, John W., 124.

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

Fielding, Henry, _Tom Jones_, 110, 111.