Part 9

_Tuesday, September 23, 1872._—Longfellow came to town to see Jamie, in one of his loveliest moods. The day was so warm and fine, such a day of dreams, that he proposed to him every kind of excursion. “Come,” he said, “let us go to the tea stores and smell the tea; the warm atmosphere will bring out all the odors and we can get samples!” And again, “Come, let us go to the wharves and see the vessels just in from Italy or Spain. It will be a lovely sight in this soft sky, and we can hear the men speak in their native tongues.” Unhappily all these seductions were in vain, for Jamie was busy and was to lecture in Grantville in the evening. L. said: “At half-past eight I shall think of you doing thus and thus” (sawing the air with his arms). L. continued: “You know I have very strange people come to me—a man came a day or two ago by the name of Hyers, who has just published a book describing his own career. He believes that he is fed by the Lord! ‘How do you mean?’ asked I, with the knowledge that we were all fed in the same way. ‘Why,’ said H., ‘He leaves _pies and peanuts on the sidewalks for me_.’” Longfellow could hardly contain himself—but “after all,” he said, “that is very like Greene: when Greene comes to me, he always takes his money to come and go, just like my own sons and without so much as a thank you. But I like to have Greene come because he enjoys it so much and it is so strange. He amuses me. Then Appleton too, with his odd fancies, it would be hard to find a stranger man than he. He amused me immensely the other day by fancying an Indian, ‘Great Fire,’ or ‘Hole in the Wall,’ or some such fellow, coming to Boston for the first time. Passing a perruquier’s, he sees the window filled with masses of false hair; taking them to be scalps and the window to be an exhibition of these tokens of prowess, he rushes in, embraces the little perruquier behind the counter, treats him like a brother, and almost frightens the small hairdresser out of his senses!!”

L. likes Joaquin [Miller] much. Of course, he said, there are some things about him not altogether agreeable, such as flinging a quid of tobacco out of his mouth under the table; “but I don’t mind those things; perhaps,” he added, “perhaps I might have done the same as a youth of 20!!!”

_Thursday, June 12, 1873._—Dined last night with the Aldriches and Mr. Bugbee at Mr. Lowell’s beautiful old Elmwood.[21] It was a perfect night, cool, fresh, moon-lighted, after a muggy day of heat. After dinner I went into the fine old study with Aldrich, where he showed me two or three little poems he has lately written. He was all ready to talk on literary topics and much in earnest about his own satisfaction over “Miss Mehitable’s Son” (which is indeed a very good story), and was full of disgust over the “Nation’s” cool dismissal of it. It was too bad; but that Dennet of the “Nation” is beneath contempt because of the slights he throws upon good literary work. Aldrich says he found “Asphodel” all worn to pieces, read and reread in the upstairs study. He finds Mr. Lowell’s library in curious disorder with respect to modern books. He is an easy lender and an easy borrower. The result is, everything is at loose ends. Only two volumes of Hawthorne can be found, for instance....

Such wonderful colors overspread our bay this evening, the wide heavens, and all that lay between, it seemed an unreal and magic glory, and I recall dimly Hawthorne’s disgust when he endeavored to describe a landscape. The Lord, he says, expressed himself in this glory; how shall we therefore interpret into language when he himself has taken this form of speech as the only adequate expression to convey his meaning to us? Who does not feel this in looking at the glories of Nature in this perfect season?

And here is a final glimpse of Longfellow, at Manchester-by-the-Sea, shortly after Don Pedro of Brazil had visited him in Cambridge:—

_Thursday, July 6, 1876._—A fine rushing wind—no rain, but a wind that seemed to tear everything up by the roots. I dared not venture out in the morning. To our surprise and delight Mr. Longfellow came to dine. He was pleased to find Anna here, and fell to talking of Heidelberg in German with her and quoting the poets most delightfully. We sat in the front hall and rejoiced over his presence as he talked, for he was in a fine talking mood. He told us of the Emperor’s visit and of his soldierly though most simple bearing; how he came to call upon him after his dinner, and when, as he rose to go, Longfellow said, “Your Majesty, I thank you for the honor you have done me.” He said, “Ah! no, Longfellow, none of your nonsense, let us be friends together. I hope you will write to me. I will write you first and you must promise to answer.” As they walked down the garden path together, Longfellow raised his hat and stepped one side as he was about to get into his carriage. “No, no,” he said laughingly, “there you are at it again.” In short, he has left a pleasant memory behind.

Longfellow told us his maids broke everything he possessed; at last they had broken a very beautiful Japanese vase or bowl which Charley brought home—so he had made a Latin epitaph for the maid. Unhappily I recall only the last line:—

_Nihil tetigit quod non fregit._

He described Blumenbach very amusingly, whose lectures on Natural History he attended as a youth in Heidelberg. He descended from his desk one day and came and rested his hand on the rail just before which L. was seated. He had been speaking of Platonic love. “Und die Platonische Liebe ist nach Amerika gegangen,” he said, looking at Longfellow. The whole student audience roared and applauded.

He was in the loveliest spirits and manners. His friendly ways to my three friendless girls were not only such as to excite them profoundly, but there was sincere feeling in his invitation to them to call upon him and in his questions in their behalf.

The wind subsided as we sat together; the two young Bigelows sang “Maid of Athens” and one or two other songs, and then he departed. How sorry we were as we watched his retreating figure, as he and dear J. wound down the hill in the little phaeton.

Mrs. Fields’s gallery of friends would be incomplete without a single sketch of Whittier’s familiar outline. Out of many which the diaries contain, one may best be taken, for it shows him in company with that other friend, Celia Thaxter, whom also Mrs. Fields counted among the few to whose memory she devoted special chapters in her “Authors and Friends”; and it brings the three together at Mrs. Thaxter’s native Isles of Shoals, so long a mecca of the “like-minded.”

_July 12, 1873._—I shall not soon forget our talk one afternoon in the parlor at “The Shoals.” Whittier, as if inspired by that spirit residing in us which is the very ground-work of the Quaker belief, began to speak of Emerson’s faith and of the pain it gave him to see the name of Jesus placed in his writings as but one among many. When he discoursed with Emerson of these things, he could have no satisfaction. Celia, on the other hand, said she did not understand these things; she never prayed. “I am sure thee does without knowing it,” said W.; “else what do thy poems mean? Thee has not set prayer perhaps, but some kind of a prayer thee must have. No human being can exist without it. But what troubles me also in Emerson is that I can find no real faith in immortality.” Here I took up the question. I had heard Mr. Emerson at Thoreau’s grave, afterward speaking expressly on immortality, and in both discourses I felt deeply his faith in our future progress and enduring life. Whittier was inclined to think me mistaken. I think too that his use of Jesus’ name is to prevent the worship of him instead of the One God. Whittier asked Celia to read a discourse of Emerson’s, which she did aloud; and again he spoke of the beauty of childlike worship, the necessity for it in our natures, and quoted some lovely hymns. His whole heart was alive and poured out toward us as if he longed tenderly like the prophet of old to breathe a new life into us. I could seem to see that he reproached himself that so many days had passed without his trying to speak more seriously. He was not perfectly well after this—a headache overtook him before our talk was over and did not leave him until he found himself in Amesbury again. I trust it did so there....

Whittier said one day, when we were talking of the “Life of Charlotte Brontë” by Mrs. Gaskell, and I was saying how sad it was she should have made the old man, her father, suffer unto death, as she did, by telling the tale of his bad son’s life, and “still worse,” I said, “she came out in the Athenæum and declared that her story was false, when she knew it was true, hoping to comfort the old man,”—“I don’t know,” said Whittier; “I am inclined to think that was the best part of it, if her lie would have done the old man any good!”

After we had our long afternoon session of talk over Emerson and future existence and the unknowable, Celia stood up and stretched herself and said, “How good it has been with the little song-sparrow putting in his oar above it all!”

And what of Mrs. Fields herself, a woman of nearly forty when this last passage was written? For the most part the diary reveals her but indirectly. Yet in the midst of all her pictures of her friends, a fragment of self-portraiture is occasionally found; and to one of them the reader of these pages is entitled.

_December 18, 1873._—Have been looking over “Wilhelm Meister”! I struck upon that marvellous passage, “I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances; who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. How far his object may be great or little is the next consideration with me”; and much more quite as good to the same end. It prompts me to say what I wish to do in life.

Aristotle writes: “Virtue is concerned with action, art with production.” The problem of life is how to harmonize the two—either career must become _prominent_ according to the nature of the individual. I discern in myself: 1st, the desire to serve others unselfishly according to the example of our dear Lord; 2nd, the desire to cultivate my powers in order to achieve the highest life possible to me as an individual existence by stimulating thought to its finest issues through reflection, observation, and by profound and ceaseless study of the written thoughts of the wisest in every age and every clime.

To fulfil these aims we must be able to answer the simple question promptly to ourselves: “What then shall I do tomorrow and today?” Then, the decision being made, the thing alone must have all the earnestness put into it of a creature who knows that the next moment he may be called to his account.

As a woman and a wife my first duty lies at home; to make that beautiful,—to stimulate the lives of others by exchange of ideas, and the repose of domestic life; to educate children and servants.

2nd, To be conversant with the very poor; to visit their homes; to be keenly alive to their sufferings; never allowing the thought of their necessities to sleep in our hearts.

3rd, By day and night, morning and evening, in all times and seasons when strength is left to us, to study, study, study.

Because I have put this last, it does not stand last in importance; but to put it first and write out the plan for study which my mind naturally selects would be to ignore that example of perfect life in which I humbly believe, and to return to the lives of the ancients, so fine in their results to the few, so costly to the many. But in the removed periods of existence, when solitude may be our blessed portion, what a joy to fly to communion with the sages and live and love with them!

I have written this out for the pleasure of seeing if “I distinctly understand what I wish.” It is a wide plan, too wide, I fear, for much performance, but therefore perhaps more conducive to a constant faith.

V

WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA[22]

When Mrs. Fields wrote the “Personal Recollections” of Oliver Wendell Holmes which appear in her “Authors and Friends,” she quoted, with a few changes prompted by modesty, this passage from a letter received from him at Christmas, 1881: “Except a few of my immediate family connections, no friends have seen me so often as a guest as did you and your husband. Under your roof I have met more visitors to be remembered than under any other. But for your hospitality I should never have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with famous writers and artists whom I can now recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard them in that pleasant library, that most lively and agreeable dining-room. How could it be otherwise with such guests as he entertained with his own unflagging vivacity and his admirable social gifts?”

One of the visitors thus encountered by Dr. Holmes was Charles Dickens. Here was a guest after the host’s own heart—and the hostess’s. The host stood alone among publishers as a friend of the authors with whom it was his business to deal. Out of them all there was none with whom he came to stand on terms of closer sympathy and friendship than with Dickens. They had first met when Dickens came to America in 1842, and Fields was by no means the conspicuous figure he was to become. When he visited Europe in 1859-60, with his young wife, whose personality was to contribute its own beauty and charm to the hospitality of 148 Charles Street for many years to come, they dined with Dickens in London, visited him at Gad’s Hill, and had much discussion of a plan, which Fields had been urging upon him in correspondence, for Dickens to come to America for a course of readings. As early as in one of the letters of this time, Dickens wrote to Fields: “Here I forever renounce ‘Mr.’ as having anything whatever to do with our communication, and as being a mere preposterous interloper.” From such beginnings grew the intimacy which caused Dickens, when he drew up the humorous terms of a walking-match between Dolby, his manager, and Osgood, Fields’s partner, while the Boston readings of 1868 were in progress, to define Fields as “Massachusetts Jemmy” and himself as the “Gad’s Hill Gasper” by virtue of his “surprising performances (without the least variation) on that true national instrument, the American catarrh.”

The visits of Dickens to America, first in 1842, then in the winter of 1867-68, have been the subject of abundant chronicle. For the first of them there is the direct record of his “American Notes,” besides those indirect reflections in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” which wrought an effect described by Carlyle in the characteristic saying that “all Yankee-doodledom blazed up like one universal soda bottle.” Many memorials of the second visit are preserved in Fields’s “Yesterdays with Authors,” and in John Forster’s “Life” both visits are of course recorded.

There is, besides, one source of intimate record of Dickens in America which hitherto has remained almost untouched.[23] This is found in the diaries of Mrs. Fields, filled, as the preceding pages have shown, not merely with her own sympathetic observations, but with many things reported to her by her husband. To him it was largely due that Dickens crossed the Atlantic near the end of 1867. Landing in Boston, and soon beginning his extraordinarily popular readings, he found in the Charles Street house of the Fieldses a second home. “Steadily refusing all invitations to go out during the weeks he was reading,” wrote Fields in his “Yesterdays with Authors,” “he went only into one other house besides the Parker, habitually, during his stay in Boston.” In that house Mrs. Fields wrote the diaries from which the following passages are taken. There Dickens was not merely a warmly welcomed friend and guest at dinner, but for a time an inmate. Henry James, summoning after Mrs. Fields’s death his remembrances of her and of her abode, found in it “certain fine vibrations and dying echoes” of all the episode of Dickens’s second visit. “I liked to think of the house,” he wrote, “I couldn’t do without thinking of it, as the great man’s safest harborage through the tremendous gale of those even more leave-taking appearances, as fate was to appoint, than we then understood.”

In Dickens’s state of physical health while the Fieldses were thus seeing him, lay the only token of an end not far off. All else was gayety and delight. The uncontrollable laughter—where does one hear quite parallel notes to-day?—the simplicities of game and anecdote, the enthusiastic yielding of complete admiration, the glimpses of august figures of an earlier time—all these serve equally to take one back over more than half a century, into a state of society about which an element of myth begins to form, and to bring out of that past the living, human figure of Dickens himself.

For the most part these extracts from the diaries call for no explanations.

Several months before the great visitor’s arrival his coming was heralded by his business agent, of whom Mrs. Fields wrote:—

_August 14, 1867._—Mr. Dolby arrived today from England (Mr. Dickens’s agent), a good, healthy, kindly natured man of whom Dickens seems really fond, having followed him to the steamer in Liverpool from London to see that all things were comfortably arranged for him. He says Dickens has lamed one of his feet with too much walking of late. He is here to arrange for 100 nights, for which he hears he may receive $200,000; the readings to begin the first of December and to be chiefly given in New York City.

_August 15, 1867._—Our day was quiet enough, but when J. came down, he held us quite spellbound and magnetized all the evening with his account of Dickens, which Mr. Dolby had given him. He says Dolby himself is a queer creature when he talks. He has a stutter which leads him to become suddenly stately in the middle of a homely phrase and to give a queer intonation to his voice, so that he did not dare look at Osgood (who was a listener also) lest they should both explode with laughter.

Dickens now has five dogs; for these the cook prepares daily five plates of dinner. One day the plates were all ready when a small pup stole in and polished off the five plates. He fainted away immediately, and in this condition was discovered by the cook, who put him under the pump and revived him; but he had been going about looking like the figure 8 ever since.

Dickens is a warm friend of Fechter. One day, returning from a reading tour, his man met him at the station saying, “The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “What?” said Mr. Dickens. “The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir.” “I know nothing of fifty-eight boxes,” said the other. “Well, sir,” said the man, “they are all piled up outside the gate and we shall soon see, sir.” They proved to be a Swiss chalet complete, handles, blinds, not a bit wanting, which Fechter had sent him. It is put up in a grove near the house, where it presents a very picturesque effect.

Dickens allows nothing to escape his attention and gives “one small corner of the white of one eye” to his household concerns, though he seems not to observe. His daughter Mary has the governance of the servants, Miss Hogarth of the cellar and provisions. There is a system in everything with which he has to do. When he gives a reading, he is present in the hall at half-past six, although the reading does not begin until eight; for Dickens cannot go about as other people do, he must go when the people do not press upon him. On reaching the private room, his servant brings his evening dress, reading desk, screen, lamps, when he arranges the hall, examines the copper gas-tubes to see if in order, dresses himself and is ready to begin. In Liverpool the other night he had advertised to read “Sergeant Buzfuz,” instead of which by accident he read “Bleak House.” Mr. Dolby spoke to him as soon as he had finished, telling him the mistake he had made. He at once returned to the desk, and said, “My friends, it is half-past ten o’clock and you see how tired I am, but I will still read Sergeant Buzfuz’s speech if you expect it.” “No, no,” the crowd shouted; “you’re tired. No, no, this ought to do for tonight.” One tall man raised himself up in the gallery and said, “Look here, we came to hear Pickwick and we ought to hef it.” “Very well, my friend,” replied Dickens, immediately, “I will read Sergeant Buzfuz for your accommodation solely”; and thereat he did read it to a breathless and delighted audience.

At length came Dickens himself, and the diary takes up the tale:—

_November 18, 1867._—Today the steamer is telegraphed with Dickens on board, and the tickets for his readings have been sold. Such a rush! A long queue of people have been standing all day in the street—a good-humored crowd, but a weary one.[24] The weather is clear but really cold, with winter’s pinch in it.

_November 19._— ... Yesterday I adorned Mr. Dickens’s room with flowers, which seemed to please him. He was in the best of good spirits with everything.

_Thursday, November 21._—Mr. Dickens dined here. Agassiz, Emerson, Judge Hoar, Professor Holmes, Norton, Greene, dear Longfellow, last not least, came to welcome. Dickens sat on my right, Agassiz at my left. I never saw Agassiz so full of fun....

Dickens bubbled over with fun, and I could not help fancying that Holmes bored him a little by talking at him. I was sorry for this, because Holmes is so simple and lovely, but Dickens is sensitive, very. He is fond of Carlyle, seems to love nobody better, and gave the most irresistible imitation of him. His queer turns of expression often convulsed us with laughter, and yet it is difficult to catch them, as when, in speaking of the writer of books, always putting himself, his real self, in, “which is always the case,” he said; “but you must be careful of not taking him for his next-door neighbor.”