Chapter II: Part 2

I was impressed last night with the nervous energy of O. W.
H. His leg by a slight quiver kept time to the reading of his
verses, and his talk fell before and after like swift rain.
He does not go away from town but sways between Boston and
Cambridge all these perfect summer days; receiving yesterday,
the hottest day of this or many years, Motley at dinner, and
going perpetually, and writing verses and letters not a few.
His activity is wonderful; think of writing letters these warm
delicious evenings by gaslight in a small front study on the
street! It hurts him less than his wife, partly because the
intellectual vivacity and excitement keeps him up, partly
because he is physically fitted to bear almost everything but
cold. How fortunate for the world that while he lives he should
continue his work so faithfully. He will have no successor, at
least for many a long year, after we have all gone to sleep
under our green counterpanes and Nature has tucked us up well
in yearly violets.

Earlier in the year Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Stowe met in Charles Street.

_Wednesday morning, January 29, 1868._—Last night Professor
Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, her daughter Georgie, and the Howellses,
took tea here. The Professor came early and was in good talking
trim—presently in came Mrs. Stowe, and they fell shortly into
talk upon Homeopathy and Allopathy. He grew very warm, declared
that cases cited of cures proved nothing, and we were all
“incompetent” to judge! We could not but be amused at his heat,
for we were more or less believers in Homeopathy against his
one argument for Allopathy. In vain Mrs. Stowe and I tried to
turn and stem the fiery tide: Georgie or Mrs. Howells would
be sure to sweep us back into it again. However, there were
many brilliant things said, and sweet and good and interesting
things too. The Professor told us one curious fact, that
chemists had in vain analyzed the poison of rattlesnakes and
could not discover the elements of destruction it undoubtedly
possesses. Also that, when Indians poison their arrows with
it, they hang up the liver of a white wolf and make one snake
after another bite it until the liver is entirely impregnated;
they then leave it to dry until disintegrated, when they
moisten and apply round the necks of the arrows—_not on the
point_. He had a long quiet chat with Mrs. Stowe before the
evening ended. They compared their early Calvinistic education
and the effect produced upon their characters by such training.

_Tuesday, April 13, 1869._—Dr. Holmes and his wife and Mr.
Whittier dined here. The talk was free, totally free from all
feeling of constraint, as it could not have been had another
person been present. Whittier says he is afraid of strangers,
and Dr. Holmes is never more delightful than under just such
auspices. Dr. Holmes asked Whittier’s undisguised opinion
of Longfellow’s “New England Tragedies”—“honest opinion
now,” said he. “Well, I liked them,” said Whittier, half
reluctantly—evidently he had found much that was beautiful and
in keeping with the spirit of the times of which Longfellow
wrote, and their passionless character did not trouble him as
it had O. W. H. Presently, he added that he was surprised to
find how he had preserved almost literally the old text of the
old books he had lent Longfellow twelve years ago, and had
measured it off into verse. “Ah,” said O. W. H., “you have
said the severest thing after all—‘measured off’; that’s just
what he has done. It is one of the easiest, the very commonest
tricks of the rhymster to be able to do this. I am surprised to
see the ease with which I can do it myself.” They spoke then
of “Evangeline,” which both agreed in awarding unqualified
praise. “Only,” said Whittier, “I always wondered there was
no terrible outburst of indignation over the outrage done to
that poor colony. The tide of the story runs as smoothly as if
nothing had occurred. I long thought of working up that story
myself, but I am glad I did not, only I can’t understand its
being so calm.” They talked on religious questions of course,
the Professor holding that sin being finite, and of such a
nature that we could both outgrow it and root it up, Whittier
still returning to the ground that sin was a “very real thing.”

It is impossible to represent the clearness and swiftness
of Dr. Holmes’s talk. The purity of heart and strength of
endeavor evident in the two poets makes their atmosphere a very
elevating one and they evidently naturally rejoiced in each
other’s society.

Mrs. Holmes had not been out to dine before this winter.
Jamie sent us a pot of strawberries growing, which delighted
everybody.

Before the following passage was written, in 1871, Dr. Holmes had moved from Charles Street to Beacon Street; Mr. Fields, in impaired health, had retired from active business as a publisher and was devoting himself chiefly to writing and lecturing; and Mrs. Fields, already interested in the establishment of Coffee Houses for the poor in the North End and elsewhere, had begun the notable work in public charities to which her energies were so largely given for the remaining forty-four years of her life. In the Coöperative Workrooms, still rendering their beneficent services, and in the larger organization of the Associated Charities, embodying a principle now widely adopted throughout the land, the labors of this generous spirit, never content to give all it had to the gracious life within its own four walls, have borne enduring fruits.

1871.—Thursday afternoon last (June 22) went to Cambridge for
a few visits, and coming home stopped at Dr. Holmes’s, at
his new house on Beacon St. Found them both at home, sitting
lonely in the oriel window looking out upon a glorious sunset.
They were thinking of the children who have flown out of their
nest. Dr. Holmes was very friendly and sweet. He talked most
affectionately with J., told him he no longer felt a spur to
write since he had gone out of business; he needed just the
little touch of praise and encouragement he used to administer
to make him do it; now he did not think he should ever write
any more worth mentioning. He had been in to see the Coffee
House and entertained us much by saying he met President
Eliot near the door one day just as he was going in, but he
was ashamed of doing so until they had parted company. There
was something so childlike in this confession that we all
laughed heartily over it. However he got in at last, and “tears
as big as onions stood in my eyes when I saw what had been
accomplished.” “You must be a very happy woman,” he went on
to say. I told him of the new one in Eliot Street about to be
opened this coming week.

At the end of the summer of 1871, when Mr. and Mrs. Fields were beginning to learn the charms of the North Shore town of Manchester, where they established the “Gambrel Cottage” on “Thunderbolt Hill” which gave a summer synonym to the hospitality of Charles Street, they journeyed one day to Nahant for a midday dinner with Longfellow. Here Mrs. Fields’s sister, Louisa, Mrs. James H. Beal, was a neighbor of the poet. Another neighbor was the late George Abbot James, and in Longfellow’s diary for September 4, 1871, is the entry: “Call on Dr. Holmes at Mr. James’s. Sumner still there. We discuss the new poets.” Mrs. Fields reports a continuation of the talk with the same friends.

_Wednesday, September 6, 1871._—Dined with Mr. Longfellow at
Nahant. The day was warm with a soft south wind blowing, and as
we crossed the beach white waves were curling up the sands....
The dear poet saw us coming from afar and walked to his little
gate to meet us with such a sweet cordial welcome that it was
worth going many a mile to have that alone. The three little
ladies, his daughters, and Ernest’s wife, were within, but
they came warmly forward to give us greeting; also Mr. Sam.
Longfellow was of the party. A few moments’ chat in the little
parlor, when Longfellow saw Holmes coming in the distance (he
had an opera-glass, being short-sighted, and was sitting on
the piazza with J.). “Hullo!” said he, “here comes Holmes,
and all dressed up too, with flowers in his button-hole.”
Sure enough, here was _the_ Professor to have dinner with
us also. He was full of talk as ever and looking remarkably
well. Longfellow asked with much interest about Balaustion and
Joaquin Miller, neither of which he had read. Holmes criticized
as if unbearable and beyond the pale of decency Browning’s
cutting of words, “Flower o’ the pine,” and such characteristic
passages. Longfellow spoke of a volume of poems he had received
of late from England in which “saw” was made to rhyme with
“more.” Holmes said Keats often did that. “Not exactly, I
think,” said L., “‘dawn’ and ‘forlorn,’ perhaps.” “Well,”
said H., “when I was in college” (I think he said college,
certainly while at Cambridge) “and my first volume was about
to appear, Mrs. Folsom saw the sheets and fortunately at the
very last moment for correction discovered I had made ‘forlorn’
rhyme with ‘gone,’ and out of her own head and without having
time to consult with me she substituted ‘sad and wan.’”[6]
The Professor went on to say that he must confess to a tender
feeling of regret for his “so forlorn” to this very day, but he
supposed every writer of poems must have his keen regrets for
the numerous verses he could recall where he had wrestled with
the English language and had lost something of his thought in
his struggle with the necessities of art. We shortly after went
to dinner, where the talk still continued to turn on art and
artists, chiefly musical, the divorcement of music and thought;
a thinker or man of intellect in listening to music comes to a
comprehension of it, Holmes said, mediately, but a musician
feels it directly through some gift of which the thinker knows
nothing. Longfellow always recalls with intense delight hearing
Gounod sing his own music in Rome—his voice was hardly to be
mentioned among the fine voices of the world, indeed it was
small, but his rendering was exquisite. Canvassing T. B. Read’s
poems and speaking of “Sheridan’s Ride,” which has been so
highly praised, “Yes,” said Holmes, “but there are very poor
lines in it, but how often, to use Scripture phrase, there
is a fly in the ointment.” The talk went bowling off to Père
Hyacinthe. “He was very pleasant,” said Holmes, “it was most
agreeable to meet him, but you could only go a short distance.
His desire was to be a good Catholic, and ours is of course
quite different. It was like speaking through a knot-hole after
all.”

The dumb waiter bounced up. “We cannot call that a _dumb_
waiter,” said L., “but I had an odd dream the other night.
I thought Greene (G. W.) came bouncing up on the waiter in
that manner and stepped off in a most dignified fashion with
a crushed white hat on his head. He said he had just been to
drive with a Spanish lady.”

Sumner (Charles) came up to the piazza. He had dined elsewhere
and came over as soon as possible for a little talk. Holmes
talked on, although we all said, “Mr. Sumner—here is Mr.
Sumner,” without perceiving that the noble Senator was sitting
just outside the cottage window waiting for us to rise, and
began to converse about him. Longfellow grew nervous and rose
to speak with Sumner—still Holmes did not perceive, and went
on until Jamie relieved us from a tendency to convulsions by
voting that we should join the Senator. Then Sumner related the
substance of an amusing letter of Cicero’s he had just been
reading in which Cicero gives an account to his friend of a
visit he had just received from the Emperor Julius Cæsar. He
had invited Julius to pass a few days with him, but he came
quite unexpectedly with a thousand men! Cicero, seeing them
from afar, debated with another friend what he should do with
them, but at length managed to encamp them. To feed them was
a less easy matter. The emperor took everything quite easily,
however, and was very pleasant, “but,” adds Cicero, “he is not
the man to whom I should say a second time, ‘if you are passing
this way, give me a call.’”

Again, in 1873, Longfellow, Holmes, and Sumner are found together at the dinner-table with Mrs. Fields, this time in Charles Street. When she made use of her diary at this point, for her article on Dr. Holmes which appeared first in the “Century Magazine” (1895), it was with many omissions. The passage is now given almost entire. It should be said that the Misses Towne, mentioned at the beginning of it, were friends and summer neighbors at Manchester.

_Saturday, October 11, 1873._—Helen and Alice Towne have come
to pass Sunday with us. Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Greene, Dr.
Holmes came to dine. Mr. Sumner seemed less strong than of late
and I fancied he suffered somewhat while at table during the
evening, but he told me he was working at his desk or reading
during fourteen consecutive hours not infrequently at present,
as he was in the habit of doing when uninterrupted by friendly
visits. He said he was very fond of the passive exercise of
reading; the active exercise of composition was of course
agreeable in certain moods, but reading was a never-ending
delight. He spoke of Lord Brougham, and Mrs. Norton and her two
beautiful sisters. Both he and Mr. Longfellow recalled them in
their youthful loveliness, but Mr. Sumner said when he was in
England the last time he saw the Duchess of Somerset, who was a
most poetic looking creature in her youth and (I believe) the
youngest of the three sisters, so changed he should never have
guessed who it might be. She was grown a huge red-faced woman.
(Longfellow laughed, referring to her second marriage and
said, “Yes, she had turned a Somerset!”) Dr. Holmes sparkled
and coruscated as I have seldom heard him before. We are more
than ever convinced that no one since Sydney Smith was ever so
brilliant, so witty, spontaneous, naïf, and unfailing as Dr.
Holmes. He talked much about his class in College: “There never
was such vigor in any class before, it seems to me—almost every
member turns out sooner or later distinguished for something.
We have had every grade of moral status from a criminal to a
Chief Justice, and we never let any one of them drop. We keep
hold of their hands year after year and lift up the weak and
failing ones till they are at last redeemed. Ah, there was
one exception—years ago we voted to cast a man out who had
been a defaulter or who had committed some offense of that
nature. The poor fellow sank down, and before the next year,
when we repented of this decision, he had gone too far down and
presently died. But we have kept all the rest. Every fourth man
in our class is a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our class, who
wrote ‘My Country, ’tis of Thee.’ Sam. Smith will live when
Longfellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into
oblivion—and yet what is there in those verses to make them
live? Do you remember the line ‘Like _that_ above’? I asked
Sam. what ‘that’ referred to—he said ‘that rapture’!!—(The
expression of the rapid talker’s face of contempt as he said
this was one of the most amusing possible.)—Even the odds and
ends of our class have turned out something.... Longfellow, I
wish I could make you talk about yourself.”—“But I never do,”
said L. quietly. “I know you never do, but you confessed to me
once.”—“No, I don’t think I ever did,” said L. laughing

Greene was for the most part utterly speechless. He attended
with great assiduity to his dinner, which was a good one, and
Longfellow was watchful and kind enough to send him little
choice things to eat which he thought he would enjoy.

Holmes was abstemious and never ceased talking—“Most men write
too much. I would rather risk my future fame upon one lyric
than upon ten volumes. But I have said Boston is the hub of the
universe. I will rest upon that.”

All this report is singularly dry compared with the wit and
humor which radiated about the table. We laughed till the tears
ran down our cheeks. Longfellow was intensely amused. I have
not seen him laugh so much for many a long day. We ladies sat
at the table long after coffee and cigars in order to hear the
talk....

Sumner said he had been much displeased by a remark Professor
Henry Hunt made to him a few days ago. He said Mr. Agassiz was
an _impediment_ in the path of science. What did such men as
Hunt and John Fiske mean by underrating a man who has given
such books to the world as Agassiz has done, not to speak of
his untiring efforts in the other avenues of influence! “It
means just this,” said Holmes: “Agassiz will not listen to the
Darwinian theory; his whole effort is on the other side. Now
Agassiz is no longer young, and I was reading the other day
in a book on the Sandwich Islands of an old Fejee man who had
been carried away among strangers, but who prayed he might be
carried home, that his brains might be beaten out in peace by
his son according to the custom of those lands. It flashed over
me then that our sons beat out our brains in the same way. They
do not walk in our ruts of thoughts or begin exactly where we
leave off, but they have a new standpoint of their own. At
present the Darwinian theory can be nothing but an hypothesis;
the important links of proof are missing and cannot be
supplied; but in the myriad ages there may be new developments.”

I thought the young ladies looked a little tired sitting, so
about nine o’clock we left the table—still the talk went on
for about four hours when they broke up.

With two letters from Dr. Holmes this rambling chronicle of his friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Fields must end. The first of the communications is a mere fragment of his everyday humor:

BEVERLY-FARMS-BY-THE-DEPOT

_July 18th, 1878_

DEAR MR. FIELDS:—

The Corner sends me a book directed to me here, but on opening
the outside wrapper I read “James T. Fields, Esq., Jamaica
Plain, Boston, Mass.” The book, which is sealed up (or stuck
up, like many authors), measures 7 × 5, nearly, and is
presumably idiotic, like most books which are sent us without
being ordered.

Perhaps you have received a similar package which on opening
you found directed to O. W. Holmes, Esq., Peak of Teneriffe,
Boston. If so, when the weather grows cool again and we can
make up our minds to face the title page of the dreaded volume,
we will make an exchange.

Always truly yours,

O. W. HOLMES

The second letter, written ten years after Dr. Holmes, in moving from Charles to Beacon Street, had made the last of his “justifiable domicides,” strikes a more serious note, revealing that quality of true sympathy so closely joined in abundant natures with true humor. Mr. Fields had died in April of 1881, and Mrs. Fields had applied herself at once to the preparation of her volume, “James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches,” drawing freely upon the diaries from which many of the foregoing pages, then passed over, are now taken. The performance of this loving labor must have done much towards the first filling of a life so grievously emptied. Already the intimate and beloved companionship of Miss Jewett had come into it.

294 BEACON ST., _November 16, 1881_

MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS:—

I feel sure there will be but one voice with regard to your
beautiful memorial volume. If I had any misgivings that you
might find the delicate task too difficult—that you might be
discouraged between the wish to draw a life-like picture and
the fear of saying more than the public had a right to, these
misgivings have all vanished, and I am sure your finished task
leaves nothing to be regretted. As he was in life, he is in
your loving but not overwrought story. I do not see how a life
so full of wholesome activity and genuine human feeling could
have been better pictured than it is in your pages. Long before
I had finished reading your memoir in the proofs I had learned
to trust you entirely as to the whole management of the work
on which you had entered. All I feared was that your feelings
might be overtasked, and that the dread of coming before the
public when your whole heart was in the pages opened to its
calm judgment might be more than you could bear.

And now, my dear Mrs. Fields, there must come a period of
depression, almost of collapse, after the labor and the solace
of this tender, tearful, yet blessed occupation. I think you
need the kind thoughts and soothing words—if words have any
virtue in them—of those who love you more than while each day
had its busy hours in which the memory of so much that was
delightful to recall kept the ever-returning pangs of grief
a little while in abeyance. It must be so. But before long,
quietly, almost imperceptibly, there will, I hope and trust,
return to you the quieting sense of all that you have done and
all that you have been for that life which for so many happy
years you were privileged to share. How few women have so
perfectly fulfilled, not only every duty, but every ideal that
a husband could think of as going to make a happy home! This
must be and will be an ever-growing source of consolation.

Forgive me for saying what many others must have said to you,
but none more sincerely than myself.

I do not know how to express to you the feeling with which
Mrs. Holmes looks upon you in your bereavement. I should do
it injustice if I attempted to give it expression, for she
lives so largely in her sympathies and her endeavors to help
others that she could not but sorrow deeply with you in your
affliction and wish there were any word of consolation she
could add to the love she sends you.

Believe me, dear Mrs. Fields,

Affectionately yours,

O. W. HOLMES

For thirteen years longer, till his death in 1894 at the age of eighty-five, Dr. Holmes was a prolific writer of notes, more often than letters, to Mrs. Fields. The sympathy of tried and ripened friendship runs through them all. In the Charles Street house the younger friends might see from time to time this oldest friend of their hostess. When he came no more, it was well for those of a later day that his memory was so securely held in the retrospect and the record of Mrs. Fields.

IV

CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE VISITORS

The volumes in which Mrs. Fields brought to light many passages from her journals stand as red and black buoys marking the channel through which the navigator of these pages must steer his course if he is to avoid the rocks and shoals of the previously published. In her books it was but natural that she should deal most freely with those august figures in American letters who so towered above their contemporaries as to attach the longer and more portentous adjective “Augustan” to the circle formed by the joining of their hands. If it has become the fashion to look back upon the American Augustans and the English Victorians with similarly mingled feelings, in which tolerance stands in a growing proportion to the admiration and respect which formerly ruled supreme, it is the unaltered fact that the figures of the American group dominated both the local and the national scene of letters in their day, and that their historic significance is undiminished. But it is rather as human beings than as literary figures that they reveal themselves in the sympathetic records of Mrs. Fields—human beings who typified and embodied a state of thought and society so remote in its characteristic qualities from the prevailing conditions of this later day as to be approaching steadily that “equal date with Andes and with Ararat” of which one of them wrote in words quite unmistakably his own.

Perhaps no single member of the group is represented in Mrs. Fields’s journals so often as Dr. Holmes by illuminating pages which she herself left unprinted. For this reason, and because Concord and Cambridge visitors to Charles Street were in fact so much a “group,” it has seemed wise to assemble in this place passages that relate to one after another of the “Augustan” friends in turn. Sometimes they appear as separate subjects of record, sometimes in company with their fellows. That majestic figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose death in 1864 made the earliest gap in the circle of figures most memorable, shall be first to step forth, like one of his own personages of the Province House, from the shadows in which indeed he lived.

The long chapter on Hawthorne in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and that small volume about him which Mrs. Fields contributed in 1899 to the “Beacon Biographies,” constitute the more finished portraits of the man as his host and hostess in Charles Street saw him. His letters to Fields are quoted at length in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and contribute an autobiographic element of much importance to any study of Hawthorne. But there are illuminating passages that were left unpublished. In one of them, for example, Hawthorne, in a letter of September 21, 1860, after lamenting the state of his daughter’s health, exclaimed: “I am continually reminded, nowadays, of a response which I once heard a drunken sailor make to a pious gentleman who asked him how he felt: ‘Pretty d——d miserable, thank God!’ It very well expresses my thorough discomfort and forced acquiescence.” In another, of July 14, 1861, after the calamity that befell Longfellow in the tragic death of his wife through burning, Hawthorne wrote to Fields:—

“How does Longfellow bear this terrible misfortune? How are his own injuries? Do write and tell me all about him. I cannot at all reconcile this calamity to my sense of fitness. One would think that there ought to have been no deep sorrow in the life of a man like him; and now comes this blackest of shadows, which no sunshine hereafter can ever penetrate! I shall be afraid ever to meet him again; he cannot again be the man that I have known.”

In the words, “I shall be afraid ever to meet him again,” the very accent of Hawthorne is clearly heard. Still another manuscript letter, preserved in the Charles Street cabinet, should now be printed to round out the story of Hawthorne’s reluctant omission from his “Atlantic” article—“Chiefly about War Matters”—that personal description of Abraham Lincoln which Fields was unwilling to publish in his magazine in 1862, but afterwards included in his “Yesterdays with Authors.”[7] In that place, however, he used but a few words from the following letter.

CONCORD, _May 23, ’62_

DEAR FIELDS:—

I have looked over the article under the influence of a cigar
and through the medium (but don’t whisper it) of a glass of
arrack and water; and though I think you are wrong, I am going
to comply with your request. I am the most good-natured man,
and the most amenable to good advice (or bad advice either,
for that matter) that you ever knew—so have it your own way.
The whole description of the interview with Uncle Abe and his
personal appearance must be omitted, since I do not find it
possible to alter them, and in so doing, I really think you
omit the only part of the article really worth publishing. Upon
my honor, it seemed to me to have a historical value—but let it
go. I have altered and transferred one of the notes so as to
indicate to the unfortunate public that it here loses something
very nice. You must mark the omission with dashes, so—x x x x x
x x.

I have likewise modified the other passage you allude to; and I
cannot now conceive of any objection to it.

What a terrible thing it is to try to get off a little bit of
truth into this miserable humbug of a world! If I had sent you
the article as I first conceived it, I should not so much have
wondered.

I want you to send me a proof sheet of the article in its
present state before making any alterations; for if ever I
collect these sketches into a volume, I shall insert it in all
its original beauty.

With the best regards to Mrs. Fields,

Truly yours,

NATH’L HAWTHORNE

P. S. I shall probably come to Boston next week, to the
Saturday Club.

If these unpublished letters add something to the more formal portraits of Hawthorne drawn by Fields and his wife, still other lines may be added by means of the unconscious, fragmentary sketches on which the portraits were based. In Mrs. Fields’s diaries the following glimpses of Hawthorne in the final months of his life are found.

_December 4, 1863._—Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Alden passed the
night with us; he came to town to attend the funeral of Mrs.
Franklin Pierce. He seemed ill and more nervous than usual. He
brought the first part of a story which he says he shall never
finish.[8] J. T. F. says it is very fine, yet sad. Hawthorne
says in it, “pleasure is only pain greatly exaggerated,” which
is queer to say the least, if not untrue. I think it must be
differently stated from this. He was as courteous and as grand
as ever, and as true. He does not lose that all-saddening
smile, either.

_Sunday, December 6, 1863._—Mr. Hawthorne returned to us. He
had found General Pierce overwhelmed with sadness at the death
of his wife and greatly needing his companionship, therefore
he accompanied him the whole distance to Concord, N. H. He
said he could not generally look at such things, but he was
obliged to look at the body of Mrs. Pierce. It was like a
carven image laid in its richly embossed enclosure and there
was a remote expression about it as if it had nothing to do
with things present. Harriet Prescott was there. He had some
talk with her and liked her. He was more deeply impressed than
ever with the exquisite courtesy of his friend. Even at the
grave, while overwhelmed with grief, Pierce drew up the collar
of Hawthorne’s coat to keep him from the cold.[9]

We went to walk in the morning and left Mr. Hawthorne to read
in the library. He found a book called “Dealings with the
Dead,” which he liked—indeed he said he liked no house to stay
in better than this. He thought the old edition of Boccaccio
which belonged to Leigh Hunt a poor translation. He has already
written the first chapter of a new romance, but he thought so
little of the work himself as to make it impossible for him to
continue until Mr. Fields had read it and expressed his sincere
admiration for the work. This has given him better heart to go
on with it. He talked of the magazine with Mr. F.; told him he
thought it was the most ably edited magazine in the world, and
was bound to be a success, with this exception: he said, “I
fear its politics—beware! What will you do when in a year or
two the politics of the country change?” “I will quietly wait
for that time to come,” said J. T. F.; “then I can tell you.”

As the sunset deepened Mr. Hawthorne talked of his early life.
His grandfather bought a township in Maine and at the early age
of eleven years he accompanied his mother and sister down there
to live upon the land. From that moment the happiest period of
his life began and lasted until he was thirteen, when he was
sent to school in Salem. While in Maine he lived like a bird
of the air, so perfect was the freedom he enjoyed. During the
moonlight nights of winter he would skate until midnight alone
upon the icy face of Sebago Lake, with all its ineffable beauty
stretched before him and the deep shadows of the hills on
either hand. When he was weary he could take refuge sometimes
in a log cabin (there were several in this region), where
half a tree would be burning on the broad hearth and he could
sit by that and see the stars up through the chimney. All the
long summer days he roamed at will, gun in hand, through the
woods, and there he learned a nearness to Nature and a love
for free life which has never left him and made all other
existence in a measure insupportable. His suffering began with
that Salem school and his knowledge of his relatives who were
all distasteful to him. He said, “How sad middle life looks
to people of erratic temperaments. Everything is beautiful in
youth—all things are allowed to it.” We gave him “Pet Marjorie”
to read in the evening—a little story by John Brown. He thought
it so beautiful that he read it carefully twice until every
word was grasped by his powerful memory....

Talking of England, Hawthorne said she was not a powerful
empire. The extent over which her dominions extended led her to
fancy herself powerful. She is much like a squash vine which
runs over a whole garden, but once cut at the root and it is
gone at once.

We talked and laughed about Boswell, whom he thinks one of
the most remarkable men who ever lived, and J. T. F. recalled
that story of Johnson who, upon being told of a man who had
committed some misdemeanor and was upon the verge of committing
suicide in consequence, said, “Why does not the man go
somewhere where he is not known, instead of to the devil where
he is known?”

Hawthorne was in the same class at college with Longfellow,
whom he says he could not appreciate at that time. He was
always finely dressed and was a tremendous student. Hawthorne
was careless in dress and no student, but always reading
desultorily right and left. Now they are deeply appreciative of
each other.[10]

Hawthorne says he wants the North to beat now; ’tis the only
way to save the country from destruction. He has been strangely
inert and remote upon the subject of the war; partly from his
deep hatred of everything sad. He seemed to feel as if he could
not live and face it.

He was intensely witty, but his wit is of so ethereal a texture
that the fine essence has vanished and I can remember nothing
now of his witty things!

It would be a pity to truncate the following passage by confining the record of Fields’s day in Concord to his glimpse of Hawthorne, already recorded, with emendations, in the “Biographical Notes.”

_Saturday, January 9, 1864._—J. T. F. passed yesterday in
Concord. He went first to see Hawthorne, who was sitting alone
gazing into the fire, his grey dressing-gown, which became him
like a Roman toga, wrapped around his figure. He said he had
done nothing for three weeks. Yet we feel his romance must be
maturing in his mind. General Barlow and Mrs. Howe had sent
word they were coming to call, so Mrs. Hawthorne had gone out
to walk (been thrown out on picket-duty, Mrs. Stowe said) and
had left word at home that Mr. Hawthorne was ill and could see
no one. After his visit there, full of affectionate kindness,
J. T. F. proceeded to dinner with the Emersons. Here too
the reception was most hearty, but he fancied there were no
servants to speak of at either house. Mrs. E. looked deadly
pale, but her wit coruscated marvellously; even Mr. Emerson
grew silent to listen. She said a committee of three, of
which she was one, had been formed to pronounce upon certain
essays (unpublished) of Mr. Emerson, which they thought should
be printed now. She thought some of them finer than any of
his published essays. He laughed a great deal at the fun she
_poked_ at the earlier efforts.

From there J. T. F. proceeded to see the Thoreaus. The mother
and sister live well, but lonely it should seem, there without
Henry. They produced 32 volumes of journal and a few letters.
The idea was to print the letters. We hope it may be done.
Their house was like a conservatory, it was so filled with
plants in beautiful condition. Henry liked to have the doors
thrown open that he might look at these during his illness. He
was an excellent son, and even when living in his retirement at
Walden Pond, would come home every day. He supported himself
too from a very early age.

Here follows a passage also used by Fields in “Yesterdays with Authors,” but in a rendering so moderated that the original entry in the journal is quite another thing.

_Monday, March 28._—Mr. Hawthorne came down to take this as his
first station on his journey for health. He shocked us by his
invalid appearance. He has become quite deaf, too. His limbs
are shrunken but his great eyes still burn with their lambent
fire. He said, “Why does Nature treat us so like children! I
think we could bear it if we knew our fate. At least I think it
would not make much difference to me now what became of me.”
He talked with something of his old wit at times; said, “Why
has the good old custom of coming together to get drunk gone
out? Think of the delight of drinking in pleasant company and
then lying down to sleep a deep strong sleep.” Poor man! He
sleeps very little. We heard him walking in his room during
a long portion of the night, heavily moving, moving as if
indeed waiting, watching for his fate. At breakfast he gave
us a most singular account of an interview with Mr. Alcott.
He said: “Alcott was one of the most excellent of men. He
could never quarrel with anyone.” But the other day he came to
make Mr. H. a call, to ask him if there was any difficulty or
misunderstanding between the two families. Mr. Hawthorne said
no, that would be impossible; “but I proceeded,” he continued,
“to tell him it was not possible to live upon amicable terms
with Mrs. Alcott.... The old man acknowledged the truth of all
that I said (indeed who should know it better), but I comforted
him by saying in time of illness or necessity I did not doubt
we should be the best of helpers to each other. I clothed all
this in velvet phrases, that it might not seem too hard for him
to bear, but he took it all like a saint.”

_April, 1864._—When Mr. Hawthorne returned after watching at
the death-bed of Mr. Ticknor, his mind was in a healthier
condition, we thought, than when he left, but the experience
had been a terrible one. I can never forget the look of pallid
exhaustion he wore the night he returned to us. He said he had
scarcely eaten or slept since he left. “Mr. Childs watched
me so closely after poor Ticknor died, as if I had lost my
protector and friend, and so I had! But he stuck by as if he
were afraid to leave me alone. He stayed past the dinner hour,
and when I began to wonder if he never ate himself, he departed
and sent another man to watch me till he should return!”
Nevertheless he liked Mr. Childs and spoke repeatedly of his
unwearying kindness. “I never saw anything like it,” he said;
yet when he was abstractedly wondering where his slippers were,
I overheard him say to himself, “Oh! I remember, that cursed
Childs watched me so I forgot everything.”

He spoke of the coldness of somebody and said, “Well, I think
he would have felt something if he had been there!” He said he
did not think death would be so terrible if it were not for the
undertakers. It was dreadful to think of being handled by those
men.

He was often wholly overcome by the ludicrous view of something
presented to him in the midst of his grief. There was a black
servant sleeping in the room that last night, whose name was
Peter. Once he snored loudly, when the dying man raised himself
with an appreciation of fun still living in him and said, “Well
done, Peter!”

In every account of the last week of Hawthorne’s life, the shock he received through the illness and death of his friend and traveling companion, Ticknor, in Philadelphia, is an item of sombre moment. The two men had left Boston together late in March—Hawthorne, sick and broken, writing but once, in a tremulous hand, to his wife during the ill-starred journey; Ticknor, giving himself unstintingly to the restoration of Hawthorne’s health, and stricken unto death before a fortnight was gone. The circumstances are suggested in the entry that has just been quoted from Mrs. Fields’s journal. They stand still more clearly revealed in the last letter written by Hawthorne to Fields, who refers to it in “Yesterdays with Authors,” and adds that the news of Ticknor’s death reached Boston on the very day after this letter was written, all too evidently with a feeble hold upon the pen.

PHILADELPHIA, CONTINENTAL HOTEL

_Saturday morning_

DEAR FIELDS:—

I am sorry to say that our friend Ticknor is suffering under
a severe billious attack since yesterday morning. He had
previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an alarming degree.
He sent for a physician during the night, and fell into the
hands of an allopathist, who, of course, belabored with pills
and powders of various kinds, and then proceeded to cup, and
poultice, and blister, according to the ancient rule of that
tribe of savages. The consequence is that poor Ticknor is
already very much reduced, while the disorder flourishes as
luxuriantly as if that were the doctor’s sole object. He calls
it a billious colic (or bilious, I know not which) and says it
is one of the severest cases he ever knew. I think him a man of
skill and intelligence, in his way, and doubt not that he will
do everything that his views of scientific medicine will permit.

Since I began writing the above, Mr. Bennett of Boston tells
me the Doctor, after this morning’s visit, requested the
proprietor of the Continental to telegraph to Boston the
state of the case. I am glad of it, because it relieves me
of the responsibility of either disclosing bad intelligence
or withholding it. I will only add that Ticknor, under the
influence of a blister and some powders, seems more comfortable
than at any time since his attack, and that Mr. Bennett (who
is an apothecary, and therefore conversant with these accursed
matters) says that he is in a good state. But I can see that
it will be not a very few days that will set him upon his legs
again. As regards nursing, he shall have the best that can be
obtained; and my own room is next to his, so that I can step in
at any moment; but that will be of almost as much service as if
a hippopotamus were to do him the same kindness. Nevertheless,
I have blistered, and powdered, and pilled him and made my
observation on medical science and the sad and comic aspects of
human misery.

Excuse this illegible scrawl, for I am writing almost in the
dark. Remember me to Mrs. Fields. As regards myself, I almost
forgot to say that I am perfectly well. If you could find time
to write Mrs. Hawthorne and tell her so, it would be doing me
a great favor, for I doubt whether I can find an opportunity
just now to do it myself. You would be surprised to see how
stalwart I have become in this little time.

Your friend,

N. H.

Barely more than a month later, Hawthorne, traveling with another friend, Franklin Pierce, died in New Hampshire. Through the years that followed, the friendship of the Fieldses with his widow and children afforded many occasions for brief affectionate record in the chronicles of Charles Street.[11]

The two entries that follow touch, respectively, upon glimpses of Hawthorne’s immediate family at Concord, in the summer of 1865, and of his surviving sister in the summer of 1866.

_Sunday, July 9, 1865._—Passed Friday in Concord. Called at the
Emersons, but were disappointed to find them all in town, Jamie
particularly, who wished to tell him that his new essay on
Character is not suited to the magazine. Ordinary readers would
not understand him and would consider it blasphemous. He thinks
it would do more good if delivered simply to his own disciples
first, in a volume of new essays uniform with the others.

Dined with Sophia Hawthorne and the children, the first real
visit since that glorious presence has departed. What an
altered household! She feels very lonely and is like a reed.
I fear the children find small restraint from her. Poor
child! How tired she is! Will God spare her further trial, I
wonder, and take her to his rest?... Went to call on Sophia
Thoreau.[12] ... We saw a letter from Froude, the historian, to
H. T., as warmly appreciative as it was possible for a letter
to be; also “long good histories,” as his sister said, from his
admirer Cholmondely. His journal is in thirty-two volumes and
when J. T. F. spoke of wishing for an editor to condense these,
she said there was no hurry and she thought the man would come.
We spoke of Sanborn. She said, “He knows a great deal, but I
never associate him with my brother.”

She is a woman borne down with ill health. She seemed to
possess, as we saw her, something of the self-sustaining power
of her brother, the same repose and confidence in her fate, as
being always good. Dear S. H. says she has this when she thinks
of her brother, but often loses it when the surface of her
life becomes irritated and she is disabled for work. Her aged
mother, learning we were there, got up and dressed herself and
came down, to her daughter’s great surprise. She has an immense
care in that old lady evidently.

_July 24, 1866._—We left just before eleven for Amesbury, to
see Mr. Whittier, driving over to Beverly in an open wagon. It
was one of the perfect days. As Keats said once, the sky sat
“upon our senses like a sapphire crown.” We turned away after
a time from the high road into a wood path, picking our way
somewhat slowly to avoid the overhanging bushes and the rainy
pools left in the ruts. We soon found ourselves near a place
called Mt. Serat where we knew Miss Hawthorne lived, the only
surviving sister of Nathaniel, and Mr. Fields determined at
once to call upon her. To my surprise, in spite of the fine
weather and her woodland life habitually, she was at home, and
came down immediately as if she were sincerely glad to see us.
She is a small woman, with small fine features, round full
face, fresh-looking in spite of years, brilliant eyes, nervous
brow, which twists as she speaks, and very nervous fingers. In
one respect she differed from her brother—she was exquisitely
neat (nor do I mean to convey the idea by this that he was
unneat, but he always gave you a sense of disregarded trifles
about his person and we frequently recall his reply to me when
I offered to brush his coat one morning, “No, no, I never brush
my coat, it wears it out!”), and gave you a sense of being
particular in little things. I seemed to see in her another
difference—a deterioration because of too great solitude—powers
rusted—a decaying beauty—while with Hawthorne solitude fed his
genius, solitude and the pressure of necessity. Utter solitude
lames the native power of a woman even more than that of a
man, for her natural growth is through her sympathies. She is
a woman of no common mould, however. Lucy Larcom calls her a
hamadryad, and says she belongs in the woods and should be seen
there. I wish to see her again upon her own ground. She asked
us almost immediately if we would not come with her to the
woods, but our time was too short. From thence we held our way,
and soon came by train to Newburyport and Amesbury. Whittier
was at home, ready with an enthusiastic welcome.

To these memorials of Hawthorne must be added yet another, copied from a pencilled sheet preserved by Mrs. Fields in an envelope endorsed in her handwriting, “The original of a precious and extraordinary letter written by Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne while her husband lay dead.” Printed now, I believe for the first time, nearly sixty years after it was written, it rings with a devotion and exaltation which time is powerless to touch:

I wish to speak to you, Annie.

A person of a more uniform majesty never wore mortal form.

In the most retired privacy it was the same as in the presence
of men.

The sacred veil of his eyelids he scarcely lifted to
himself—such an unviolated sanctuary as was his nature, I, his
inmost wife, never conceived nor knew.

So absolute a modesty was not before joined to so lofty a
self-respect.

But what must have been that self-respect that he never in the
smallest particular dishonored!

A conscience more void of offense never bore witness to GOD
within.

It was the innocence of a baby and the grand comprehension of a
sage.

To me—himself—even to me who was himself in unity—he was to the
last the holy of holies behind the cherubim.

So unerring a judgment that a word from him would settle with
me a chaos of doubts and questions that seemed perplexing to
ordinary apprehension.

So equal a justice that I often wondered if he were human in
this—for this seemed to partake of omniscience both of love and
insight.

An impartiality of regard that solved all men and subjects in
one alembick.

Truth and right alone he deigned to regard. Far below him was
every other consideration.

A tenderness so infinite—so embracing—that GOD’S alone could
surpass it. It folded the loathsome leper in as soft a caress
as the child of his home affections—was not that divine!

Was it not Christianity in one action! What a bequest to his
children—what a new revelation of Christ to the world was
that! And for him—whom the sight and touch of unseemliness and
uncleanness caused to shudder as an Eolian string shudders in
the tempest.

Annie! to the last action in this house he was as lofty, as
majestic, as imperial and as gentle—as in the strength of his
prime, as on the day he rose upon my eye and soul a King among
men by divine right!

When he awoke that early dawn and found himself unawares
standing among the “Shining Ones” do you think they did not
suppose he had been always with them—one of themselves? Oh,
blessed be GOD for so soft a translation—as an infant wakes
on its mother’s breast so he woke on the bosom of GOD and can
never be weary any more, nor see nor touch an unclean thing.
A demand for beauty and perfection that was inexorable. Yet
though a flaw or a crack gave him so fine agony, no one, no one
was ever so tolerant as he!

Hawthorne’s allusion to Alcott brings the figure of that Concord personage on the scene. The picture of him in Charles Street is so sharpened in outline by certain remarks upon him by the elder Henry James, a somewhat more frequent visitor, that the passages relating to the two men are here joined together. The first recorded glimpses of James occurred in the course of a visit to Newport.