Chapter III: Part 3

_September 23, 1863._—Received a visit at Newport from Henry
James. His son was badly wounded in two places at Gettysburg.
He spoke of the reviews of his work among other topics. “Who
wrote the review in the Examiner?” asked Mr. F. “Oh! that was
_merely_ Freeman Clarke,” he replied; “he is a smuggler in
theology and feels towards me much as a contraband towards an
exciseman.” Speaking of fashion, he said, “there was good in
it,” although it appears to be a drawback to the residents here
while it lasts. He anticipates a change in European affairs;
the age of ignorance is to pass away and strong democratic
tendencies will soon pervade Europe. The march of civilization
will work its revenge against aristocratic England, he believes.

Mr. James considers that people make a mistake to expect
reason from Carlyle. “He is an artist, a wilful artist, and no
reasoner. He has only genius.”

_October 16, 1863._—Mr. Alcott breakfasted with us. He said
all vivid new life was well described by his daughter Louisa.
She was happier now that she had made a success. “She was
formerly not content to wait, but so soon as she became
content, then good fortune came, as she always does.” I told
him we enjoyed deeply reading his MSS. of “The Rhapsodist”
(Emerson) last night. He said he thought it was finally brought
into presentable shape! “When in a more imperfect condition,”
he continued, “I read it to Mr. Emerson. The modest man could
only keep silent at such a time, but he conveyed to me the
idea that he should prefer the paper should not be printed in
the ‘Commonwealth.’ Later I again read it, when he said, ‘If I
were dead.’ I have reason to believe that in its present shape
he would not object to its presentation.”[13] He talked of his
own valuable library and asked what he should do with it by and
by. J. T. F. suggested it should go to the Union Club, which
pleased him much. “That is the place,” said he. “If it were
known this was my intention, might I not also be entitled to
consideration at the Club?”

Among his books is a copy of Milton’s “World of Words,” owned
by Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who early colonized the state of Maine.

He talked of Thoreau. “There will be seven or eight volumes of
his works. Next should come the letters, with the commendatory
poems prefixed. Come up to Concord and we will talk it over.
If you go to see Miss Thoreau, arrange to talk with her in the
absence of the mother, who would interrupt and speak again of
the whole matter. Make Helen[14] feel that Henry will receive
as much for his books as if he had made his own bargain, for he
was good at a bargain and they are a little hard—that is, they
do not understand all the bearings of many subjects.”

The good old man has come to Boston, being asked to perform
funeral ceremonies over the bodies of two children. He asked
for my Vaughan. “A beautiful poem which is not known is much
at such a time,” he observed inquiringly. To which I heartily
responded.

Mr. Emerson came in to see Mr. Fields today. “I shall
reconsider my reluctance to have Mr. Alcott’s article published
provided he will obtain consideration by it,” was his generous
speech. He said he had begun to prepare a new volume of poems,
“but I must go down the harbor before I can finish a little
poem about the islands. I took steamboat yesterday and went
down, but a mist came up and my visit was to no purpose.”

_February 19, 1864._—This morning early called upon Mrs. Mott
of Pennsylvania. Found Mr. James with her. He observed that
circumstances had placed him above want, and inheritance
had given him a position in the world which precluded his
having any knowledge of the temptations which beset many men.
His virtues were the result of his position rather than of
character—an affair of temperament. He said society was to
blame for much of the crime in it, and as for that poor young
man who committed the murder at Malden, it was a mere fact of
temperament or inheritance. He soon broke off his talk, saying
it was “pretty well to be caught in the middle of such weighty
topics in the presence of two ladies at 10 o’clock in the
morning.” Then we talked of houses. He wishes a furnished house
for a year in Boston until his departure.

_July 28._—Still hot, with a russet sun. Mr. and Mrs. Henry
James called in the evening. He talked of “Sterling.” “He
was not stereotyped, but living, his eye burned; he was very
vivacious, although he saw Death approaching. He was one of the
choicest of friends.” Afterward he talked of Alcott’s visit to
Carlyle. Carlyle told Mr. James he found him a terrible old
bore. It was almost impossible to be rid of him, and impossible
also to keep him, for he would not eat what was set before him.
Carlyle had potatoes for breakfast and sent for strawberries
for Mr. Alcott, who, when they arrived, took them with the
potatoes upon the same plate, where the two juices ran together
and fraternized. This shocked Carlyle, who would eat nothing
himself, but stormed up and down the room instead. “Mrs.
Carlyle is a naughty woman,” said Mr. J., “she wishes to make
a sensation and does not mind sometimes following and imitating
her husband’s way.” Mr. J. said Alcott once made him a visit
in New York and when he found he could not go to Brooklyn to
attend Mr. A.’s “conversation,” the latter said, “Very well; he
would talk over the heads with him then before it was time to
go.” They got into a great battle about the premises, during
which Mr. Alcott talked of the Divine paternity as relating to
himself, when Mr. James broke in with, “My dear sir, you have
not found your _maternity_ yet. You are an egg half hatched.
The shells are yet sticking about your head.” To this Mr. A.
replied, “Mr. James, you are _damaged goods_ and will come up
_damaged goods in eternity_.”

We laughed much before they left at a story about a man who
called to ask money of John Jacob Astor. The gentleman was
ushered into a twilight library, where he fancied himself
alone until he heard a grunt from a deep chair, the high back
of which was turned towards him; then the gentleman advanced,
found Mr. Astor there and saluted him. He opened the business
of the subscription to him, and was about to unfold the paper
when Mr. Astor suddenly cried out, “Oo—oo—oo—ooooooo!” “What
is the matter, my dear sir,” said he, “are you ill? [growing
alarmed] Where is the bell? Let me ring the bell.” Then running
to the door, he shouted, “Madame, madame.” Then to Mr. Astor,
“Pray, sir, what is the matter?” “Oo—oo—oo.” “Have you a pain
in your side!!” In a moment the household came running thither,
and as the housekeeper bent over him, he cried, “Oo—oo—these
horrid wretches sending to me for money!!” As may be believed,
our friend of the subscription paper beat a hasty retreat and
here ended also our evening.

A few days later there was an evening with Sumner and others, who talked of affairs in Washington. Mr. and Mrs. James were of the company. “These men,” wrote Mrs. Fields, “despond with regard to the civil government. They have more faith that our military affairs are doing well. Chiefly they look to Sherman as the great man. Mr. James was silent; he believes in Lincoln.” And there is the final note: “We must not forget Mr. James’s youth, who was ‘aninted with isle of Patmos.’”

_July 10, 1866._—Forceythe Willson came and talked purely,
lovingly, and like the pure character he aspires to be. He said
Mr. Alcott talked with him of temperaments lately, with much
wisdom. He said the blonde was nearest to perfection, that
was the heavenly type. “You are not a blonde,” said the seer
calmly, and, said Willson to me, “I was much amused and pleased
too; for when I regarded the old man more closely I discovered
_he_ himself was a blonde.”

_October 6, 1867._—Mr. Henry James and his daughter came to
call. We chanced to ask him about Dr. G—— of New York, a
physician of wide reputation in the diagnosis of disease. He
is an old man now, but with so large a practice that he will
see no new patients. Mr. James says, however, that he is a
humbug, that is, as I understood. He is a man of discernment
which he turns to the best account, but not a man of deep
insight or unwonted development. Suddenly J. remembered that
there was once a Dr. —— of New York who was also famous. The
moment his name was mentioned Mr. James became quite a new man.
His enthusiasm flamed. Dr. —— died at the early age of 38,
and, according to the saying of the world, insane. “Yet he was
no more insane than I am at this moment as far as the action
of his mind was concerned, which was always perfectly clear.
Several years before his death he was pursued by spirits which
often kept him awake all night. His wife was a heavenly woman
and a Swedenborgian. The spirits did not come to her, but she
was persuaded that they did come to him. They so disturbed
his life that he used to say he was ready to die, in order
to pursue his tormentors and ferret out the occasion of his
trouble. At one time they told him that in every age a man had
been selected to do the bidding of the Lord God, to be the Lord
Christ of the time, and he must fit himself to be that man.
They prescribed for him therefore certain fasts and austerities
which he religiously fulfilled, only asking in return an
interview in which some sign should be given him. They promised
faithfully, but when the time arrived it was postponed; and
this occurred repeatedly, until he felt sure of the deceit of
the parties concerned.”

Through the medium of these spirits Dr. —— became at length
estranged from his wife. He went West to obtain a divorce,
and while on this strange errand occurred a breach between
himself and Mr. James. The latter wrote him a letter urging
him away from the dead, which the doctor took as interference.
The poor man returned to New York and at length shot himself.
His wife never harbored the least animosity against him for
his undeserved treatment. (Mr. J. looked like an invalid, but
was full of spirit and kindness. He not infrequently speaks
severely of men and things. Analysis is his second nature.)

_March 5, 1869._—Jamie had an unusually turbulent and exciting
day, and was thoroughly weary when night came. Henry James came
first, and had gone so far as to abuse Emerson pretty well
when the latter came in. “How do you do, Emer-son,” he said,
with his peculiar intonation and voice, as if he had expected
him on the heels of what had gone before. Mr. James calls his
new book, “The Secret of Swedenborg.” Jamie thinks his article
on Carlyle too abusive, especially as he stayed in his house,
or was there long and familiarly. But his love of country was
bitterly stung by Carlyle in “Shooting Niagara and After.”

_Saturday, March 13, 1869._—Mr. Emerson read in the afternoon.
The subject was Wordsworth in chief, but the time was far too
short to do justice to the notes he had made. In the evening we
went to Cambridge to hear Mr. James read his paper on “Woman.”
We took tea first with the family and afterward listened to
the lecture. He took the highest, the most natural, and the
most religious point of view from which I have heard the
subject discussed. He dealt metaphysically with it, after his
own fashion, showing the subtle inherent counterparts of man
to woman, showing to what extremes either would be led without
the other. He spoke with unmingled disgust of the idea of
woman, except for union in behalf of some charity for the time,
forsaking the sanctity and privacy of her home to battle and
unsex herself in the hot and dusty arena of the world.

(The members of the Woman’s Club asked him to write this
lecture for them. He did not wish to spare the time, but
promised to do so if they would invite him afterward to deliver
it in public. They disliked the lecture so much that, although
they _did_ send him a public invitation, there were but twenty
people present.)

Nothing could be holier or more inspiring than his ideal of
womanhood. She is the embodied social idea, the genius of home,
the light of life—“ever desiring novelty her life without man
would be a long chase from one field to another, accompanied by
_soft gospel truth_.”

He didn’t fail to whip the “pusillanimous” clergy, and as the
room was overstocked with them, it was odd to watch the effect.
Mr. James is perfectly brave, almost inapprehensive, of the
storm of opinion he raises, and he is quite right. Nothing
could be more clearly his own and inherent, than his views in
this lecture, nothing which the times need more. He helps to
lay that dreadful phantom of yourself which appears now and
then conjured up by the right people, haranguing the crowd and
endeavoring to be something for which you were clearly never
intended by Heaven. I think I shall never forget a pretty
little niece of Mrs. Dale Owen, who was with her at the first
Club meeting in New York. Her face was full of softness and
Madonna-like beauty, but she was learning to contract her brow
over ideas and become “strong” in her manner of expressing
them. It was a kind of nightmare.

_Summer, 1871._—Mr. Alcott, Mr. Howison, Mr. Harris, the latter
two lovers of philosophy, have been here this week. Channing is
still writing poems in Concord, says Alcott. The latter smiles
blandly at his own former absurdities, but he does not eat
meat, and continues his ancient manner of living among books.
The old gentleman gave me this wild rose as he went away. He
quoted Vaughan, talked of a book of selections he would wish to
see made, “a honey-pot into which one might dip at leisure,”
also an almanac suitable for a lady, of the choicest things
among the ancient writers. He was full of good sayings and most
witty and attractive. He is somewhat deaf, but he bears this
infirmity as he has borne all the ills of life with a mild
sweet heroism most marked and worthy of love and to be copied.

_Sunday, April 20, 1873._—Last night Mr. and Mrs. Henry James,
Alice, and Mr. DeNormandie dined here. Mr. James looked very
venerable, but was at heart very young and amused us much. He
gave a description of Mr. George Bradford being run over by the
horse-car, because of his own inadvertence in part, and of the
good-natured crowd who insisted upon his having restitution for
what he considered, in part, at least, his own fault. “Ain’t
you dead?” said one. “267 Highland Ave. is the number, don’t
forget,” said another; “you can prosecute.” “Where’s my hat?”
he asked meekly. “Better ask if ye’re not dead, and not be
looking for your hat,” said another.

He also told us of a visit of Elizabeth Peabody to the Alcotts.
He said: “In Mr. A. the moral sense was wholly dead, and the
æsthetic sense had never yet been born!”

It may well have been after a visit to the Fieldses at the seashore town of Manchester that Henry James wrote this undated characteristic note which embodies the feeling of many another guest:—

MY DEAR FIELDS:—

Pride ever goes before a fall. I scorned my wife’s solicitude
about her umbrella as unworthy of an immortal mind, and now I
am reduced to pleading with you to preserve my lost implement
in that line, and when you next come to town to bring it with
you and leave it for me at Williams’ book store, corner of
School Street, where I will reclaim it.

Alas! The difference between now and then! Such an atmosphere
as we are having this morning! And yet we did not need the
contrast to impress us with a lively sense of the lovely house,
the lovely scenes, and the lovely people we had left. We came
home fragrant with the sweetest memories, and the way we have
been making the house resound with the fame of our enjoyment
would amuse you. Alice and her aunt came home just after us,
and we have done nothing but talk since we arrived. Good bye;
give my love to that angelic woman, whom I shall remember in my
last visions, and believe me, faithfully,

Yours also,

H. J.

Henry James’s letters to Mr. and Mrs. Fields, of which a number are preserved by the present generation of the James family, abound in characteristic felicities. In one of them—they are nearly all undated—he regrets his inability to read a lecture of his own at Mrs. Fields’s invitation, on the ground that his unpublished writings are “all too grave and serious, not for you individually indeed, but for those ‘slumberers in Zion’ who are apt, you know, to constitute the bulk of a parlour audience.” In another he is evidently declining an invitation to hear a reading of Emerson’s in Charles Street:—

SWAMPSCOTT, _May 11_

MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS:—

My wife—who has just received your kind note in rapid route to
the Dedham Profane Asylum, or something of that sort—begs leave
to say, through me as a willing and sensitive medium, that you
are one of those _arva beata_, renowned in poetry, which, visit
them never so often, one is always glad to revisit, which are
attractive in all seasons by their own absolute light, and
without any Emersonian pansies and buttercups to make them
so. This enthusiastic Dedhamite says further, in effect, that
while one is deeply grateful for your courteous offer of a
seat upon your sofa to hear the Concord sage, she yet prefers
the material banquet you summon us to in your dining-room,
since there we should be out of the mist and able to discern
between nature and cookery, between what eats and what is
eaten at all events, and feel a thankful mind that we were
in solid comfortable Charles Street, instead of the vague,
wide, weltering galaxy, and should be sure to deem Annie and
Jamie (_I_ am sure of Annie, I think my wife feels equally
sure of Jamie) lovelier fireflies than ever sparkled in the
cold empyrean. But alas, who shall control his destiny? Not
my wife, whom multitudinous cares enthrall; nor yet myself,
whom a couple of months’ enforced illness now constrains to a
preternatural activity, lest the world fail of salvation....

P. S. Who _did_ contrive the comical title for his
lecture—“Philosophy of the People”? I suspect it was a joke
of J. T. F. It would be no less absurd for Emerson himself to
think of philosophizing than it would be for the rose to think
of botanizing. Emerson is the Divinely pompous rose of the
philosophic garden, gorgeous with colour and fragrance. What
a sad lookout there would be for tulip and violet and lily
and the humble grape, if the rose should turn out philosophic
gardener as well! Philosophy _of the people_, too! But that was
Fields, or else it was only R. W. E. after dining with F. at
the Union Club and becoming demoralized.

The final paragraph of a single other note suggests in sum the relation between James and his Charles Street friends:—

Speaking of Mr. Fields always reminds me of various things
so richly endowed in the creature in all good gifts; but the
dominant consideration in my mind associated with him is his
beautiful home and there chiefly that atmosphere and faultless
womanly worth and dignity which fills it with light and warmth
and makes it a real blessing to one’s heart every time he falls
within its precincts. Please felicitate the wretch for me, and
believe me, my dear Mrs. Fields,

Your true friend and servant,

H. J.

_July 8._

Though not related either to Alcott or to Henry James, the following entry, on October 16, 1863, should be preserved—and as well in this place as in another. It refers to the second of the three Josiah Quincys who were mayors of Boston in the course of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Josiah Quincy dropped in to see J. T. F. He had lately
been traveling in the West, he said. People complimented
him upon his youthful appearance and his last letter to the
President. “I am glad you liked the letter,” he said, “but my
father wrote it.” At the next town people pressed his hand,
and thanked him for his staunch adherence to the Anti-slavery
cause as expressed in the “Liberator.” “Oh,” his reply was,
“that was my brother Edmund Quincy”; a little farther on a
friend complimented his brilliant story in the last “Atlantic”
magazine. “That was by my son J. P. Quincy,” he was obliged to
answer. Finally, when his exploits in the late wars at the head
of the 20th Regiment were recounted, he grew impatient, said it
was his son Colonel Quincy, but he thought it high time he came
home, instead of travelling about to receive the compliments of
others.

In giving the title, “Glimpses of Emerson,” to one of the chapters in her “Authors and Friends,” Mrs. Fields described accurately the use she made of her records and remembrances of that serene Olympian who glided in and out of Boston to the awe and delight of those with whom he came into personal contact. “Olympian” must be the word, since “Augustan” connotes something quite too mundane to suggest the effect produced by Emerson upon his sympathetic contemporaries. Did they realize, I wonder, how fitting it was that this prophet of the harmonies of life should live in a place the name of which is spoken by all but New Englanders as if it signified not a despairing _Væ victis_, but the very bond of peace? All the adjectives of benignity have been bestowed upon Emerson. Mrs. Fields’s “Glimpses” of him suggest that atmosphere, as of mountain solitudes, in which he moved; that air of the heights which those who moved beside him were fain to breathe. His “Conversations” in public and private places, a form of intellectual refreshment suggested by Mrs. Fields and conducted, to Emerson’s large material advantage, by her husband, appear to-day as highly characteristic of their time,—the sixties and seventies,—and the light thrown upon them by her journal illuminates not only him and her, but the whole society of “superior persons” in which Emerson was so dominating a figure. By no means all of that light escaped from her manuscript journals to the printed page of “Authors and Friends.” In the hitherto unprinted passages now given there are further shafts of it, sometimes slender in themselves, but joining to show the very Emerson that came and went in Charles Street.

_From the marble statue by Daniel Chester French in the Concord Public Library_]

There was a furtive humor in Emerson, which expressed itself more accurately in his own words than in anything written about him. A pleasant trace of it is found in a note to Fields addressed, “My dear Editor,” dated “Concord, October 5, 1866,” and containing these words: “I have the more delight in your marked overestimate of my poem, that I had been vexed with a belief that what skill I had in whistling was nearly or quite gone, and that I must henceforth content myself with guttural consonants or dissonants, and not attempt warbling.”

There is a clear application of the Emersonian philosophy to domestic matters in a letter written by Mrs. Emerson to Mrs. Fields, a week after the fire which drove the poet’s family from his house at Concord, in the summer of 1872. Mrs. Fields—as if in fulfillment of Emerson’s words on the proffer of some previous hospitality: “Indeed we think that your house should have that name inscribed upon it—‘Hospitality’”—had invited the dislodged Emersons to take refuge under her roof. Mrs. Emerson, replying, wrote:—

We are most happily settled in the “Old Manse,” where our
cousin, Miss Ripley, assures us we can be accommodated—to her
satisfaction as well as our own—until our house is rebuilt.
Only the upper half is destroyed and we shall, I trust, so
well restore it that you will not know—when we shall have
the pleasure of welcoming you there—except for its fresh
appearance, that anything has happened. I should not use
such a word as “calamity,” for truly the whole event is a
blessing rather than a misfortune. We have received such warm
expressions of kindness from our friends, and have witnessed
such disinterested action and brave daring in our town’s
people, that we feel—in addition to our happiness in the
sympathy of friends in other places—as if Concord was a large
family of personal friends and well-wishers. They command not
only our gratitude but our deep respect, for their loving and
personal self-forgetfulness.

Mr. Emerson and Ellen join me in affectionate and grateful
acknowledgments to yourself and to Mr. Fields.

Ever your friend,

LILIAN EMERSON

CONCORD, _July 31, 1872_.

It is in the atmosphere of the mutual relation revealed in many letters from Emerson and his household to Mr. and Mrs. Fields that the following reports of encounters with him—a few out of many similar passages in her journals—should be read.

_December 3, 1863._—Last Tuesday Mr. Emerson lectured in town.
Mrs. E. and Edith came to tea. She was troubled because she
was a little late. She is a woman of proud integrity and real
sweetness. She has an awe of words. They mean so much to her
that her lips do not unlock save for truth or kindliness or
beauty or wisdom. The lecture was for today—there was much of
Carlyle, chastisement, and soul. After the lecture they came
home with us and about 20 friends. Wendell Phillips was in
his sweetest mood. He spoke of Beecher and Luther and of the
vigorous, healthy hearts of these men who swayed this world.
He said Hallam speaks disparagingly of Luther. I could not but
think of Sydney Smith’s friend who spoke “disparagingly of the
Equator.” Alden too came in wearied after his lecture. Senator
Boutwell spoke in praise of life in Washington, the first man.
Sunshiny Edith passed the night with us.

_January 5, 1864._—Mr. Emerson came today to see J. T. F. He
says Mr. Blake, who holds the letters of Thoreau in his hands,
is a terribly conscientious man, “a man who would even return
a borrowed umbrella.” He became acquainted with Blake when
he was connected with theological matters, “and he believed
wholly in me at that time, but one day he met Thoreau and he
never came to my house afterwards. His conscientiousness is
equalled perhaps by that of George Bradford, who accompanied
us once to hear Mr. Webster speak. There was an immense crowd,
Mr. Bradford became separated from the party, and was swept
into a capital place within the lines. When he found himself
well ensconced in front of the speaker, he turned about and saw
us, and with a look of great concern said: ‘I have no ticket
for this place and I can’t stay.’ We besought him not to be so
foolish as to give up the place, but nothing would tempt him to
keep it.”

He was in fine mood.

_Wednesday, September 6._—Mr. Emerson went to see Mr. Fields.
“There are fine lines in Lowell’s Ode,” he said. “Yes,”
answered J. T. F., “it is a fine poem.” “I have found fine
lines in it,” replied the seer. “I told Lowell once,” he
continued, “that his humorous poems gave me great pleasure;
they were worth all his serious poetry. He did not take it very
well, but muttered, ‘The Washers of the Shroud,’ and walked
away.”

J. T. F. found Emerson sitting by the window in his new office,
highly delighted with it.

_September 30, 1865._—Jamie went to dine with the Saturday
Club. Professor Nichol was his guest. Sam. Ward (Julia’s
brother) was Longfellow’s. Lowell, Holmes, Hoar, Emerson and
a few others only were present. Judge Hoar related an amusing
anecdote of having sent a beautiful basket of pears to the
Concord exhibition this year. He said Mr. Emerson was one of
the judges, and he thought he would be pleased with the pears
because a few years ago he was in the garden one day and,
observing that very tree, which was not then very flourishing,
had told Judge Hoar that more iron and more animal matter were
needed in the soil. “Forthwith,” said the Judge, “I planted
all my old iron kettles and a cat and a dog at the foot of the
tree and these pears were the result. I have kept two favorite
terriers ready to plant if necessary beside, but the fruit for
the present seems well enough without them.”

Judge Hoar said also that he knew a man once with a prodigious
memory; before dinner he could recall General Washington, after
dinner he remembered Christopher Columbus!

_Saturday, October 7, 1865._—Tuesday, 3, Edith Emerson was
married to William Forbes. The old house threw wide its
hospitable doors and the stairway and rooms were covered with
leaves and flowers and the whole place was as beautiful as
earthly radiance and joy can make a home. Poor Mrs. Hawthorne,
laden with her many sorrows, threw off her black robe for that
day that she might rejoice with others. Edith made her own
marriage wreath, and even Mr. Emerson wore white gloves. Old
Mrs. Ripley and many aged and many beautiful persons were there.

In 1866 Emerson, long exiled from the good graces of his Alma Mater, was restored to them by the bestowal of an honorary degree. In 1867 the restoration was completed by his election as an Overseer of Harvard College and his appearance, after an interval of thirty years, as the Phi Beta Kappa orator. In this capacity he read his address on the “Progress of Culture” on July 18, 1867. Of the manner in which he did it, and of the effect he produced on his hearers, Lowell wrote immediately to Norton, in a letter often quoted, “He boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses; but it was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was _our_ fault, not his.” “Phi Beta Day” was still a local festival of much brilliance, which was thus reflected in 1867 on the pages of Mrs. Fields’s journal.

_Thursday, July 18, 1867._—Arose at five and worked in my
garden until breakfast. Then it was time to dress for Phi Beta
at Cambridge. We drove out, leaving home at nine o’clock.
We expected Professor Andrew D. White to go with us, but he
called still earlier to say he had been summoned to a business
meeting by President Hill. The day was soft and pleasant with
a clouded sky. We were among the first on the ground, but we
had the pleasure of waiting a few moments to see our friends
arrive before we were admitted to the church. Only ladies went
in. I went with Mrs. Quincy, the poet’s[15] wife (poet for
the day, for he is apt to disclaim this title usually), and
we found good places in the gallery; by and by, however, Mrs.
Dana beckoned to me to come and sit with them, so I changed
my seat to a place on the lower floor. It was an impressive
sight to see those men come in (though they kept us waiting
until twelve o’clock)—Lowell, Emerson, Dana, Hale, and all
the good brave men we have with few exceptions. First came
Quincy’s poem, then Mr. Emerson’s address—both excellent after
the manner of the men. Poor Mr. E.’s MSS. was in inextricable
confusion, and in spite of the chivalry of E. E. Hale, who
hunted up a cushion that he might see better, the whole matter
seemed at first out of joint in the reader’s eyes. However
that may have been, it was far from out of joint in our eyes,
being noble in aim and influence, magnetic, imaginative. I
felt grateful that I had lived till that moment and as if I
might come home to live and work better. Thank Heaven for such
a master! He was evidently put out and angry with himself for
his disorder and, taking Mr. Fields’s arm as he came from the
assembly, had to be somewhat reassured that it was not an utter
failure.

Mrs. Dana tried to carry me to lunch, most kindly. I could not
make up my mind to go anywhere after what I had heard, but
for a moment to see if the good Jameses were well, and thence
homeward. It seemed, if I could ever work, it must be then.

At half-past six Jamie returned from the dinner, where J. R.
Lowell presided in the most elegant and brilliant manner. In
calling out Agassiz he told the story of the sailor who was
swallowed by a whale and finding time rather heavy on his
hands thought he would inscribe his name on the bridge of bone
above his head; but looking for a place, jack-knife in hand,
he found that Jonah was before him—so he said Agassiz, etc.
And of Holmes he said that the Professor and himself were like
two buckets in a well: when one of them presided at a dinner,
the other made it a point to bring a poem; when one bucket came
up full, the other went down empty. And so on through all.
Phillips Brooks, the distinguished preacher of Philadelphia,
was there, and many other men of note.

Out of the many notes relating to Emerson’s lectures, a few passages may be taken as typical. Perhaps the best unpublished pages are those on which the philosopher is seen, with his wife and daughter, against the social background of the time and place.

_October 19, 1868._—The weeks spin away so fast I have no
time for records, and yet last Sunday and Monday we had two
pleasant parties, especially Monday, after Mr. Emerson’s first
lecture. We were 14 at supper. Mrs. Putnam and Miss Oakey
among the guests, but the Emersons, who are always pleased
and always full of kindliness, enjoyment, and Christianity, I
believe give more pleasure than they receive wherever they are
entertained. Edward is full of his grape-culture in Milton,
Ellen full of good works, Mrs. Emerson very hot against her
brother’s opponents, Morton and those who take sides with him
now that Morton himself is in the earth-mould first.[16] Mr.
Emerson, alive and alert on all topics, talked openly of the
untruthfulness of the Peabodys, of the beauty of “Charles
Auchester,” of Mr. Alcott’s school, of Dana’s politics as
superior perhaps to Butler and yet not altogether sound and
worthy, conservatism being so deep in his blood.

Thursday we drove our friends to Milton Blue Hill after the
Emersons had gone, returned to dine and Selwyn’s theatre in the
evening. Herman Merivale was of the party—son of Thackeray’s
friend. The Stephens went on Wednesday. Thursday we dined in
Milton with Mrs. Silsbee; it was a wet nasty day. Friday,
Saturday and Sunday we were quietly enough here, Jamie with a
fearful cold. Surely all this is unimportant enough as regards
ourselves; but I like to remember when Mr. Emerson came and
what he said and how he looked, for it is a pure benediction to
see him and I honor and love him.

_February 20, 1869._—Heard Emerson again, and Laura was with
me; we drank up every word eagerly. He read Donne, Daniel, and
especially Herbert; also _vers de société_; the facility of
these old divines giving them a power akin to what has produced
these familiar rhymes.

He said Herbert was full of holy quips; fond of using a kind of
irony towards God, and quoted appropriately. Beautiful things
of Herrick, too, he read, but treated Vaughan rather unjustly,
we thought.

Lowell sat just behind; I could imagine his running commentary
on many of Mr. Emerson’s remarks, which were often more
Emersonian than universal, or true. The facility of the old
poets seemed to impress him with almost undue reverence. He is
extremely natural and easy in manner and speech during these
readings. He bent his brows and shut his eyes, endeavoring
to recall a passage from Ben Jonson as if we were at his own
dinner-table, and at last when he gave it up said, “It is all
the more provoking as I do not doubt many a friend here might
help me out with it.”

His respect for literature, often in these degenerate
days smiled upon from some imaginary hills by surrounding
multitudes, is absolute and regnant. It is religion and life,
and he reiterating them in every form.

The first and second of the “Conversations” arranged for Emerson by Fields are duly described in the journal. In the evening that followed the second, Emerson and his daughter dined at Charles Street, in company with Longfellow and his daughter Alice, William Morris Hunt and his wife, Dr. Holmes, and the Fieldses. The scene and talk were recorded by the hostess.

... Coming home, Ellen’s trunk had not arrived, so she came,
like a good child, most difficult in a woman grown, to dinner
in her travelling dress. Alice Longfellow looked very pretty in
a polonaise of lovely olive brown over black; a little feather
of the same color in her hair. Rooshue [Mrs. Hunt] and her
husband came in their everydays too. I wore a lilac polonaise
with a yellow rose—I speak of the latter because it seemed to
please W. M. Hunt to see the dash of color....

Hunt convulsed us with a story of seeing a man run through by
an iron bolt, when a distinguished physician is called in; the
physician asks if he can sleep well, and a thousand and one
questions of like relevancy, to all of which the patient only
replies by gasps of agony. Hunt acted the whole scene famously.
The sunset too delighted him as it gilded the old sheds back of
the house and made them “like Solomon’s temple.” Longfellow has
written to Miss Rossetti, the author of the “Shadow of Dante,”
to thank her for her pleasant book. He asks her the difficult
question why Dante puts Venus nearest the sun. Also he points
out her fault of saying the spirits of the blest inhabited the
planets, whereas Dante clearly states that they all lived in
one heaven but visited the planets.

The truth of Hawthorne’s tale of the minister with the black
veil was hunted up. His name was Moody and he was one of the
Emerson family. It seems the poor man in his youth shot a boy
by accident, and as he grew older a morbid temper settled upon
him and he did not think himself fit to preach; so he withdrew
from the ministry but taught a small school, always wore a
black veil, literally a handkerchief. Ellen said her aunt was
taught by him and she appeared anxious to set the matter right.
Rose Hawthorne and her husband have been to see Mr. Emerson,
and he likes them both well; thinks Rose looks happy and the
young man promising, which is much. There is hope of Una’s
recovery and return.

After dinner, we ladies looked over manuscripts for a time
until Longfellow went—when Mrs. Hunt went to the piano and
played and sang. Finally he came, and they sang their little
duets together and afterward she sang a song with words by
Channing about a pine tree, set to a scrap of a sonata by
Helen Bell, and after that a touching German song with English
words—then she read Celia’s [Mrs. Thaxter’s] new poem to Mr.
Emerson, called “The Tryst.” She read it only pretty well,
which disgusted her; and she said it reminded her of William’s
reading, which was the worst she ever knew; he could literally
stop in the middle of a sentence because it happened to be
the bottom of a page, and ask her what it meant. At that he
took Celia’s poem and read it through word for word like a
school-boy, looking up at her to see if he was right and should
go on. She laughed immoderately, and as for Mr. Emerson, J.
said his eyes left their wonted sockets and went to laugh far
back in his brain.

Putting down his book, Hunt launched off into his own life as
a painter. His lonely position here without anyone to look up
to in his art—his idea of art being entirely misunderstood,
his determination _not_ to _paint_ cloth and cheeks, but to
paint the glory of age and the light of truth. He became almost
too excited to find words, but when he did grasp a phrase, it
was such a fine one that it went a great way. His wife sat by
making running comments, but when he said, “If any man who was
talking could not be heard, he would naturally try to talk so
that he could be heard,” we tried to urge him to stand firm
and to assure him that his efforts were neither lost nor in
vain. “If the books you wrote were left all dusty and untouched
upon the shelves, don’t you think you would try to write so
that people should want them? I am sure you would.” His wife
tried to say he must stand in the way he knew was right—as did
we all—but he seemed to think it too hard, too Sisyphus-like
a labor. The portrait of little Paul is still unsold. After
keeping the carriage waiting one hour and a half, they went—a
most interesting pair.

_Tuesday, April 23._—Shakespeare’s birthday. Emerson and his
daughter passed the night with us and Edith Davidson, Ellen’s
“daughter,” came to breakfast. We talked over again the
pleasure of the night before. Emerson had never heard Hunt talk
before and had seldom found Longfellow so expansive. Holmes
met J. in the course of the day, and told him he had a real
good time, though he did have a thumping headache—he was much
pleased with Alice Longfellow.

_Tuesday, May 21._—Call from Mr. Emerson, Mrs. E. and Ellen.
They came in a body to thank me, which Mrs. Emerson did in
a little set speech after her own fashion, at which we all
laughed heartily—especially at the “profit” clause. Indeed we
had a very merry time altogether. Mr. Emerson gave “Queenie”
permission to look all about the room, “for indeed there was
not such another in all Boston—no indeed [half soliloquizing],
not such another.” Then he looked about and told them the wrong
names of the painters, and would have been entirely satisfied
if he had not referred to me, when I was obliged to tell the
truth and so from that time he made me speaker. He said he
should do his very best for the university class for women
for next December to make up for having served them so badly
this winter. He said I had _very gently_ reminded him of his
entire forgetfulness to fulfil an engagement or half-engagement
to come to speak to them this winter. “Queenie” told me she
was one of the few persons who had read Miss Mitford’s poems,
“Blanche” and all the rest, and liked them very much. So the
various portraits of the old lady interested her much.

They came down to Boston, Mrs. E. said, on purpose to make this
call. I had just returned home from a long drive about town on
business, so it was the best possible moment for me.

Our first thought this morning (J’s. and mine) was, how could
Mr. Emerson finish his course of “Conversations,” which had
been so brilliant until the last, in so unsatisfactory a
manner. His matter was for the most part old, and he finished
with reading well-known hymns of Dr. Watts and Mrs. Barbauld. I
fear we were all disappointed. Some of the lectures (especially
the one on “Love”) have been so fine that we were bitterly
disappointed.

A later reference to Emerson shows him in Philadelphia, and through the eyes of a qualified observer there. The passage was written at Manchester-by-the-Sea, to which Mr. and Mrs. Fields had begun to pay summer visits even before 1872, and where they soon acquired that cottage of their own on “Thunderbolt Hill,” which belied its name in serving as the most peaceful of retreats for Mrs. Fields and the friends she was constantly summoning to her side through all the remainder of her life.

_Tuesday, August 25, 1872._—Miss A. Whitney came Saturday and
remained until Monday morning. Sunday evening we passed at
Mrs. Towne’s. Mrs. Annis Wister[17] of Pennsylvania had just
arrived, a dramatic creature, who tells and tells again at
request, with as much amiability as talent, her wonderful story
of Father Donne, the Irish priest, who performed the marriage
ceremony for one of her servants. Mrs. Wister, in spite of a
lisp, has a thoroughly clear enunciation. She never leaves a
sentence unfinished nor suffers the imagination to complete any
corner of her picture. She is exceedingly lively and witty,
and Miss Whitney, whose mind is quite different and altogether
introverted, busied over her artistic conceptions, could not
help a feeling of envy. The gift of narration, so rare in
this country, has been carefully cultivated by Mrs. Wister,
and poor Miss Whitney could only wonder and admire. I could
see her fine large eyes glow with pleasure and desire as she
listened to her. Mrs. Wister told me an odd thing, which shows
her as an individual. She asked me how the testimonial to Mr.
Emerson was progressing, as her father was much interested and
thought nothing he possessed too good to be given at once to
Mr. Emerson, nor indeed worthy of his acceptance, and she would
like to write him. I told her I believed the sum had reached
$10,000, and had already been presented. This led her to say
the friendship of her father for Mr. Emerson, and indeed their
mutual friendship, as she then believed it to be, dated back
to their youth, when Mr. Emerson was first writing his poems
and delighting over the illustrations her father would make for
them. As she grew up, she became dissatisfied at the relation
between them. She thought Mr. Furness, her father, gave much
more to Mr. Emerson in the way of friendship than Mr. Emerson
ever appreciated. This went on until she became about eighteen
years of age, when Mr. Emerson chanced to be visiting them in
Pennsylvania. One day she was standing upon the stairs near the
front door, and Mr. Emerson was ready to go out and waiting
there for her father, who had withdrawn for a moment. Her heart
was full, and suddenly she turned upon Mr. Emerson, and said,
“Mr. Emerson, I think you cannot know what a treasure you have
in this friendship of my father. He loves you dearly and I fear
you cannot appreciate what it is to have the love of such a man
as my father.” She says to this day she grows “pank,” as the
Scotchman said, all over at such presumption, but she could not
help it.

I asked what Mr. Emerson replied. He looked surprised, she
said, and cast his eyes down, and then said earnestly that he
knew and felt deeply how unworthy he was to enjoy the riches of
such a friendship.

This incident presented Mrs. Wister as well as Mr. Emerson
under a keen light. They could never understand each other.

From October, 1872, until the following May, Emerson and his daughter Ellen were traveling abroad. On their return Mrs. Fields wrote in her journal:—

_Thursday, May 27, 1873._—The Nortons came home with the
Emersons day before yesterday. Emerson came to pass an hour
with J. T. F. before going to Concord. His son Edward had come
down to meet him and was full of excitement over the reception
his father was to receive and of which he was altogether
ignorant. He was overjoyed to be on the old ground again and
comes back to value the old friends even more than ever. He
must have been much pleased by the joy testified in Concord,
but we have only the newspaper account of that. He has been
fêted more than ever in England, and Ellen was rather worn out
by the ovations; but her general health is much improved. The
Nortons, who returned in the same steamer, tell me Miss Emerson
was fêted for her own sake and was his rival! Her “American
manners” became all the rage in that world of novelty. One
night a gentleman sitting next her at dinner introduced the
word “æsthetic.” She said she did not understand what he meant
by that word!

On the voyage Emerson was devoted to his daughter and full
of fun in all his talk with her. He would tuck her up in
blanket shawls and go up and down, hither and yon, to make
her comfortable—then he would laugh at her for being such an
exacting young lady and would be very ironical about the manner
in which she would allow him to wait on her. “And yet,” he
said, turning to the Nortons, “Ellen is the torch of religion
at home.”

Throughout the journals Mrs. Fields’s references to meetings of the Saturday Club, and the records of conversation reported by her husband after these lively gatherings, are frequent. In one brief entry Parkman, Lowell, and Emerson appear in a conjunction that could hardly have been happy at the moment, but the concluding words of the passage may well stand, for their appreciation of Emerson, at the end of these pages concerned chiefly with him.

_August 26, 1874._— ... Parkman said to Lowell, and a more
strange evidence of lapse of tact could hardly be discovered,
“Lowell, what did you mean by ‘the land of broken promise’?”
Emerson, catching at this last, said, “What is this about the
land of broken promise?” clearly showing he had never read
Lowell’s Ode upon the death of Agassiz—whereat Lowell answered
not at all, but dropped his eyes and silence succeeded,
although Parkman made some kind of futile attempt to struggle
out of it. Emerson said, “We have met two great losses in our
Club since you were last here—Agassiz and Sumner.” “Yes,” said
Lowell, “but a greater than either was that of a man I could
never make you believe in as I did—Hawthorne.” This ungracious
speech silenced even Emerson, whose warm hospitality to the
thought and speech of others is usually unending.

In “Authors and Friends” Mrs. Fields concerned herself with Longfellow and Whittier at even greater length than with Holmes and Emerson. The Whittier paper, besides, was printed as a small separate volume; and in Samuel T. Pickard’s “Life of Whittier,” as in Samuel Longfellow’s biography of his brother, the letters from Whittier, as from Longfellow, to Mrs. Fields, and to her husband, bear witness to valued intimacies. Neither to Whittier nor to Longfellow, therefore, does it seem desirable to devote a special section of these papers; nor yet to Lowell, who never became the subject of published reminiscences by Mrs. Fields, perhaps for the very reason that he figures somewhat less frequently than the others in her journal. Yet there are many allusions to him, and in addition to the letters to Fields which Norton selected for his “Letters of James Russell Lowell,” and Scudder for his biography of Lowell, a surprising number of unprinted, characteristic communications, both to Fields and to his wife, testify to their friendship. The remainder of this chapter cannot be more profitably employed than by drawing from Mrs. Fields’s journal passages relating to these and other local guests of the Charles Street house, and supplementing the diary especially with a few of Lowell’s sprightly letters to his successor in the editorship of the “Atlantic Monthly.” It may be remarked, as fairly indicative of the relations between Lowell and the Fieldses through many years, that when they visited England in 1869 their traveling companion was Lowell’s daughter Mabel.

_From the crayon portrait by Rowse in the Harvard College Library_]

Here, to begin with, is a note written to accompany one of Lowell’s most familiar poems, “After the Burial,” when he sent the manuscript to the editor of the “Atlantic.” Lowell’s practice of shunning capitals at the beginning of his letters, except for the first personal pronoun, is observed in the quotations that follow:—

ELMWOOD, _8th March, 1868_

MY DEAR FIELDS:—