Chapter IV: Part 4

when I am in a financial crisis, which is on an average once
in six weeks, I look first to my portfolio and then to you.
The verses I send you are most of them more than of age, but
Professors don’t write poems, and I even begin to doubt if
poets do—always. But I suppose you will pay me for my name as
you do others, and so I send the verses hoping you may also
find something in _them_ that is worth praise if not coin.
Consolation and commonplace are twin sisters and I doubt not
one sat at each ear of Eve after Cain’s misunderstanding with
his brother. In some folks they cause resentment, and this
little burst relieved mine under some desperate solacings after
the death of our first child, twenty-one years ago. I trust
there is nothing too immediately personal to myself in the poem
to make the publishing of it a breach of that confidence which
a man should keep sacred with himself.

With kind regards to Mrs. Fields, I remain always yours,

J. R. LOWELL

Another typical letter, dated “Elmwood, 12th July, 1868, ¼ to 9 AM wind W. by N. Therm 88°,” begins:—

MY DEAR FIELDS:—

as I swelter here, it is some consolation for me that you are
roasting in that Yankee-baker which we call the Wᵗᵉ Mᵗˢ. That
repercussion of the sun’s heat from so many angles at once
(the focus being the tourist) always struck me as one of the
sublimest examples of the unvarying operation of natural laws.
I wish you and Mrs. Fields might be made exceptions, but it can
hardly be hoped.

Before the end of the month Fields had escaped the perils of New Hampshire heat, and paid a visit to Elmwood, thus chronicled by Mrs. Fields:—

_July 25, 1868._—J. went out to see Lowell last night. As he
passed Longfellow’s door, “Trap,” the dog, was half-asleep
apparently on the lawn, but hearing a foot-step he leaped up
and, seeing who it was, became overjoyed, leaped upon him and
covered his hands with caresses. He stayed some time playing
with him. Lowell was alone in his library, looking into an
empty fire-place and smoking a pipe. He has been in Newport
for a week, but was delighted to return to find his “own
sponge hanging on its nail” and to his books. He had become
quite morbid because, while J. was away, a smaller sum than
usual was sent him for his last poem. He thought it a delicate
way of saying they wished to drop him. He was annoyed at the
thought of having left out of his article on Dryden one of the
finest points, he thought, that was making Dryden to appear the
“Rubens” of literature, which he appears to him to be.

Lowell is a man deeply pervaded with fine discontents. I do
not believe the most favorable circumstances would improve
him. Success, of which he has a very small share considering
his deserts (for his books have a narrow circulation), would
make him gayer and happier; whether so wise a man, I cannot but
doubt.

He wears a chivalric, tender manner to his wife.

In the following autumn, Bayard Taylor and his wife were paying a visit in Charles Street, and Lowell appears in Mrs. Fields’s journal as one of the friends summoned in their honor.

_Thursday morning, November 19, 1868._—Mr. Parton came to
breakfast and Dr. Holmes came in before we had quite done. O.
W. H. was delighted to see Mr. P., because of his papers on
“Smoking and Drinking.” He believes smoking paralyzes the will.
Taylor, on the contrary, feels himself better for smoking; it
subdues his physical energy so he can write; otherwise he is
nervous to be up and away and his mind will not work.

At dinner we had Lowell, Parton, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Mr.
and Mrs. Scott-Siddons and, later, Aldrich. Lowell talked
most interestingly, head and shoulders beyond everybody else.
The Siddonses left early, the gentlemen all smitten by her
beauty and loveliness. A kind of childish grace pervaded her
and she was beautiful as a picture. I could not wonder at
their delight. Lowell’s talk after their departure was of
literature, of course. He has been reading Calderon for the
last six months, in the original. He finds him inexhaustible
almost. Speaking of novels, he said Fielding was the master,
although he considers there are but two perfect creations of
individual character in all literature; these are Falstaff and
Don Quixote; all the rest fell infinitely below—are imperfect
and unworthy to stand by their side. Tom Jones he thought might
come in, in the second rank, with many others, but far below.
He said he could not tell his boys at Cambridge to read Tom
Jones, for it might do them harm; but Fielding painted his own
experience and the result was unrivalled. Thackeray and the
rest were pleasant reading, very pleasant, and yet how could
he tell his class that he read Tom Jones once a year![18] He
scouted the idea of Pickwick or anybody else approaching his
two great characters. They stood alone for all time. Rip Van
Winkle was suggested, but he said in the first place that was
not original. Few persons knew the story perhaps in the old
Latin (he gave the name, but unhappily I have forgotten it) but
it was only a remade dish after all.

_Friday._—Bayard Taylor and his wife left for New York. Mr.
Parton dined out and we had a quiet evening at home and went
to bed early. (Parton thinks it would be possible to make the
“Atlantic Monthly” far more popular. He suggests a writer named
Mark Twain be engaged, and more articles connected with life
than with literature.)

It is easy to believe that Lowell’s talk must have sounded much like his letters, which so often sound like talk. Witness the following sentences from a letter of December 21, 1868, in reply, apparently, to an appeal for a new essay for the “Atlantic”:—

Well, well, I am always astonished at the good nature of folks,
and how much boring they will stand from authors. As I told
Howells once, the day will come when a wiser generation will
drive all its literary men into a corner and make a _battue_ of
the whole lot. However, “after me, the deluge,” as Nero said,
and I suppose they’ll stand another essay or two yet, if I can
divine, or rather if I have absorbed enough of the general
feeling about something to put a point on it.

It’s a mercy I’m not conceited! I should like to be, and try
to be, and have fizzes of it now and then, but they soon go
out and leave a _fogo_ behind them I don’t like. But if I only
were for a continuance I should be as grand a bore as ever
lived—as grand as Wordsworth, by Jove! I would come into town
once a week to read you over one of my old poems (selecting
the longest, of course), and point out its beauties to you.
You would flee to _Tierra del Fuego_ (ominous name!) to escape
me. You would give up publishing. You would write an epic and
read a book just to _me_ every time I came. But no, it is too
bright a dream. Let me [be] satisfied with my class, who have
to hear me once a week, and with just enough conceit to read
my lectures as if I had not stolen ’em, as I am apt to do now.
Look out for an essay that shall [make] Montaigne and Bacon
cross as the devil—when they come to read it! It will come ere
you think.

Yours ever,

FABIUS C. LOWELL

A few weeks later Lowell was writing again to Fields, on January 12, 1869, about a fiftieth birthday party at Elmwood:—

I am going to celebrate my golden wedding with Life, on the
22nd of next month, by a dinner or a supper or something of the
kind, and I want you to _jine_. I shall get together a dozen or
so of old friends, and it will be a great satisfaction for you
and me to see how _much grayer_ the rest of ’em are than we. I
shall fit my invitations to this end, and the bald and hoary
will have the chance of the lame, the halt, and the blind in
the parable. If it should be a dinner, it won’t matter, but if
a supper, be sure and forget your night-key and then you won’t
have any anxiety, nor Mrs. Fields either. Of course, I shall
have an account of the affair in the papers with a list of the
gifts (especially in money) and the names of all who _donate_.
You will understand by what I have said that it is to be one
of those delightful things they call a “surprise party,” and I
expect to live on it for a year—one friend for every month.

A week later, in the course of a letter accepting the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Fields for Lowell’s daughter to accompany them to Europe, he wrote: “Do you see that —— is to commence his autobiography in ‘Putnam’s Magazine’? At least, I take it for granted from the title—The Ass in Life and Literature? If sincerely done, it will be interesting.”

For all the transcendentalism of the circle to which Mrs. Fields bore so intimate a relation, there emanated from Lowell and others an atmosphere of sincerity which helped to preserve the equilibrium of the more easily swayed. Mrs. Fields herself was not immune to the appeal of some of the “isms” of the time and place, but an entry in her journal for January 18, 1870, shows her in no great peril of being swept away by them:—

Attended yesterday a meeting of what is called the Radical
Club. Mr. Channing spoke, Mr. Higginson, Wendell Phillips,
Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mr. Bartol, Wasson, J. F. Clarke,
Edna Cheney. Mr. Whittier was present and a room full of
“come-outers.” Mr. Channing and Mr. Phillips were reverent,
though I think Mr. Phillips more definite, and perhaps
consequently more conservative, in what he said. Certainly Mr.
Phillips’s speech was highly satisfactory. On the whole there
was much vague talk and restless expression of self without any
high end being furthered. I thought much of Mr. Higginson’s
talk and Mr. Wasson’s irreverent answer were untrue. Perhaps I
am wrong in saying no good end is attained by such a meeting.
Perhaps a closer understanding of what we do believe is the
result. But there is much unpleasant in the unnatural and
excited view of the inside ring.[19]

There was, moreover, a constant corrective at hand in the persons of the local wits, among whom Longfellow’s brother-in-law, Thomas Gold (“Tom”) Appleton, was of the most clear-sighted. His definition of Nahant as “cold roast Boston,” and his prescription for tempering the gales on a particularly windy Boston corner by tethering a shorn lamb there, have secured him something more than a local survival. He frequently left his mark on the pages of Mrs. Fields’s diary—once venturing seriously into prophecy on the spiritual future of Boston, in terms which will seem, at least, _in partibus infidelium_, to have received a certain confirmation at the hands of time. In the diary the following entry is found:—

_Sunday, November 6, 1870._—Appleton (Tom, as the world calls
him) came in soon after breakfast Sunday morning. He talked
very wisely and brilliantly upon Art, its value and purpose to
the state, the necessity for the Museum. He said our people
were far more literary than artistic. The sensuous side of
their nature was undeveloped. The richness of color, the glory
of form, was less to them than something which could set the
sharp edge of their intellect in motion. “Besides, what is
Boston going to do,” he said, “when these fellows die who give
it its honor now, Longfellow, Holmes, and the rest? They can’t
live forever, and with them its glory will depart without it
is sustained by a foundation for art in other directions.
Harvard University will do something to keep it up, but not
much, and unless a distinct effort be made now, Boston will
lose its place and go behind.” He became much excited by the
lack of appreciation for William Story in Boston, and the
abuse of the Everett statue, which he considers good in its
way and as marking the highest point in Everett’s oratorical
fame, that is, when he lifted his hand to indicate the stars in
his address at Albany, and set his fame some points nearer the
luminaries which inspired him, by his fine eloquence.

He said a merchant told him one day that he didn’t like Story’s
portrait statues, but his ideal work he was delighted with.
“You lie!” I said to him. “The beautiful Shepherd-Boy which I
helped to buy and bring to Boston you know nothing of—you can’t
tell me now in which corner of the Public Library it is hidden
away. I tell you, you lie!”

He spoke of the Saturday Club, and said that, although he
sometimes smiled at Holmes’s enthusiasm over it, he believed
in the main he was quite right, and it would be remembered in
future as Johnson’s Club has been, and recorded and talked of
in the same way.

Unfortunately I don’t see their Boswell. I wish I could believe
there was a single chiel amang them takin’ notes.[20]

On December 14, 1870, the diary recorded a dinner at which Longfellow, Osgood, Aldrich, Holmes, Dana, Howells, Lowell, and Bayard Taylor were the guests. It celebrated the completion of Taylor’s translation of “Faust.” Of the talk of Lowell and Longfellow, Mrs. Fields wrote:—

Before dinner I found opportunity for a short talk with Lowell
upon literature. He thinks the chief value of Bret Harte is
his local color and it would be a fatal mistake for him to
come East, in spite of Taylor’s representation of the aridity
of intellectual life now in California. Taylor finds the same
reason for leaving his native place. He regrets his large
house, and frankly says he is tired of living there, tired of
living alone, there being really no one in the vicinity with
whom he can associate as on equal grounds. There is no culture,
not even a love for it, in the neighborhood.

But I have not said half enough of Longfellow. He scintillated
all the evening, was filled with the spirit of the time and the
scene, sweetly reprimanded Taylor for not having time to give
him a visit also, darted his _jeux d’esprit_ rapidly right and
left, often setting the table in a roar, a most unusual thing
with him. Holmes at the other end was talking about the natural
philosophers who “invented facts.” Lowell took exception, said
it was an impossible juxtaposition of ideas and words. Holmes
defended himself by quoting (I think the name was Carius;
whoever it was, Lowell said at once and rather warningly, he is
a very distinguished name) a series of created facts by which
he said a woman was not articulated or not as a man is (perhaps
I have not his exact ideas); whereat Longfellow at once held up
the _inarticulate_ woman to the amusement of the table. Then
they began to talk of the singular persons this world contains,
“quite as strange as Dickens,” as they always say; and Taylor,
who introduced the subject, proceeded to relate an incident
which happened to him in a cheap coffee house in New York.
It was near a railway station, so he dropped in, finding it
convenient so to do, at an hour not usually popular with the
frequenters of such establishments. It was empty save for an
extraordinary figure with long arms, short legs and misshapen
body, who, hearing a glass of ale ordered, came forward and
said if he pleased he would like to have _his_ ale at the same
table for the sake of company. There was nothing to do but
to comply, which Taylor of course did, whereupon the strange
creature, never asking who Taylor was, went on to relate that
_he_ was the great man-monkey of the world who could hang from
a tree and eat nuts and make the true noise in the throat
better than any other; he had no competitor except one of the
Ravel brothers, but he (Ravel) was not the real thing; he
himself alone could make the noise perfectly....

They all drank the exquisite Ehrbacher Rhine wine from tall
green German glasses of antique form, which delighted them
greatly. Jamie was much entertained by Holmes’s finding them
“good conversational aperient, but ugly. I should always have
them on the table, but they are not handsome.” Longfellow was
delighted with my Venetian lace bodice; it seemed to have a
flavor of Venice about it in his eyes. It was a real pleasure
to me to see his appreciation of a thing Jamie and I really
enjoy so much.

I have not reported all, by any means, but time fails me now.
A thought of Dickens was continually present, as it must be
forever at a company dinner-table. How many beautiful feasts
have I enjoyed by his side! There is none like him, none.

Taylor wrote a friendly German inscription in his book and
presented me after dinner.

There were amusing traits of Elizabeth Peabody given.
Longfellow remembered that the first time he met her was in
a carriage. She was taken up in the dark. Hearing his name
mentioned, she leaned forward and said, “Mr. Longfellow, can
you tell me which is the best Chinese Grammar?”

A midsummer entry of the same year suggests the part that an editor’s wife may play in the successful conduct of a magazine, if only through sharing the enthusiasm that attends the first reading of a manuscript of distinguished merit.

_Saturday, July 16, 1870._—A perfect summer day. Jamie did not
go to town, but with a bag full of letters and MSS. concluded
to remain here. He fell first upon a MS. by Henry James,
Jr., a short story called “Compagnons de Voyage,” and after
tasting of it in our room and finding the quality good (though
the handwriting was execrable), I invited my dear boy to a
favorite nook in the pasture where we could hear the sea and
catch a distant gleam of its blue face while we were still in
shadow and fanned by oak leaves. It was one of those delicious
seasons which summer can bring to the dullest heart, I believe
and hope. We lay down with our feet plunged into the cool
delicious grass, while I read the pleasant tale of Italy to the
close. I do not know why success in work should affect us so
powerfully, but I could have wept as I finished reading, not
from the sweet low pathos of the tale, which was not tearful,
but from the knowledge of the writer’s success. It is so
difficult to do anything well in this mysterious world.

On the very next day Lowell wrote Fields a letter which must have been read with delight by such friends of Dickens as the Fieldses. The decorated sonnet which filled its third sheet is reproduced herewith in facsimile: the plainness of Lowell’s script renders type superfluous. The mere fact that the death of Dickens could have called forth clerical expressions provoking Lowell to such scorn is in itself a measure of the distance we have travelled since 1870. The verses are not included in Lowell’s “Poetical Works,” nor are they listed in the “Bibliography of James Russell Lowell,” compiled by George Willis Cooke. With two slight changes they may be found, however, over Lowell’s signature, in “Every Saturday,” for August 6, 1870.

ELMWOOD, _17th July, 1870_

MY DEAR FIELDS:—

I can stand it no longer! If Dickens is to be banned, the rest
of us might as well fling up our hands. This hot weather, too,
gives a foretaste that raises well-founded apprehension. It
is a good primary school for the Institution of which the
Rev’ds Fulton and Dunn seem to be ushers. Instead of going to
Church today, where I might have heard something not wholly to
my advantage, as the advertisements for _lost_ people say, I
have written a sermon. It is not a proper sonnet, but a cross
between that and epigram—a kind of bull-terrier, in short, with
the size of the one and the prick-ears and docked tail of the
other, nor without his special talent for rats. Is there any
grip in his jaw or no? He is good-natured and scarce shows his
teeth.

The thing is an improvisation and the weather awfully hot!

Sweltered your servant sits and sweats and swears: (for
alliteration only) but if you would like it for the “Atlantic,”
why here it is on the next leaf. Or, if too late, why not
“Every Saturday”? I could not even think of it sooner, for I
have been wrestling with a bad head and an article on Chaucer,
and I fear they have thrown me. I want rest, and a bath of
poetry, but where may the wicked hope for either? My sonnet
(if Leigh Hunt would let me call it so) hit me like a stray
shot from nowhere that I could divine, and five minutes saw it
finished. So why may it not be good? It came, anyhow, as a poem
comes—though it isn’t just that. But my dog isn’t bad? He is
from the life at any rate.

I shall make use of my first leisure to get into Boston.
But I have got bedevilled with the text of Chaucer and am
working on it with my usual phrenzy—thirteen hours, for
example, yesterday, collating texts and writing into margins.
I comfort myself that my Chaucer will bring a handsome price
at my _vandoo_! I shall be easier in my coffin if it run up
handsomely for Fanny and Mabel.

Do you want an essay for your “Almanac” if one should come,
which is doubtful? I need one or two more to make a little
volume, and I need a little volume for nameless reasons. O, if
I could sell my land! I would transmute that gold into poetry.
Or if only poems would come when you whistle for ’em!

Give my kindest regards to Mrs Fields.

Yours always,

J. R. L.

From my study, this first day for three weeks without a drowsy
pain in my knowledge box, I really feel a little lively, and
wonder at myself. But don’t be alarmed—it won’t last, any more
than money does, or principle in a politician, or hair, or
popular favor—or paper.

Lowell and Longfellow continue to make their appearances in Mrs. Fields’s diary.

_December 7, 1871._—Last Sunday Charlotte Cushman dined here.
Our guests asked to meet her were Mr. and Mrs. Lowell and
Mr. Longfellow; Miss Stebbins and Miss Chapman, her guests,
also came. We had a lovely social time, Lowell making himself
especially interesting, as he always does when he can once work
himself up to the pitch of going out at all. He talked a while
with me about poetry and his own topics after dinner. He said
he was one of the few people who believed in absolute truth;
that he always looked for certain qualities in writers, which
if he could not discover, they no longer interested him and
he did not care to read them. He discovered, for instance, in
the writers who had survived the centuries the same kindred
points, those points he studied until he discovered what the
adamant was and where it was founded; then he would look into
the writers of our own age to see if he could find the same
stuff; there was little enough of it unfortunately. He does
not like Reynolds’s portrait of Johnson, thought it untrue,
far too handsome, yet highly characteristic in the management
of the hands, which portray the man as he was when talking
better probably than anything ever did. Mrs. Lowell appeared to
enjoy herself. J. says L. is always more himself if Mrs. L. is
happy and talkative. They are thinking of Europe. Mabel is to
be married in April, and afterward they probably go at once to
Europe.

A small party of friends assembled in the evening. Longfellow
was the beloved and observed and worshipped among all.

_From a photograph taken in middle life_]

_April 11, 1872._—Last night Jamie dined with Longfellow. John
Field of Pennsylvania and Lowell were the two other guests.
J. was there twenty minutes before the rest arrived, and
Longfellow gave him an account of the wedding of a school-mate
of mine, —— ——, an excellent generous-hearted, generously built
woman, with a little limping old clergyman who has already had
three wives and whose first name is ——. Longfellow said, in
memory of what had gone before, the organist, as if driven
by some evil spirit, played “Auld Lang Syne,” as the wedding
procession came in, consisting of the bride and her brother,
two very well-made large persons and the elderly bridegroom
limping on behind all alone. The organist suddenly stopped at
this point, breaking off with a queer little quirk and shiver
as if he only then discovered what he was doing. Indeed the
whole wedding appeared to have points to affect the risibles
of the poet. He could hardly speak of it without laughter.
He said, moreover, that it was, he thought, disgusting and
outrageous for old men to get married.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Nihil tetigit quod non fregit._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA[22]

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

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

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

_From a portrait by Francis Alexander, for many years in the Fields house, and now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts_]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_From a Humorous Drawing by_ ALFRED BRYAN, 1879.

DICKENS AND FECHTER]

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

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

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

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

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

He spoke of the fineness of his Parisian audience:—“the most
delicately appreciative of all audiences.” He also gave a
most ludicrous account of a seasick curate trying to read the
service on board ship last Sunday. He tells us Browning is
really about to marry Miss Ingelow, and of Carlyle, that he is
deeply saddened, irretrievably, by the death of his wife. Just
as we were in a tempest of laughter over some witticism of his,
he jumped up, seized me by the hand, and said good-night. He
neither smoked nor drank. “I never do either from the time my
readings ‘set in,’” he said, as if it were a rainy season....

Among other interesting personal facts Dickens told us that
he had last year burned all his private letters. An appeal
from the daughter of Sydney Smith for some of his letters set
him thinking on the subject, and one day when there was a big
fire—[sentence unfinished].

Mr. Dickens left the table just as we were in a tempest of
laughter. Dr. Holmes ... was telling how inappreciative he had
found some country audiences—one he remembered in especial
when his landlady accompanied him to the lecture and her face,
he observed, was the only one which relaxed its grimness!
“Probably because she saw money enough in the house to cover
your expenses,” rejoined Dickens. That was enough; the laughter
was prodigious....

_Wednesday, November 27._—What a pity that these days have
flown while I have been unable to make any record of them.
J. has been to walk each day with Dickens, and has come home
full of wonderful things he has said.[25] His variety is so
inexhaustible that one can only listen in wonder.

_Thursday, 28._—Thanksgiving Day. J. took Dickens to see the
Aldriches’ house. He was very much amused by what he saw there
and has written out a full account to his daughter, Mrs.
Collins....

I have made no record of our supper party of Wednesday evening.
We had Alfred to wait, and a pretty supper and more important
by far (tho’ the first a consequent of the last) a pretty
company. There were Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Helen Bell and
Mrs. Silsbee, Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Hillard and Louisa and
Mr. Beal. Mrs. Bell sang a little before supper (“Douglas”
for one) very gracefully with real feeling. At nine o’clock
oysters and fun began; finally Mr. Dickens told several ghost
stories, but none of them more interesting than a little bit
of clairvoyance or what-you-will, which he let drop concerning
himself. He said a story was sent to him for “All the Year
Round,” which he liked and accepted; just after the matter had
been put in type, he received a letter from another person
altogether from the one who had forwarded it in the first
place, saying that _he_ and not the first man was the author,
and in proof of his position he supplied a date which was
wanting in the first paper. Curiously enough, Mr. Dickens,
seeing the story hinged upon a date and the date being but a
blank in the MS., had supplied one, as it were by chance, and,
behold! _it was the same date which the new man had sent_.

_Sunday._—Dined with Mr. Dickens at six o’clock. Mr. and Mrs.
Bigelow, Mr. Dolby and ourselves were the only guests.

After dinner we played two or three games which I will set down
lest they should be forgotten.

Descriptions of “Buzz,” “Russian Scandal,” and another wholly innocent amusement may be omitted.

_Monday night, December 2, 1867._—The first great reading! How
we listened till we seemed turned into one eyeball! How we all
loved him! How we longed to tell him all kinds of confidences!
How Jamie and he did hug in the anteroom afterward! What a
teacher he seemed to us of humanity as he read out his own
words which have enchanted us from childhood! And what a house
it was! Longfellow, Dana, Norton (Mrs. Dana, Jr., and the three
little Andrews went with us), and a world of lovely faces and
ardent admirers.