Chapter VI: Part 6

_Sunday, April 12._—Last night we went to the circus together,
C. D., J., and I. It is a pretty building. I was astonished
at the knowledge C. D. showed of everything before him. He
knew how the horses were stenciled, how tight the wire bridles
were, etc. The monkey was, however, the chief attraction. He
was rather drunk or tired last night and did not show to good
advantage, but he knew how to do all the things quite as well
as the men. When the young rope-dancer slipped (he was but an
apprentice at the business, without wages, C. D. thought), he
tried over and over again to accomplish a certain somersault
until he achieved it. “That’s the law of the circus,” said C.
D.; “they are never allowed to give up, and it’s a capital rule
for everything in life. Doubtless this idea has been handed
down from the Greeks or Romans and these people know nothing
about where it came from. But it’s well for all of us.” ...

At six o’clock Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby came in to dinner. He
seemed much revived both in health and spirits, in spite of the
weather....

Dickens talked of Frédérick Lemaître; he is upwards of sixty
years old now; but he has always lived a wretched life, a low,
poor fellow; yet he will surprise the actors continually by the
new points he will make. He will come in at rehearsal, go about
the stage in an abject wretched manner, with clothes torn and
soiled as he has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts,
and without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently he
says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle burning
on his box, “Give me your candle”; then he will blow it out
and with the snuff make a cross upon his book. “What are you
going to do, Frédérick?” the actors say. “I don’t know yet;
you’ll see by and by,” he says, and day after day perhaps will
pass, until one night when he will suddenly flash upon them
some wonderful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to
hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least hint
will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he will ask for
a chair. “What will you do with it, Frédérick?” He does not
reply, but night after night the chair is placed there until he
makes his point. He often comes hungry to the theatre, and the
manager must give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go
on. Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells Dickens
that there can be nothing more wonderful than his acting in the
old scene of the miserable father who kills his own son at the
inn. The son, coming in rich and handsome, and seeing this old
sot about to be driven from the porch by the servant, tells
the man to give him meat and wine. While he eats and drinks,
the wretch sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and
resolves to kill him. Fechter’s description, with his own
knowledge of Lemaître, had so inspired Dickens that he was able
to reproduce him again for us.

_Wednesday, April 15._—[On returning from a reading in
“Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be worse for reading
or speaking”]: He soon came up after a little soup, when he
called for brandy and lemons and made _such_ a burnt brandy
punch as has been seldom tasted this side of the “pond.” As
the punch blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an
old-fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given
between the plays at the theatre. One song led to another until
we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for anything more comic
than his renderings of the chorus cannot be imagined. Surely
there is no living actor who could excel him in these things
if he chose to exert his ability. His rendering of “Chrush ke
lan ne chouskin!!” or a lingo which sounded like that (the
refrain of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We
laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself too
hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old song full of
rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty and circumlocution,
to the word “annuity,” which it appeared has been sought
by an old woman with great _assiduity_ and granted with
immense _incongruity_. The negro minstrels have in great part
supplanted these queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads,
but they are sure to come up again from time to time. We did
not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said)
as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not forget, Dolby and
he, to pay a proper tribute to “Maryland, My Maryland,” and
“Dixie” as very stirring ballads.

[After another reading, from which Dickens came home extremely
tired]: We ran in at once to talk with him and he soon cheered
up. When I first pushed open the door he was a perfect picture
of prostration, his head thrown back without support on the
couch, the blood suffusing his throat and temples again where
he had been very white a few minutes before. This is a physical
peculiarity with Dickens which I have never seen before in a
man, though women are very subject to that thing. Excitement
and exercise of reading will make the blood rush into his hands
until they become at times almost black, and his face and head
(especially since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red
to white and back to red again without his being conscious of
it.

_Friday, April 17._—Weather excessively warm, sky often
overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again and for the last
time “Copperfield” and “Bob Sawyer.” He was much exhausted
and said he watched a man who was carried out in a fainting
condition to see how they managed it, with the lively interest
of one who was about to go through the same scene himself.
The heat from the gas around him was intolerable. After the
reading we went into his room to have a little soup, “broiled
bones,” and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were good in spite of
fatigue, the thought of home and the memories of England coming
back vividly. We, finally, from talk of English scenery, found
ourselves in Stratford. He says there is an inn at Rochester,
very old, which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This
conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking
that way and discovered Charles’s Wain setting over the chimney
just as Shakespeare has described. “When you come to Gad’s
Hill, please God, I will show you Charles’s Wain setting over
the old roof.”

We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he hardly closed
his eyes all night. Whether he was haunted by visions of home,
or what the cause was, we cannot discover, but whatever it
may be, his strength fails under such unnatural and continual
excitement.

_Saturday, April 18._—Mr. Dickens has a badly sprained foot.
We like our rooms at his hotel—47 is the number. Last night
was “Marigold” and “Gamp” for the last time. He threw in a few
touches for our amusement and a great deal of vigor into the
whole. Afterward we took supper together, when he told us some
remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a scene described
to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of London of a man about to
be hanged. His last hour had approached as the doctor entered
the cell of the criminal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a
wretch was for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate
child. The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and
forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman in
attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and religious in
his frame of mind, was administering the sacrament. The wine
stood in a cup at one side until the sacred words were said,
when at the proper moment the clergyman gave it to the man,
who was still rocking backward and forward, muttering, “What
will my poor mother think of this?” Finding the cup in his
hands, he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect
himself, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse manner,
he said, “Gen’lemen, I drink your health,” and drained the
cup in a drunken way. “I think,” said C. D., “it is thirty
years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell me this, but I shall
never forget the horror that scene inspired in my mind.” The
talk had taken this turn from the fact of a much-dreaded Press
dinner which is to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed
the idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often
thought how restricted one’s conversation must become with a
man who was to be hanged in half an hour. “You could not say,
if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what
would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine
my remarks to the times of Julius Cæsar and King Alfred!!” He
then related a story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence
could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was seated
before a fire for a few moments, just before his execution,
when a servant entered and smothered what fire there was with
a huge hodful of coal. “_In half an hour that will be a good
fire_,” he was heard to murmur.

Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a dream.

_Sunday, April 19._—Last night the great New York Press dinner
came off. It was a close squeeze with Mr. Dickens to get there
at all. He had been taken lame the night before, his foot
becoming badly swollen and painful. In spite of a skilful
physician he grew worse and worse every hour, and when the
time for the dinner arrived he was unable to bear anything
upon his foot. So long as he was above ground, however, it
was a necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after
the time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he
made his way to Delmonico’s. Poor man! Nothing could be more
unfortunate, but he bore this difficult part off in a stately
and composed manner as if it were a sign of the garter he
were doffing for the first time instead of a badge of ill
health. The worst of it is that the papers will telegraph news
of his illness to England. This seems to disturb him more
than anything else. Ah! What a mystery these ties of love
are—such pain, such ineffable happiness—the only happiness.
After his return he repeated to me from memory every word of
his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of such a
thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it over in
his mind and “balances the sentences,” when he is all right.
He produced an immense effect on the Press of New York,
tremendous applause responding to every sentence. Curtis’s
speech was very beautiful. “I think him the very best speaker
I ever heard,” said C. D. “I am sure he would produce a great
effect in England from the sympathetic quality he possesses.”
I have seldom seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr.
Dickens’s attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward,
too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He made a
rum punch in his room, where we sat until one o’clock. After
repeating his speech, he gave us an imitation of old Rogers as
he would repeat a quatrain:—

“The French have sense in what they do
Which we are quite without,
For what in Paris they call _goût_
In England we call _gout_.”

Mr. Dolby sat at dinner near a poor bohemian of great keenness
of mind, Henry Clapp, by name, who said some things worthy
of Rivarol or any other wittiest Frenchman we might choose
to select. Speaking of Horace Greeley (the chairman at the
dinner), he said: “He was a self-made man and worshipped his
creator.” Of Dr. O——, a vain and popular clergyman, that “he
was continually looking for a vacancy in the Trinity.” Of
Mr. Dickens, that “nothing gave him so high an idea of Mr.
Dickens’s genius as the fact that he created Uriah Heep without
seeing a certain Mr. Young (who sat near them), and Wilkins
Micawber without being acquainted with himself (Henry Clapp).”
Of Henry T—— that “he aimed at nothing and always hit the mark
precisely.”

This speech of Mr. Dickens will make a fine effect, a
reactionary effect, in the country. The enthusiasm for him knew
no bounds. Charles Norton spoke for New England. I had a visit
from him this morning as well as from Mr. Osgood, Dolby, etc.
C. D. lunched at the Jockey Club with Dr. Barker and Donald
Mitchell and returned to dine with us. He talked of actors,
artists, and the clergy—church and religion—but was evidently
suffering more or less all the time with his foot, yet kept up
a good heart until nine o’clock, when he retired to the privacy
of his own room. He feels bitterly the wrong under which
English dissenters have labored for years in being obliged not
only to support their own church interests in which they _do_
believe, but also the abuses of the English Church against
which their whole lives are a continual protest. He spoke of
the beauty of the landscape through which we had both been
walking and driving under a grey sky, with the eager spring
looking out among leafless branches and dancing in the red and
yellow sap. He said it had always been a fancy of his to write
a story, keeping the whole thing in the same landscape, but
picturing its constantly varying effects upon men and things
and chiefly, of course, upon the minds of men. He asked me if I
had ever read Crabbe’s “Lover’s Ride.” We became indignant over
a tax of five per cent which had just been laid upon the entire
proceeds of his Readings, telegraphed to Washington, and found
that it was unjust and had been taken off.

_Monday, April 20._—Attended a meeting of a new “institution”
just on foot, first called “Sorosis” and afterwards “Woman’s
League” for the benefit and mutual support of women. It was the
first official meeting, but it proved so unofficial that I was
entertained, and amused as well, and was able on my return to
make Mr. Dickens laugh until he declared if anything could make
him feel better for the evening that account of the Woman’s
League would.

_Tuesday._—I find it very difficult today to write at all. Mr.
Dickens is on his bed and has been unable to rise, in spite of
efforts all day long.... Mr. Norton has been here and we have
been obliged to go out, but our hearts have been in that other
room all the time where our dear friend lies suffering.... Oh!
these last times—what heartbreak there is in the words. I lay
awake since early this morning (though we did not leave him
until half-past twelve) feeling as if when I arose we must
say good-bye. How relieved I felt to brush the tears away and
know there was one more day, but even that gain was lessened
when I found he could not rise and even this must be a day of
separation too. When Jamie told him last night he felt like
erecting a statue to him because of his heroism in doing his
duty so well, he laughed and said, “No, don’t; take down one of
the old ones instead!”

The diary goes on to express the genuine sorrow of Mrs. Fields and her husband at parting from a friend who had so completely absorbed their affection, but in terms which the diarist herself would have been the first to regard as more suitable for manuscript than for print. The pages that contain them throw more light upon Mrs. Fields—a warm and tender light it is—than upon Dickens. There is, however, one paragraph, written after the Fieldses had returned to Boston from New York, which tells something both of Dickens and of Queen Victoria, in whose personality the public interest appears to be perpetual; and with this passage the quotations from the diary shall end.

_Friday, April 24._—After the Press dinner in New York Mr.
Dickens repeated all his speech to me, as I believe I have
said above, never dropping a word. “I feel,” he said, “as if I
were listening to the sound of my own voice as I recall it. A
very curious sensation.” Jamie asked him if Curtis was quite
right in the facts of his speech. He said, “Not altogether,
as, for instance, in that matter about the Queen and our
little play, ‘Frozen Deep.’ We had played it many times with
considerable success, when the Queen heard of it and Colonel
Phipps (?) called upon me and said he wished the Queen could
see the play. Was there no hall which would be appropriate for
the occasion? What did I think of Buckingham Palace? I replied
that could not be, for my daughters played in the piece and I
had never asked myself to be presented at court nor had I ever
taken the proper steps to introduce them there, and of course
they could not go as amateur performers where they had never
been as visitors. This seemed to trouble him a good deal, so I
said I would find some hall which would be appropriate for the
purpose and would appoint an evening, which I did immediately,
taking the Gallery of Illustration and having it fitted up for
the purpose. I then drew up a list of the company, chiefly of
artists, literary and scientific men, and interesting ladies,
which I caused to be submitted to the Queen, begging her to
reject or add as she thought proper, setting aside forty seats
for the royal party. The whole thing went off finely until
after the first play was over, when the Queen sent round a
request that I would come and see her. This was considered an
act of immense condescension and kindness on her part, and the
little party behind the scenes were delighted. Unfortunately,
I had just prepared myself for the farce which was to follow
and was already standing in motley dress with a red nose. I
knew I could not appear in that plight, so I begged leave to
be excused on that ground. However, that was forgiven and
all passed off well, although the large expense of the whole
thing of course fell on me, which amounted to one hundred and
fifty or two hundred pounds. Several years after, when Prince
Albert died, the Queen sent to me for a copy of the play. I
told Colonel Phipps the play had never been printed and was the
property of a gentleman, Mr. Wilkie Collins. Then would I have
it copied? So I had a very beautiful copy made and bound in the
most perfect manner, and presented to her Majesty. Whereupon
the Princess of Prussia, seeing this, asked for another for
herself. I said I would again ask the permission of Mr. Collins
and again I had a beautiful copy made with great labor. Then
the Queen sent to ask the price of the books. I sent word that
my friend, Mr. Wilkie Collins, was a gentleman who would, I was
sure, hear to nothing of the kind and begged her acceptance of
the volumes.” “How has the Queen shown her gratitude for such
favors?” I said. “We have never heard anything more from her
since that time.” Good Mr. Dolby said quietly, “You know in
England we call her ‘Her Ungracious Majesty.’” Certainly one
would not have believed it possible for even a queen’s nature
to have become so hardened as this to the kindly acts of any
human being, not to speak of the efforts of one of her most
noble subjects and perhaps the greatest genius of our time.

If any reader wishes to follow the further course of the friendship between Dickens and the Fieldses, he has only to turn to “Yesterdays With Authors,” in which many letters written by Dickens after April, 1868, are quoted, and many remembrances of their intercourse when the Fieldses visited England in 1869, the year before Dickens’s death, are presented. Here it will suffice to quote one out of several passages in Mrs. Fields’s diary relating to Dickens, and to bring to light a single characteristic little note from Dickens, not hitherto printed.

On Wednesday, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Fields wrote of Dickens:—

He drove us through the Parks in the fashionable afternoon
hour and afterward to dine with him at the St. James, where
Fechter and Dolby were the only outsiders. Mrs. Collins was
like one of Stothard’s pictures. I felt this more even after
refreshing my memory of Stothard’s coloring at the Kensington
Museum yesterday. C. D. told me that the book of all others
which he read perpetually and of which he never tired, the book
which always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the
fresh imagination he brings to it, a book for inexhaustiveness
to be placed before every other book, is Carlyle’s “French
Revolution.” When he was writing “A Tale of Two Cities,” he
asked Carlyle if he might see some book to which he referred in
his history. Whereat Carlyle sent down to him all his books,
and Dickens read them faithfully; but the more he read the
more he was astounded to find how the facts but passed through
the alembic of Carlyle’s brain and had come out and fitted
themselves each as a part of the one great whole, making a
compact result, indestructible and unrivalled, and he always
found himself turning away from the books of reference and
rereading this marvellous new growth from those dry bones with
renewed wonder.

The note from Dickens read:—

GAD’S HILL PLACE
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT

_Wednesday Sixth October, 1869_

MY DEAR FIELDS:—

Delighted to enjoy the prospect of seeing you and yours on
Saturday. Wish you had been at Birmingham. Wish you were not
going home. Wish you had had nothing to do with the Byron
matter.[28] Wish Mrs. Stowe was in the pillory. Wish Fechter
had gone over when he ought. Wish he may not go under when he
oughtn’t.

With love,

Ever affectionately yours,

CHARLES DICKENS

Among the papers preserved by Mrs. Fields there are, besides the manuscript letters of Dickens himself, many letters written after his death by his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth. From bits of these, and especially from a letter written by Dickens’s daughter, while his death was still a poignant grief, the affection in which he was held in his own household is touchingly imaged forth.

“All the Old World,” wrote Miss Dickens, “all the New World loved him. He never had anything to do with a living soul without attaching them to him. If strangers could so love him, you can tell a little what he must have been to his own flesh and blood. It is a glorious inheritance to have such blood flowing in one’s veins. I’m so glad I have never changed my name.”

From one of Miss Hogarth’s letters a single passage may be taken, since it adds something of first-hand knowledge to the accessible facts about one piece of Dickens’s writing which—in so far as the editor of these pages is aware—has never seen the light of print. This letter was written in the September after Dickens’s death:

“I must now tell you about the beautiful little New Testament which he wrote for his children. I am sorry to say it is _never to be published_. It happens that he expressed that decided determination only last autumn to me, so we have no alternative. He wrote it years ago when his elder children were quite little. It is about sixteen short chapters, chiefly adapted from St. Luke’s Gospel, most beautiful, most touching, most simple, as such a narrative should be. He never would have it printed and I used to read it to the little boys in MS. before they were old enough to read _writing_ themselves. When Charley’s children became old enough to have this kind of teaching, I promised Bessy (his wife) that I would make her a copy of this History, and I determined to do it as a Christmas Gift for her last year, but before I began my copy I asked Charles if he did not think it would be well for him to have it printed, at all events for _private_ circulation, if he would not publish it (though I think it is a pity he would never do that!). He said he would look over the MS. and take a week or two to consider. At the end of the time he gave it back to me and said he had decided _never to publish it—or even have it privately printed_. He said I might make a copy for Bessy, or for any one of his children, _but for no one else_, and that he also begged that we would never even lend the MS., or a copy of it, to any one to take out of the house; so there is no doubt about his _strong feeling_ on the subject, and we must obey it. I made my copy for Bessy and gave it to her last Christmas. After his death the original MS. became _mine_. As it was never published, of course it did not count as one of Mr. Forster’s MSS., and therefore it was one of his private papers, which were left to me. So I gave it at once to Mamie, who was, I thought, the most natural and proper possessor of it, as being his eldest daughter. You must come to England and read it, dear Friend! as we must not send it to you! We should be glad to see you and to show it to you and Mr. Fields in our own house.”

Miss Hogarth must have known full well that, if this manuscript Gospel according to Charles Dickens was to be shown to anybody outside his immediate circle, he himself would have chosen the Charles Street friends from what he called—to them—his “native Boston.”

VI

STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS

Had anyone crossed the Charles Street threshold of the Fieldses with the expectation of encountering within none but the New England Augustans, he would soon have found himself happily disillusioned, even at a time when there was no Dickens in Boston. As it was in reality, so must it be in these pages, if they are to fulfill their purpose of restoring a vanished scene, the variety of which must indeed be counted among its most distinctive characteristics. The pages that follow will accordingly serve to illustrate the familiar fact that the pudding of a “family party” is often rendered the more acceptable by the introduction of a few plums not plucked from the domestic tree.

Mrs. Fields once noted in her diary the circumstance that, when her husband came to Boston from Portsmouth at the age of fourteen, and began to work as a “boy” in the bookshop of Carter & Hendee, the second of these employers had a box at the theatre and, to keep his young employees happy, used constantly to ask one or more of them to see a play in his company. Thus enabled in his youth to see such actors as the elder Booth, Fanny Kemble and her father, and many others of the best players to be seen in America at the time, Fields acquired a love of the theatre and of stage folk which stood him in good stead throughout his life. A certain exuberance in his own nature must have sought a response in social contacts other than those of the straiter sect of his local contemporaries. In men and women of the stage, in authors from beyond the compass of the local horizon, writers with whom he formed relations in his double capacity of editor and publisher, in artists and public men outside the immediate “literary” circle of Boston, Fields took an unceasing delight, shared by his wife, and still communicable through her journals.

_From a drawing by a French painter_]

From their pages, then, I propose to assemble here a group of passages relating first to stage folk, and then to others, and, since these records so largely explain themselves, to burden them as lightly as possible with explanations. Slender as certain of the entries are, each contributes something to a recovery of the time and of the persons that graced it.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, says his biographer, used to declare in his later years, “Though I am not genuine Boston, I am Boston-plated.” His intimate relation with Boston began in 1865, through the publication of a “Blue and Gold” edition of his poems by the firm of which Fields was a member, and the beginning of his editorship of “Every Saturday,” an illustrated journal issued under the same auspices. His range of acquaintance before that time was such that when the “plating” process began,—it was really more like a transmutation of metals,—he sometimes served as a sympathetic link between his new Boston and his old New York. It was in New York, only a few weeks after the assassination of Lincoln, that Aldrich appears in the diary, fresh from seeing his friend, Edwin Booth.

_May 3, 1865._—An hour before we went to tea, Aldrich came to
see us. He said he and Launt Thompson were staying with Edwin
Booth alternate nights during this season of sorrow; that it
was “all right between himself and the lady he was about to
marry.” Then he described to us the first night while Booth
was plunged in agony. He said the gas was left burning low
and the bed stood in the corner, just where he lay sleepless,
looking at a fearfully good crayon portrait of Wilkes Booth
which glared at him over the gas. Launt Thompson started with
the mother from New York for Philadelphia, where she was going
to join her daughter the day that John Wilkes was shot, and an
extra containing the news was brought them by a newsboy as they
stepped on the ferry-boat. The old woman would have the paper.
“He was her ‘Johnny’ after all,” said T. B. A.

_Friday._—Have seen a lady who knows the person to whom Booth
is engaged—said that her letter telling him she was true passed
his letter of relinquishment on its way to Philadelphia. She
thinks these two women have saved Booth. “I have been loved too
well,” he said once....

Aldrich said we should not have been more astonished to hear he
himself had done the terrible deed than he was to know Wilkes
Booth had done it. “He was so gentle, gentler than I, and very
handsome—a slight, beautiful figure,” and (as he described the
face, it was the Greek Antinous kind of beauty there) I could
not but reflect how the deed may deform the man. Nobody said he
was beautiful after he was dead, but they laid a cloth upon the
face and said how dreadful. It has been a strange experience to
come among the people who know the family. I hoped I should be
spared this, but the soul of good in things evil God means we
should all see.

_Sunday, May 7._—A radiant day. Went to hear Dr. Bellows—a
grand discourse. After service sat in his drawing-room and
talked and then walked together.... He too has been to see
Edwin Booth. The poor fellow said to him, “Ah! if it had been a
fellow like myself who had done this dreadful deed, the world
would not have wondered—but Johnny!!”

_Wednesday, January 3, 1866._—Dined with the Grahams and went
to see Booth upon the occasion of his reappearance. The unmoved
sadness of the young man and the unceasing plaudits of the
house, half filled with his friends, were impressive and made
it an occasion not to be forgotten.

_September 23, 1866._—Edwin Booth and the Aldriches came to
tea; also Tom Beal and Professor Sterry Hunt of Montreal, the
latter late. Booth came in the twilight while a magnificent red
and purple and gold sunset was staining the bay. The schooners
anchored just off shore had already lighted their lanterns
and swung them in the rigging, and the full moon cast a silver
sheen over the scene. I hear he passes every Sunday morning
while here at the grave of his wife in Mt. Auburn. He seems
deeply saddened. He was very pleasant, however, and ready to
talk, and gave amusing imitations—in particular of his black
boy, Jan, who possesses, he says, the one accomplishment of
forgetting everything he ought to remember. One day a man
with a deep tragic voice, “Forrestian,” he said, came to him
with letters of introduction asking Mr. Booth to assist him
as he was about to go to England. Mr. B. told him he knew no
one in England and could do nothing for him, he was sorry. If
he ever found it possible to do him a service he would with
pleasure. With that Mr. B. turned,—they were in the vestibule
of the theatre—and entered the box-office to speak to someone
there; immediately he heard the deep voice addressing Jan
with “You are with Mr. Booth.” “Yes,” responded Jan with real
negro accent, “I’m wid Mr. Booth.” “In what capacity—are
you studying?” “Yaas,” returned Jan, unblushingly, “I’se
studyin’.” “What are you upon now?” “Oh, Richelieu, Hamlet,
an’ a few of dese yer.” “Ah, I should be pleased to enter into
correspondence with you while I am abroad. Would you have any
objections?” “Oh, no, no objection, no objection at all.”
“Thank you, sir; good-day, sir.” With that they parted and
Jan came with his mouth stretched wide with laughter. “Massa,
what is ‘correspond’? I told him I’d correspond, what’d he
mean, correspond?” Then Jan, convulsed with his joke, roared
and roared again. They are surely a merry race, but provoking
enough sometimes. They are capable of real attachments,
however; this man has been several times dismissed but will
not go. Booth told everything very dramatically, but I was
especially struck with his description of a man travelling with
two shaggy terrier pups in the cars. He had them in a basket
and hung them up over his head and then composed himself to
sleep. Waking up half an hour later, he observed a man on the
opposite side of the car, his eyes starting from his head and
the very picture of dismay, as if a demon were looking at him.
The owner of the pups, following the direction of the man’s
eyes, looked up and saw the two pups had their heads out of
the basket. He quietly made a sign for them to go back and
they disappeared. The man’s gaze did not apparently slacken,
however, but in a moment became still more horrified when the
pups again looked out. “What’s the matter?” said the owner.
“What are those?” said the man, pointing with trembling finger;
“pray excuse me, but I have been on a spree and I thought they
were demons.” He introduced the subject of the stage and talked
of points in “Hamlet,” which he had made for the first time,
but occasionally through accident had omitted. The next day he
will be sure to be asked by letter or newspaper why he omits
certain points which would be so excellent to make, _the writer
thinks_. He has had a life of strange vicissitudes, as almost
all actors. He referred last night to his frequent travels
during childhood over the Alleghanies with his father, of long
nights spent in this kind of travel; and once in Nevada he
walked fifty miles chiefly through snow. “Why?” said Lilian.
“Because I was hard up, Lily,” he continued; “I walked it too
in stage boots which were too tight—it was misery.” ...

They had all gone by half-past ten, but we lay long awake
thinking over poor Booth and his strange sad fortune. Hamlet,
indeed!—although Forceythe Willson says, “I have been to see
Mr. Hamlet play Booth.” Yes, perhaps when he is playing it for
the 400th time with a bad cold, it may seem so; indeed I found
it dullish myself, or his part, I mean, the other night; but he
_did_ play it once—the night of his reappearance in New York.

_May 18, 1869._—Last Sunday evening Booth, Aldrich and his wife
and sister, Dr. Holmes and Amelia and Launt Thompson, Leslie
and ourselves took tea here together. In the evening came Mr.
and Mrs. Emerson. We did have a rare and delightful symposium.
Booth talked little as usual, and the next night went round
to Aldrich’s and took himself off as he behaves in company!!
Nevertheless he was glad to see Holmes, though every time Dr.
H. addressed him across the table he seemed to receive an
electric shock.

A chance meeting between William Warren and Fields in a lane at the seaside Manchester is recorded, with their talk, in the diary as early as 1865. Two entries in 1872 have to do with Jefferson, first alone and then with Warren. The friendship with Jefferson, begun so long ago, was continued until his death.

_Tuesday, March 18, 1872._—Left Boston for a short trip to New
York. Jefferson the actor, famous throughout the world for
his impersonation of “Rip Van Winkle,” was on the train and
finding us out (or J. him), came to our compartment car to
pass the day. He talked without cessation and without effort.
He described his sudden disease of the eyes quite bravely
and simply, from the use of too much whiskey. He said the
newspapers had said it was the gas, and many other reasons had
been assigned first and last; but he firmly believed there
was no other reason than too much whiskey. He had taken the
habit—when he was somewhat below his ordinary physical and
mental condition in the evening and wished to rise to the
proper point and “carry the audience”—of taking a small glass
of whiskey. This glass was after a time made two, and even
three or four. Finally he was stricken down by a trouble of
the eyes which threatened the entire extinction of sight. His
physician at once suggested that unnatural use of stimulants
was the cause, of which he himself is now entirely convinced
and no longer touches anything stronger than claret. He has
played to a larger variety of audiences probably than almost
any other great actor. The immense applause he received in
England, where he played 170 consecutive nights at the Adelphi
in London, always as “Rip,” has only served to make him
more modest, it would seem, more desirous to uphold himself
artistically. He gave us a hint of his taste for fishing and
described his trout-raising establishment in Jersey; very
curious and wonderful it was. Nature preserves only one in a
hundred of the eggs of trout to come to maturity. Mr. Jefferson
in his pond is able to raise 85 out of 100. There seems no
delight to him so great as that of sitting beside a stream on a
sunny day, line in hand.

Talking of the everlasting repetition of “Rip,” he says he
should be thankful to rest himself with another play, but this
has been a growth and it would be a daring thing for him to
attempt anything new with a public who would always compare
him with himself in this play which is the result of years
of his best thought and strength. I think myself, if he were
quite well he would be almost sure to attempt something else.
He told us several stories very dramatically. He is an odd,
carelessly dressed little mortal, a cross between Charles Lamb
and Grimaldi, but we have seldom passed a more delightful day
of talk than with him. The hours absolutely fled away.

_Wednesday, May 22, 1872._—Mr. Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, and
Jefferson and Warren, the two first comedians of our time,
dined here. The hour was three o’clock, to accommodate the
two professional gentlemen. The hours until three, with the
exception of two visits (Miss Sara Clarke and Miss Wainwright
in spite of saying “engaged”), were occupied in making
preparations for the little feast. I mean the hours after
breakfast until time to dress. (Of hours before breakfast I
have now-a-days nothing to say. I am not strong enough to do
anything early, but country life this summer is to change all
that.) Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Warren arrived first. Finding
much to interest them in the pictures of our lower room, they
lingered there a few moments before coming to the library,
when we talked of Marney’s pictures (Mr. J. owns some of his
water-colors) and looked about at others. Soon Longfellow came
with Jamie. He said he felt like one on a journey. He left home
early in the morning, had been sight-seeing in Boston all day,
was to dine and go to the theatre with us afterward.

He asked Mr. Warren why a Mr. Inglis was selling his fine
library and pictures—a question nobody had been able to solve.
Mr. Inglis is, however, in some way connected with the stage,
and Warren told us it was because he had been arrested with
Mr. Harvey Parker and others and condemned to be thrown in the
House of Correction, for selling liquor. His money protected
him from the rigor of the law, but the disgrace remained. His
children felt it much and he was going to Europe at least for
a season. We could not help feeling the injustice of this when
we remembered the myriad liquor shops for the poor all over the
town, with which no one interferes.

Mr. Jefferson was deeply interested in our pictures of the
players by Zanaçois. Dr. Holmes came in, talked a little at my
suggestion about Anne Whitney’s bust of Keats, which he appears
to know nothing about artistically (I observed the same lack
of knowledge in Emerson), but he criticised the hair. He said
he supposed nothing was known about Keats’s hair, so it might
as well be one way as another. I told him on the contrary I
owned some of it; whereat I got it out, and he went off in a
little episode about an essay which he had sometimes thought
of writing about hair. He has a machine by which the size of a
hair can be measured and recorded. This he would like to use,
and make a note of comparison between the hairs of “G. W.” (as
he laughingly called Washington), Jefferson, Milton, and other
celebrities of the earth. He thought it might be very curious
to discover the difference in quality.

We were soon seated at the table (only six all told) where the
conversation never flagged. Longfellow properly began it by
saying he thought Mr. Charles Mathews was entirely unjust to
Mr. Forrest as King Lear. He considered Mr. Forrest’s rendering
of the part, and he sat through the whole, as fine and close to
nature. He could not understand Mr. Mathews’s underrating it
as he did. Of course the other two gentlemen could say nothing
more than the difficulty Mr. Mathews from his nature would
have in estimating at its proper worth anything Mr. Forrest
might do, their idea of Art being so dissimilar. Here arose the
question if one actor was a good judge of another. Jefferson
said he sometimes thought actors very bad judges—indeed he
preferred to be judged by an audience inspired by feeling
rather than by one intellectually critical.

Jefferson has a clear blue eye, very fine and bright and sweet.
Longfellow thinks his mouth a very weak one, and certainly his
face is not impressive. Warren appears a man of finer intellect
and more wit. He had many witty things to say and his little
tales were always dramatically given. Dr. Holmes could not seem
to recover from the idea that Jefferson had made a fortune out
of one play and that he _never_ played but one. “I hear, Mr.
Jefferson,” he said, when he first came in, “that you have been
playing the same play ever since you came here.” (He has been
playing the same for a dozen years, I believe, nearly—and has
been here _three weeks_!) Jefferson could hardly help laughing
as he assured him that for the space of three weeks he had
given the same every night. Dr. Holmes had a way at the table
of talking of “you actors,” “you gentlemen of the stage,” until
I saw Longfellow was quite disturbed at the unsympathetic
unmannerliness of it, in appearance, and tried to talk more
than ever in a different strain.

After I left the table, which I did because I thought they
might like to smoke, Jamie sent for Parsons’s poems and read
them some of the finest. Of course the talk was wittier and
quicker as the time came to separate, but I cannot report
upon it. The impression the two actors left upon me, however,
was rather that of men who enjoyed coming up to the surface
to breathe a natural air seldom vouchsafed to them than of
men sparring with their wits—they are affectionate, gentle,
subdued gentlemen and a noble contrast to the self-opinionated
ignorance which we often meet in society. Dr. Holmes was,
however, the wit of the occasion, as he always is, and
everybody richly enjoyed his sallies. They stayed until the
last moment—indeed I do not see how they got to their two
theatres in time to dress. It must have been, as they say of
eggs, a “hard scrabble.” _We_ went afterward—we four—to see a
new actor, Raymond, play “Colleen Bawn” at the Globe—pretty
play, though very touching and melodramatic, by Boucicault.
I must confess to dislike such plays where your feelings are
wrought to the highest pitch for nothing.

The name of Fechter is familiar to the middle-aged through the memory of fathers, to the young through that of grandfathers. Readers of these pages will recall that Dickens, soon after reaching America in 1867, spoke of him in terms which caused Mrs. Fields to look forward with confidence to a new friendship. His coming to America was specifically heralded by an article, “On Mr. Fechter’s Acting,” contributed by Dickens to the “Atlantic” for August, 1869. When Fechter was in Boston, warmly received as Dickens’s friend, he often appears in the journals of Mrs. Fields, in conjunction with others.

_Friday, February 25, 1870._—Mr. Fechter came to lunch with Mr.
Longfellow, Mr. Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. Dorr. He talked freely
about his Hamlet, so different from all other impersonations.
His audience here he finds wonderfully good, better than any
other; fine points which have never been applauded before
bring out a round of applause. On the whole he appears to
enjoy new hearers—does not understand the constant comparison
between himself and Booth. They are already great friends.
Booth was in the house the last night of his performance there;
afterward he did not come to speak to him, and Fechter felt it;
but a letter came yesterday saying he was so observed that he
slipped away as soon as possible, and could not come on Sunday
because visitors prevented him. Better late than never; it was
pleasant to Fechter to hear from Booth—with one exception:
he enclosed a notice from some newspaper, cutting up himself
horribly and praising Fechter. “Ah! that won’t do; I shall send
it back to him and tell him why. We are totally unlike in our
Hamlets, and neither should be praised at the other’s expense.”

Mr. Fechter described minutely Mr. Dickens’s attack of
paralysis last year, and, the year before, his prompt
appearance in the box of the theatre at the last performance of
“No Thoroughfare,” which he said he should do; but as Fechter
had not heard of his return from America, it was a great shock.
“If it had been ‘Hamlet,’ or any difficult play, I could not
have gone on! He should not have done such a thing.” He told us
a strange touching story of M’lle Mars, during her last years.
She came upon the stage one night to give one of the youthful
parts in which she had once been so famous. When she appeared,
some heartless wretch threw her a wreath of immortelles, as if
for her grave. She was so shocked that the drops stood on her
brow, the rouge fell from her cheeks, and she stood motionless
before the audience, a picture of age and misery. She could not
continue her part.

He spoke with intense enthusiasm of Frédérick Lemaître, much
as I have heard Mr. Dickens do. “The second-class actors were
always arguing with him (only second-class people argue) and
saying, ‘Why do you wish me to stand here, Frédérick?’ ‘I don’t
know,’ he would say, ‘only do it.’”

Mr. Appleton was deeply interested in the fact that Shakespeare
proved himself such a believer in ghosts, as “Hamlet” shows,
and would like to push the subject farther, Mr. Fechter
evidently finding much to say on this topic also. Mr.
Longfellow was interested to ask about the Dumas, _père et
fils_. Mr. Fechter has known them well and has many queer
stories to tell of their relation to each other. _Le fils_
calls _mon père_, “my youngest child born many years ago,” and
the father usually introduces the son as M. Dumas, _mon père_.
The motto on Fechter’s note paper is very curious and a type
of the man—“_Faiblesse vaut vice_.” Mr. Longfellow spoke again
of Mr. Dickens’s restlessness, of his terrible sadness. “Yes,
yes,” said Fechter, “all his fame goes for nothing.” ...

Jamie is so weak that he went to sleep almost as soon as they
were gone. God knows what it all means; I do not.

It is odd that Fechter’s eyes should be brown after all. They
look so light in the play. He is a round little man, naturally
friendly, spontaneous. We do not know what his life has been,
and we will not ask; that does not rest with us; but he is a
very fine artist. His imitation of Mr. Dickens, as he sat on
the lawn watching him at work, or as he joined him coming from
his desk at lunchtime with tears on his cheek and a smile on
his mouth, was very close to the life and delightful.

Mr. Longfellow did not talk much, not as much as the last time
he was here, but he was lovely and kind.[29] He brought a
coin of the French Republic which had been touched by French
wit, _Liberté_ x (point), _Egalité_ x (point), _Fraternité_ x
(point). And more to the same effect, without altering the coin.

Appleton has just bought a new Troyon, which he says he shall
lend me for a week.

At the end of the following August there is a record of a talk with Fechter on the boat from Boston to Nahant, where he and the Fieldses dined with Longfellow. Dickens had died in the June just past, and Fechter had much to say of him and his family life. “Day by day,” wrote Mrs. Fields, “I am grateful to think of him at rest.” The little party at Nahant is described.

We found dear Longfellow looking through a glass to espy our
approach, and all his dear little girls and Ernest and his wife
and Appleton, who whisked me away from the dinner-table to his
studio where he had some really good sketches. The conversation
at table was half French, Longfellow and Appleton both finding
it agreeable to recall the foreign scenes by the foreign
tongue. But except a queer imitation of John Forster, by
Fechter, I do not remember any quotable talk. F. said Forster
always looked at everybody as if regarding their qualifications
for a lunatic asylum (he is commissioner of lunacy), saying to
himself, “Well, I’ll let you off _today_, but tomorrow you must
certainly go and be shut up.” He describes Forster’s present
state of health as something very precarious and wretched.

_November 14, 1870._—Monday night went to see Fechter in
“Claude Melnotte.” Longfellow and his daughter Edith sat in
the box adjoining ours. It was the stage box where they were
sheltered from observation; ours was the box next it, to be
sure, but accessible to all eyes. During the curtain Longfellow
came into our box; Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Andrew were with me,
both plain ladies dressed in mourning. His advent caused a
little rustle of curiosity to ripple over the house. Longfellow
was never looking finer than he is today. His white hair and
deep blue eyes and kind face make his presence a benediction
wherever he goes—of such men one cannot help feeling what
Dr. Putnam so well expressed last Sunday in speaking of the
presence of our Lord at a feast. “He rewarded the hospitality
of his friends by his presence.”