see Mr. Whittier, driving over to Beverly in an open wagon. It
was one of the perfect days. As Keats said once, the sky sat
“upon our senses like a sapphire crown.” We turned away after
a time from the high road into a wood path, picking our way
somewhat slowly to avoid the overhanging bushes and the rainy
pools left in the ruts. We soon found ourselves near a place
called Mt. Serat where we knew Miss Hawthorne lived, the only
surviving sister of Nathaniel, and Mr. Fields determined at
once to call upon her. To my surprise, in spite of the fine
weather and her woodland life habitually, she was at home, and
came down immediately as if she were sincerely glad to see us.
She is a small woman, with small fine features, round full
face, fresh-looking in spite of years, brilliant eyes, nervous
brow, which twists as she speaks, and very nervous fingers. In
one respect she differed from her brother—she was exquisitely
neat (nor do I mean to convey the idea by this that he was
unneat, but he always gave you a sense of disregarded trifles
about his person and we frequently recall his reply to me when
I offered to brush his coat one morning, “No, no, I never brush
my coat, it wears it out!”), and gave you a sense of being
particular in little things. I seemed to see in her another
difference—a deterioration because of too great solitude—powers
rusted—a decaying beauty—while with Hawthorne solitude fed his
genius, solitude and the pressure of necessity. Utter solitude
lames the native power of a woman even more than that of a
man, for her natural growth is through her sympathies. She is
a woman of no common mould, however. Lucy Larcom calls her a
hamadryad, and says she belongs in the woods and should be seen
there. I wish to see her again upon her own ground. She asked
us almost immediately if we would not come with her to the
woods, but our time was too short. From thence we held our way,
and soon came by train to Newburyport and Amesbury. Whittier
was at home, ready with an enthusiastic welcome.
To these memorials of Hawthorne must be added yet another, copied from a
pencilled sheet preserved by Mrs. Fields in an envelope endorsed in her
handwriting, “The original of a precious and extraordinary letter written
by Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne while her husband lay dead.” Printed now, I
believe for the first time, nearly sixty years after it was written, it
rings with a devotion and exaltation which time is powerless to touch:
I wish to speak to you, Annie.
A person of a more uniform majesty never wore mortal form.
In the most retired privacy it was the same as in the presence
of men.
The sacred veil of his eyelids he scarcely lifted to
himself—such an unviolated sanctuary as was his nature, I, his
inmost wife, never conceived nor knew.
So absolute a modesty was not before joined to so lofty a
self-respect.
But what must have been that self-respect that he never in the
smallest particular dishonored!
A conscience more void of offense never bore witness to GOD
within.
It was the innocence of a baby and the grand comprehension of a
sage.
To me—himself—even to me who was himself in unity—he was to the
last the holy of holies behind the cherubim.
So unerring a judgment that a word from him would settle with
me a chaos of doubts and questions that seemed perplexing to
ordinary apprehension.
So equal a justice that I often wondered if he were human in
this—for this seemed to partake of omniscience both of love and
insight.
An impartiality of regard that solved all men and subjects in
one alembick.
Truth and right alone he deigned to regard. Far below him was
every other consideration.
A tenderness so infinite—so embracing—that GOD’S alone could
surpass it. It folded the loathsome leper in as soft a caress
as the child of his home affections—was not that divine!
Was it not Christianity in one action! What a bequest to his
children—what a new revelation of Christ to the world was
that! And for him—whom the sight and touch of unseemliness and
uncleanness caused to shudder as an Eolian string shudders in
the tempest.
Annie! to the last action in this house he was as lofty, as
majestic, as imperial and as gentle—as in the strength of his
prime, as on the day he rose upon my eye and soul a King among
men by divine right!
When he awoke that early dawn and found himself unawares
standing among the “Shining Ones” do you think they did not
suppose he had been always with them—one of themselves? Oh,
blessed be GOD for so soft a translation—as an infant wakes
on its mother’s breast so he woke on the bosom of GOD and can
never be weary any more, nor see nor touch an unclean thing.
A demand for beauty and perfection that was inexorable. Yet
though a flaw or a crack gave him so fine agony, no one, no one
was ever so tolerant as he!
Hawthorne’s allusion to Alcott brings the figure of that Concord
personage on the scene. The picture of him in Charles Street is so
sharpened in outline by certain remarks upon him by the elder Henry
James, a somewhat more frequent visitor, that the passages relating to
the two men are here joined together. The first recorded glimpses of
James occurred in the course of a visit to Newport.
_September 23, 1863._—Received a visit at Newport from Henry
James. His son was badly wounded in two places at Gettysburg.
He spoke of the reviews of his work among other topics. “Who
wrote the review in the Examiner?” asked Mr. F. “Oh! that was
_merely_ Freeman Clarke,” he replied; “he is a smuggler in
theology and feels towards me much as a contraband towards an
exciseman.” Speaking of fashion, he said, “there was good in
it,” although it appears to be a drawback to the residents here
while it lasts. He anticipates a change in European affairs;
the age of ignorance is to pass away and strong democratic
tendencies will soon pervade Europe. The march of civilization
will work its revenge against aristocratic England, he believes.
Mr. James considers that people make a mistake to expect
reason from Carlyle. “He is an artist, a wilful artist, and no
reasoner. He has only genius.”
_October 16, 1863._—Mr. Alcott breakfasted with us. He said
all vivid new life was well described by his daughter Louisa.
She was happier now that she had made a success. “She was
formerly not content to wait, but so soon as she became
content, then good fortune came, as she always does.” I told
him we enjoyed deeply reading his MSS. of “The Rhapsodist”
(Emerson) last night. He said he thought it was finally brought
into presentable shape! “When in a more imperfect condition,”
he continued, “I read it to Mr. Emerson. The modest man could
only keep silent at such a time, but he conveyed to me the
idea that he should prefer the paper should not be printed in
the ‘Commonwealth.’ Later I again read it, when he said, ‘If I
were dead.’ I have reason to believe that in its present shape
he would not object to its presentation.”[13] He talked of his
own valuable library and asked what he should do with it by and
by. J. T. F. suggested it should go to the Union Club, which
pleased him much. “That is the place,” said he. “If it were
known this was my intention, might I not also be entitled to
consideration at the Club?”
Among his books is a copy of Milton’s “World of Words,” owned
by Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who early colonized the state of Maine.
He talked of Thoreau. “There will be seven or eight volumes of
his works. Next should come the letters, with the commendatory
poems prefixed. Come up to Concord and we will talk it over.
If you go to see Miss Thoreau, arrange to talk with her in the
absence of the mother, who would interrupt and speak again of
the whole matter. Make Helen[14] feel that Henry will receive
as much for his books as if he had made his own bargain, for he
was good at a bargain and they are a little hard—that is, they
do not understand all the bearings of many subjects.”
The good old man has come to Boston, being asked to perform
funeral ceremonies over the bodies of two children. He asked
for my Vaughan. “A beautiful poem which is not known is much
at such a time,” he observed inquiringly. To which I heartily
responded.
Mr. Emerson came in to see Mr. Fields today. “I shall
reconsider my reluctance to have Mr. Alcott’s article published
provided he will obtain consideration by it,” was his generous
speech. He said he had begun to prepare a new volume of poems,
“but I must go down the harbor before I can finish a little
poem about the islands. I took steamboat yesterday and went
down, but a mist came up and my visit was to no purpose.”
_February 19, 1864._—This morning early called upon Mrs. Mott
of Pennsylvania. Found Mr. James with her. He observed that
circumstances had placed him above want, and inheritance
had given him a position in the world which precluded his
having any knowledge of the temptations which beset many men.
His virtues were the result of his position rather than of
character—an affair of temperament. He said society was to
blame for much of the crime in it, and as for that poor young
man who committed the murder at Malden, it was a mere fact of
temperament or inheritance. He soon broke off his talk, saying
it was “pretty well to be caught in the middle of such weighty
topics in the presence of two ladies at 10 o’clock in the
morning.” Then we talked of houses. He wishes a furnished house
for a year in Boston until his departure.
_July 28._—Still hot, with a russet sun. Mr. and Mrs. Henry
James called in the evening. He talked of “Sterling.” “He
was not stereotyped, but living, his eye burned; he was very
vivacious, although he saw Death approaching. He was one of the
choicest of friends.” Afterward he talked of Alcott’s visit to
Carlyle. Carlyle told Mr. James he found him a terrible old
bore. It was almost impossible to be rid of him, and impossible
also to keep him, for he would not eat what was set before him.
Carlyle had potatoes for breakfast and sent for strawberries
for Mr. Alcott, who, when they arrived, took them with the
potatoes upon the same plate, where the two juices ran together
and fraternized. This shocked Carlyle, who would eat nothing
himself, but stormed up and down the room instead. “Mrs.
Carlyle is a naughty woman,” said Mr. J., “she wishes to make
a sensation and does not mind sometimes following and imitating
her husband’s way.” Mr. J. said Alcott once made him a visit
in New York and when he found he could not go to Brooklyn to
attend Mr. A.’s “conversation,” the latter said, “Very well; he
would talk over the heads with him then before it was time to
go.” They got into a great battle about the premises, during
which Mr. Alcott talked of the Divine paternity as relating to
himself, when Mr. James broke in with, “My dear sir, you have
not found your _maternity_ yet. You are an egg half hatched.
The shells are yet sticking about your head.” To this Mr. A.
replied, “Mr. James, you are _damaged goods_ and will come up
_damaged goods in eternity_.”
We laughed much before they left at a story about a man who
called to ask money of John Jacob Astor. The gentleman was
ushered into a twilight library, where he fancied himself
alone until he heard a grunt from a deep chair, the high back
of which was turned towards him; then the gentleman advanced,
found Mr. Astor there and saluted him. He opened the business
of the subscription to him, and was about to unfold the paper
when Mr. Astor suddenly cried out, “Oo—oo—oo—ooooooo!” “What
is the matter, my dear sir,” said he, “are you ill? [growing
alarmed] Where is the bell? Let me ring the bell.” Then running
to the door, he shouted, “Madame, madame.” Then to Mr. Astor,
“Pray, sir, what is the matter?” “Oo—oo—oo.” “Have you a pain
in your side!!” In a moment the household came running thither,
and as the housekeeper bent over him, he cried, “Oo—oo—these
horrid wretches sending to me for money!!” As may be believed,
our friend of the subscription paper beat a hasty retreat and
here ended also our evening.
A few days later there was an evening with Sumner and others, who talked
of affairs in Washington. Mr. and Mrs. James were of the company. “These
men,” wrote Mrs. Fields, “despond with regard to the civil government.
They have more faith that our military affairs are doing well. Chiefly
they look to Sherman as the great man. Mr. James was silent; he believes
in Lincoln.” And there is the final note: “We must not forget Mr. James’s
youth, who was ‘aninted with isle of Patmos.’”
_July 10, 1866._—Forceythe Willson came and talked purely,
lovingly, and like the pure character he aspires to be. He said
Mr. Alcott talked with him of temperaments lately, with much
wisdom. He said the blonde was nearest to perfection, that
was the heavenly type. “You are not a blonde,” said the seer
calmly, and, said Willson to me, “I was much amused and pleased
too; for when I regarded the old man more closely I discovered
_he_ himself was a blonde.”
_October 6, 1867._—Mr. Henry James and his daughter came to
call. We chanced to ask him about Dr. G—— of New York, a
physician of wide reputation in the diagnosis of disease. He
is an old man now, but with so large a practice that he will
see no new patients. Mr. James says, however, that he is a
humbug, that is, as I understood. He is a man of discernment
which he turns to the best account, but not a man of deep
insight or unwonted development. Suddenly J. remembered that
there was once a Dr. —— of New York who was also famous. The
moment his name was mentioned Mr. James became quite a new man.
His enthusiasm flamed. Dr. —— died at the early age of 38,
and, according to the saying of the world, insane. “Yet he was
no more insane than I am at this moment as far as the action
of his mind was concerned, which was always perfectly clear.
Several years before his death he was pursued by spirits which
often kept him awake all night. His wife was a heavenly woman
and a Swedenborgian. The spirits did not come to her, but she
was persuaded that they did come to him. They so disturbed
his life that he used to say he was ready to die, in order
to pursue his tormentors and ferret out the occasion of his
trouble. At one time they told him that in every age a man had
been selected to do the bidding of the Lord God, to be the Lord
Christ of the time, and he must fit himself to be that man.
They prescribed for him therefore certain fasts and austerities
which he religiously fulfilled, only asking in return an
interview in which some sign should be given him. They promised
faithfully, but when the time arrived it was postponed; and
this occurred repeatedly, until he felt sure of the deceit of
the parties concerned.”
Through the medium of these spirits Dr. —— became at length
estranged from his wife. He went West to obtain a divorce,
and while on this strange errand occurred a breach between
himself and Mr. James. The latter wrote him a letter urging
him away from the dead, which the doctor took as interference.
The poor man returned to New York and at length shot himself.
His wife never harbored the least animosity against him for
his undeserved treatment. (Mr. J. looked like an invalid, but
was full of spirit and kindness. He not infrequently speaks
severely of men and things. Analysis is his second nature.)
_March 5, 1869._—Jamie had an unusually turbulent and exciting
day, and was thoroughly weary when night came. Henry James came
first, and had gone so far as to abuse Emerson pretty well
when the latter came in. “How do you do, Emer-son,” he said,
with his peculiar intonation and voice, as if he had expected
him on the heels of what had gone before. Mr. James calls his
new book, “The Secret of Swedenborg.” Jamie thinks his article
on Carlyle too abusive, especially as he stayed in his house,
or was there long and familiarly. But his love of country was
bitterly stung by Carlyle in “Shooting Niagara and After.”
_Saturday, March 13, 1869._—Mr. Emerson read in the afternoon.
The subject was Wordsworth in chief, but the time was far too
short to do justice to the notes he had made. In the evening we
went to Cambridge to hear Mr. James read his paper on “Woman.”
We took tea first with the family and afterward listened to
the lecture. He took the highest, the most natural, and the
most religious point of view from which I have heard the
subject discussed. He dealt metaphysically with it, after his
own fashion, showing the subtle inherent counterparts of man
to woman, showing to what extremes either would be led without
the other. He spoke with unmingled disgust of the idea of
woman, except for union in behalf of some charity for the time,
forsaking the sanctity and privacy of her home to battle and
unsex herself in the hot and dusty arena of the world.
(The members of the Woman’s Club asked him to write this
lecture for them. He did not wish to spare the time, but
promised to do so if they would invite him afterward to deliver
it in public. They disliked the lecture so much that, although
they _did_ send him a public invitation, there were but twenty
people present.)
Nothing could be holier or more inspiring than his ideal of
womanhood. She is the embodied social idea, the genius of home,
the light of life—“ever desiring novelty her life without man
would be a long chase from one field to another, accompanied by
_soft gospel truth_.”
He didn’t fail to whip the “pusillanimous” clergy, and as the
room was overstocked with them, it was odd to watch the effect.
Mr. James is perfectly brave, almost inapprehensive, of the
storm of opinion he raises, and he is quite right. Nothing
could be more clearly his own and inherent, than his views in
this lecture, nothing which the times need more. He helps to
lay that dreadful phantom of yourself which appears now and
then conjured up by the right people, haranguing the crowd and
endeavoring to be something for which you were clearly never
intended by Heaven. I think I shall never forget a pretty
little niece of Mrs. Dale Owen, who was with her at the first
Club meeting in New York. Her face was full of softness and
Madonna-like beauty, but she was learning to contract her brow
over ideas and become “strong” in her manner of expressing
them. It was a kind of nightmare.
_Summer, 1871._—Mr. Alcott, Mr. Howison, Mr. Harris, the latter
two lovers of philosophy, have been here this week. Channing is
still writing poems in Concord, says Alcott. The latter smiles
blandly at his own former absurdities, but he does not eat
meat, and continues his ancient manner of living among books.
The old gentleman gave me this wild rose as he went away. He
quoted Vaughan, talked of a book of selections he would wish to
see made, “a honey-pot into which one might dip at leisure,”
also an almanac suitable for a lady, of the choicest things
among the ancient writers. He was full of good sayings and most
witty and attractive. He is somewhat deaf, but he bears this
infirmity as he has borne all the ills of life with a mild
sweet heroism most marked and worthy of love and to be copied.
_Sunday, April 20, 1873._—Last night Mr. and Mrs. Henry James,
Alice, and Mr. DeNormandie dined here. Mr. James looked very
venerable, but was at heart very young and amused us much. He
gave a description of Mr. George Bradford being run over by the
horse-car, because of his own inadvertence in part, and of the
good-natured crowd who insisted upon his having restitution for
what he considered, in part, at least, his own fault. “Ain’t
you dead?” said one. “267 Highland Ave. is the number, don’t
forget,” said another; “you can prosecute.” “Where’s my hat?”
he asked meekly. “Better ask if ye’re not dead, and not be
looking for your hat,” said another.
He also told us of a visit of Elizabeth Peabody to the Alcotts.
He said: “In Mr. A. the moral sense was wholly dead, and the
æsthetic sense had never yet been born!”
It may well have been after a visit to the Fieldses at the seashore town
of Manchester that Henry James wrote this undated characteristic note
which embodies the feeling of many another guest:—
MY DEAR FIELDS:—
Pride ever goes before a fall. I scorned my wife’s solicitude
about her umbrella as unworthy of an immortal mind, and now I
am reduced to pleading with you to preserve my lost implement
in that line, and when you next come to town to bring it with
you and leave it for me at Williams’ book store, corner of
School Street, where I will reclaim it.
Alas! The difference between now and then! Such an atmosphere
as we are having this morning! And yet we did not need the
contrast to impress us with a lively sense of the lovely house,
the lovely scenes, and the lovely people we had left. We came
home fragrant with the sweetest memories, and the way we have
been making the house resound with the fame of our enjoyment
would amuse you. Alice and her aunt came home just after us,
and we have done nothing but talk since we arrived. Good bye;
give my love to that angelic woman, whom I shall remember in my
last visions, and believe me, faithfully,
Yours also,
H. J.
Henry James’s letters to Mr. and Mrs. Fields, of which a number are
preserved by the present generation of the James family, abound in
characteristic felicities. In one of them—they are nearly all undated—he
regrets his inability to read a lecture of his own at Mrs. Fields’s
invitation, on the ground that his unpublished writings are “all too
grave and serious, not for you individually indeed, but for those
‘slumberers in Zion’ who are apt, you know, to constitute the bulk of a
parlour audience.” In another he is evidently declining an invitation to
hear a reading of Emerson’s in Charles Street:—
SWAMPSCOTT, _May 11_
MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS:—
My wife—who has just received your kind note in rapid route to
the Dedham Profane Asylum, or something of that sort—begs leave
to say, through me as a willing and sensitive medium, that you
are one of those _arva beata_, renowned in poetry, which, visit
them never so often, one is always glad to revisit, which are
attractive in all seasons by their own absolute light, and
without any Emersonian pansies and buttercups to make them
so. This enthusiastic Dedhamite says further, in effect, that
while one is deeply grateful for your courteous offer of a
seat upon your sofa to hear the Concord sage, she yet prefers
the material banquet you summon us to in your dining-room,
since there we should be out of the mist and able to discern
between nature and cookery, between what eats and what is
eaten at all events, and feel a thankful mind that we were
in solid comfortable Charles Street, instead of the vague,
wide, weltering galaxy, and should be sure to deem Annie and
Jamie (_I_ am sure of Annie, I think my wife feels equally
sure of Jamie) lovelier fireflies than ever sparkled in the
cold empyrean. But alas, who shall control his destiny? Not
my wife, whom multitudinous cares enthrall; nor yet myself,
whom a couple of months’ enforced illness now constrains to a
preternatural activity, lest the world fail of salvation....
P. S. Who _did_ contrive the comical title for his
lecture—“Philosophy of the People”? I suspect it was a joke
of J. T. F. It would be no less absurd for Emerson himself to
think of philosophizing than it would be for the rose to think
of botanizing. Emerson is the Divinely pompous rose of the
philosophic garden, gorgeous with colour and fragrance. What
a sad lookout there would be for tulip and violet and lily
and the humble grape, if the rose should turn out philosophic
gardener as well! Philosophy _of the people_, too! But that was
Fields, or else it was only R. W. E. after dining with F. at
the Union Club and becoming demoralized.
The final paragraph of a single other note suggests in sum the relation
between James and his Charles Street friends:—
Speaking of Mr. Fields always reminds me of various things
so richly endowed in the creature in all good gifts; but the
dominant consideration in my mind associated with him is his
beautiful home and there chiefly that atmosphere and faultless
womanly worth and dignity which fills it with light and warmth
and makes it a real blessing to one’s heart every time he falls
within its precincts. Please felicitate the wretch for me, and
believe me, my dear Mrs. Fields,
Your true friend and servant,
H. J.
_July 8._
Though not related either to Alcott or to Henry James, the following
entry, on October 16, 1863, should be preserved—and as well in this place
as in another. It refers to the second of the three Josiah Quincys who
were mayors of Boston in the course of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Josiah Quincy dropped in to see J. T. F. He had lately
been traveling in the West, he said. People complimented
him upon his youthful appearance and his last letter to the
President. “I am glad you liked the letter,” he said, “but my
father wrote it.” At the next town people pressed his hand,
and thanked him for his staunch adherence to the Anti-slavery
cause as expressed in the “Liberator.” “Oh,” his reply was,
“that was my brother Edmund Quincy”; a little farther on a
friend complimented his brilliant story in the last “Atlantic”
magazine. “That was by my son J. P. Quincy,” he was obliged to
answer. Finally, when his exploits in the late wars at the head
of the 20th Regiment were recounted, he grew impatient, said it
was his son Colonel Quincy, but he thought it high time he came
home, instead of travelling about to receive the compliments of
others.