Emersons day before yesterday. Emerson came to pass an hour
with J. T. F. before going to Concord. His son Edward had come
down to meet him and was full of excitement over the reception
his father was to receive and of which he was altogether
ignorant. He was overjoyed to be on the old ground again and
comes back to value the old friends even more than ever. He
must have been much pleased by the joy testified in Concord,
but we have only the newspaper account of that. He has been
fêted more than ever in England, and Ellen was rather worn out
by the ovations; but her general health is much improved. The
Nortons, who returned in the same steamer, tell me Miss Emerson
was fêted for her own sake and was his rival! Her “American
manners” became all the rage in that world of novelty. One
night a gentleman sitting next her at dinner introduced the
word “æsthetic.” She said she did not understand what he meant
by that word!
On the voyage Emerson was devoted to his daughter and full
of fun in all his talk with her. He would tuck her up in
blanket shawls and go up and down, hither and yon, to make
her comfortable—then he would laugh at her for being such an
exacting young lady and would be very ironical about the manner
in which she would allow him to wait on her. “And yet,” he
said, turning to the Nortons, “Ellen is the torch of religion
at home.”
Throughout the journals Mrs. Fields’s references to meetings of the
Saturday Club, and the records of conversation reported by her husband
after these lively gatherings, are frequent. In one brief entry Parkman,
Lowell, and Emerson appear in a conjunction that could hardly have been
happy at the moment, but the concluding words of the passage may well
stand, for their appreciation of Emerson, at the end of these pages
concerned chiefly with him.
_August 26, 1874._— ... Parkman said to Lowell, and a more
strange evidence of lapse of tact could hardly be discovered,
“Lowell, what did you mean by ‘the land of broken promise’?”
Emerson, catching at this last, said, “What is this about the
land of broken promise?” clearly showing he had never read
Lowell’s Ode upon the death of Agassiz—whereat Lowell answered
not at all, but dropped his eyes and silence succeeded,
although Parkman made some kind of futile attempt to struggle
out of it. Emerson said, “We have met two great losses in our
Club since you were last here—Agassiz and Sumner.” “Yes,” said
Lowell, “but a greater than either was that of a man I could
never make you believe in as I did—Hawthorne.” This ungracious
speech silenced even Emerson, whose warm hospitality to the
thought and speech of others is usually unending.
[Illustration: _Facsimile of autograph inscription on a photograph of
Rowse’s crayon portrait of Lowell given to Fields_]
In “Authors and Friends” Mrs. Fields concerned herself with Longfellow
and Whittier at even greater length than with Holmes and Emerson. The
Whittier paper, besides, was printed as a small separate volume; and
in Samuel T. Pickard’s “Life of Whittier,” as in Samuel Longfellow’s
biography of his brother, the letters from Whittier, as from Longfellow,
to Mrs. Fields, and to her husband, bear witness to valued intimacies.
Neither to Whittier nor to Longfellow, therefore, does it seem desirable
to devote a special section of these papers; nor yet to Lowell, who never
became the subject of published reminiscences by Mrs. Fields, perhaps
for the very reason that he figures somewhat less frequently than the
others in her journal. Yet there are many allusions to him, and in
addition to the letters to Fields which Norton selected for his “Letters
of James Russell Lowell,” and Scudder for his biography of Lowell, a
surprising number of unprinted, characteristic communications, both to
Fields and to his wife, testify to their friendship. The remainder of
this chapter cannot be more profitably employed than by drawing from
Mrs. Fields’s journal passages relating to these and other local guests
of the Charles Street house, and supplementing the diary especially with
a few of Lowell’s sprightly letters to his successor in the editorship
of the “Atlantic Monthly.” It may be remarked, as fairly indicative of
the relations between Lowell and the Fieldses through many years, that
when they visited England in 1869 their traveling companion was Lowell’s
daughter Mabel.
[Illustration: JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
_From the crayon portrait by Rowse in the Harvard College Library_]
Here, to begin with, is a note written to accompany one of Lowell’s
most familiar poems, “After the Burial,” when he sent the manuscript to
the editor of the “Atlantic.” Lowell’s practice of shunning capitals at
the beginning of his letters, except for the first personal pronoun, is
observed in the quotations that follow:—
ELMWOOD, _8th March, 1868_
MY DEAR FIELDS:—
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.
[Illustration: _Facsimile of Lowell’s “Bulldog and Terrier” sonnet_]
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!