Longfellow, and ourselves sat down to lunch afterward, when she
sang snatches of her loveliest songs and talked and laughed and
was as graceful and merry and sweet as ever a beautiful woman
knows how to be. She is now twenty-seven years old. Her light
hair, deep blue eyes, full glorious eyes, are of the Northern
type, but her broad intellectual brow, her beautiful teeth,
and strong character, belong only to the type of genius and
beauty. She is not only brave but almost imperious, I fancy,
at times; a manner quite necessary, I say, to protect her from
vulgar animosity and audacity. We heard her last night sing
“Auld Robin Gray” not only with exquisite feeling, but with
a pronunciation of the Scottish dialect that appeared to us
very remarkable. When we spoke to her of it she said, “Yes,
but there is much like that too in the Swedish dialect. When I
first came up a peasant to Stockholm to learn to sing, I had
the dialect very bad indeed, and it was a long time before I
lost it. Then I went to school in France, and now my accent
and dialect are French. When I went back home and talked with
the French dialect, they said to me, ‘Now Christine, don’t be
absurd,’ but I could not help it. I catch everything. I have
never studied English in my life. I am learning American fast.
I have learned ‘I guess,’ and I shall soon say ‘I reckon’ by
the time I come back from the West.”
Vieuxtemps, the violinist, she appreciates and enjoys highly
as an artist. Of Ole Bull she says, “He is a charlatan. Ah,
you will excuse me, but it is true.” Of Viardot-Garcia she has
the highest admiration. Nothing ever gave her higher delight
than Viardot’s compliment after hearing her “Mignon.” It was
uncalled for, unexpected, and from the heart. She rehearsed
what we recall so well, Viardot’s plain face, poor figure—and
great genius triumphant over all. Well, we hear poor Viardot
has lost her fortune by this sad French war.
I have set down nothing which can recall the strong sweet
beauty of Nilsson. She is a power to command success—fine and
strong and sweet. Her face glowed and responded and originated
in a swift yet gentle way, as one person after another was
presented, that was a study and a lesson. She neither looked
nor seemed tired until the presentation was over, when she said
she was hungry. “We have had no breakfast yet, nothing to eat
all day; ah, I shall know again what it means when Mrs. Fields
asks me to lunch at one o’clock!” with an arch look at me. I
was extremely penitent and hurried the lunch, but the people
could not go out of the dining-room. However, all was cleaned
at last and we had a quiet cosy talk and sit-down, which was
delightful.
On Saturday she sang from “Hamlet,” the mad scene of Ophelia.
As usual, her dress and whole appearance were of the most
refined and perfect beauty, and her singing we appreciated even
more deeply than ever. She has not the remote _exalté_ nature
of highest genius, but she is the great singer of this new
time, and her realism is in marked sympathy with her period.
[Illustration: CHRISTINE NILSSON AS OPHELIA]
It has already been suggested that, when Thomas Bailey Aldrich made his
migration to Boston as editor of “Every Saturday,” he brought into the
circle of the Fieldses many fresh breezes from the outer world. In the
diary of Mrs. Fields there are frequent notes revealing a friendship
which lasted, indeed, long after the diary ceased, and up to the end of
Aldrich’s life, in 1907. Two entries—the first relating to the meteoric
author of “The Diamond Lens,” regarded in its day as a bright portent
in the literary heavens, the second to the Aldriches themselves at the
country place with the name which Aldrich embalmed in his excellent
title, “From Ponkapog to Pesth”—warrant conversion from manuscript into
print.
_November 9, 1865._—Aldrich told us the story of Fitz-James
O’Brien, the able author of “The Diamond Lens.” He was a
handsome fellow, and began his career by running away with
the wife of an English officer. The officer was in India, and
Fitz-James and the guilty woman had fled to one of the seaports
on the south of England in order to take passage for America,
when the arrival of the woman’s husband was announced to them
and O’Brien fled. He concealed himself on board a ship bound
for New York. There he ran a career of dissipation, landing
with only sixty dollars. He went to a first-rate hotel, ordered
wines, and left a large bill behind when the time came to run
away. Then he wrote for Harpers, and one publisher and another,
writing little and over-drawing funds on a large scale. He
came and lived six weeks upon Aldrich in his uncle’s house one
summer when the family were away. One day he tried to borrow
money of Harpers, and being refused he went into the bindery
department, borrowed a board, printed on it, “I am starving,”
bored holes through the ends, put in a string, hung it round
his neck, allowed his fawn-colored gloves to depend over each
end, and stood in the doorway where the firm should see him
when they went to dinner. A great laugh and more money was
the result of this escapade. Finally, when the war broke out,
he enlisted, and this was the last A. heard of him for some
time; but, being himself called to take a position on General
Lander’s staff, he was on his way to Richmond and had reached
Petersburg, when someone told him Fitz-James O’Brien had been
shot dead. Then he went to the hospital and saw him lying there
dead.
Shortly after this, when Bayard Taylor and his wife were dining
in a hotel restaurant at Dover, I believe,—it was one of the
south of England towns,—they saw themselves closely observed by
a lady and gentleman sitting near them. Finally the gentleman
arose and came to speak to Taylor, said he observed they were
Americans, and asked if he had ever heard of F. J. O’Brien.
“Oh, yes,” said Taylor, “I knew him very well. He was killed
in our war.” Then the lady burst into tears and the gentleman
said, “She is his mother!”
I forgot to say in the course of the story that he borrowed
once sixty-five dollars for which A. became responsible,
and when it was not paid he sent a letter to O’B. saying he
must pay it. In return O’Brien sent him a challenge for a
duel, which A. accepted, in the meantime discovering that an
honorable fight could not be between a debtor and a creditor.
However, when the time appointed arrived, O’Brien had
absconded. We could not repress a smile at the idea of A.’s
_fighting_, for he is a painfully small gentleman.
_May 31, 1876._—Passed the day with the Aldriches at Ponkapog.
Aldrich maintained at dinner that the horse railroad injured
Charles Street. His wife and J. T. F. took the opposite ground.
Finally J. said, “Well, the Philadelphians don’t agree with
you; they have learned the value of horse railroads in their
streets.” “Oh, that’s because they are such Christians,” said
A. “They know whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”
He is a queer, witty creature. When the railroad dropped us
at Green Lodge station, a tiny place surrounded by wild green
woods and bog, we found him sitting on a corner of the platform
where he said he had been “listening to the bullfrog tune
his violin. He had been twanging at one string a long time!”
Aldrich was in an ecstasy of delight, and in truth it was a day
to put the most untuned spirit into tune. In the afternoon we
floated on the beautiful pond. The whole day gave us a series
of pictures—only thirteen miles from town, yet the beechwoods
can be no more retired. Mr. Pierce owns 500 acres, and it
must be a pleasure to him, while he is away in Washington, to
feel that someone is using and enjoying his beautiful domain;
and how could it be half so well used and enjoyed as by the
family of a struggling literary man! The house they live in,
which was going to decay, may really be considered a creation
of Lilian’s. Altogether she is very clever and Aldrich most
fortunate and our Washington senator is doubtless most content
to think of the enjoyment of others in his domain.
Still more exotic a figure in Boston than Aldrich was William Morris
Hunt—in spite of his temporary association with Harvard College and
his Boston marriage. Both he and his wife are constantly to be met in
the pages of Mrs. Fields’s journals, from which they emerged with some
frequency into her published “Biographical Notes,” even as they have
reappeared, with others, on earlier pages of this book.
In other places than Charles Street, Fields and Hunt were often meeting.
One brief record of an encounter, at the end of a Saturday Club meeting,
should surely be preserved, for all that it suggests of Hunt in amused
rebellion against his surroundings.
_Sunday, August 26, 1874._—Hunt came to Jamie when the
afternoon was nearly ended and asked him to go up to his
studio. As they went along, he said, “I’ve made a poem! First
time I ever wrote anything in my life. ’Tisn’t long, only four
lines, but I’ve got it written down.” Whereat then and there he
pulled out his pocketbook and read:
“Boston is a hilly place;
People all are brothers-in-law.
If you or I want something done
They treat us then like mothers-in-law.
“This goes to the tune of Yankee Doodle,” Whereat he sang
it out on the public highway. He looked very handsome, was
beautifully dressed in brown velvet with a gold chain about
his neck, but swore like a trooper and was in one of his most
lawless moods.
He gave J. for me a photograph of a marvellous picture which
he calls his Persian Sybil, Anahita. I see his wife in it as
in so many of his best works. “I don’t mean to do any more
portraits,” he said. “When I remember how I have wasted time on
an eyebrow because somebody’s 14th cousin thought it ought to
turn up a little more—it makes me mad!”
[Illustration: _Facsimile letter from Hunt to Fields_]
When the English painter, Lowes Dickinson, the father of G. Lowes
Dickinson, was visiting the Fieldses in Boston, a photograph of Hunt’s
portrait of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw so impressed him that he asked to
be taken to the painter’s studio. In Miss Helen M. Knowlton’s “Art Life
of William Morris Hunt” this circumstance is related, together with its
sequel, which was the publication of Hunt’s “Talks on Art” from notes
made by Miss Knowlton herself. It is a surmise but slightly hazardous
that a characteristic note found among the Fields papers was written
apropos of Dickinson’s visit to Hunt: “Send ’em along—I mean Painters,”
he wrote to Fields. “I have had a delightful day with your friend—and I
know he is a painter—why? because he likes what I do well and _hates_
what I do that ain’t worth....”
It has been seen that, as early as November, 1868, James Parton suggested
that “a writer named Mark Twain” be engaged to contribute to the
“Atlantic.”[32] In October, 1868, “F. Bret Harte” wrote to the editor
of the “Atlantic” from San Francisco: “As the author of ‘The Luck of
Roaring Camp,’ I have to thank you for an invitation to contribute to
the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ but as editor of ‘The Overland,’ my duties
claim most of my spare time outside of the Government office in which
I am employed.... But I am glad of this opportunity to thank someone
connected with the ‘Atlantic’ for its very gracious good-will toward
me and my writings, particularly the book which G. W. Carleton of New
York malformed in its birth. There was an extra kindness in your taking
the deformed brat by the hand, and trying to recognize some traces of a
parent so far away.”
It was in the discharge of his work as editor of the “Atlantic” that
Fields, hospitable to practitioners of all the arts, entered especially
into relations with writers whose paths might not otherwise have crossed
his, and his wife’s. Of all the young Lochinvars of the pen who came
out of the West while Mrs. Fields was keeping her diary, Bret Harte and
Mark Twain were the daring and dauntless gallants who most captured the
imagination and have longest held it. To each of them Mrs. Fields devoted
a number of pages in her diary. We shall see first what she had to say
about Bret Harte.
_Friday, March 10, 1871._—Too many days full of interest have
passed unrecorded. Chiefly I should record what I can recall
of Francis Bret Harte, who has made his first visit to the
East just now, since he went to San Francisco in his early
youth. He is now apparently about 35 years old. His mind is
full of the grand landscape of the West, and filled also with
sympathetic interest in the half-developed natives who are
to be seen there, nearer to the surface than in our Eastern
cities. He told me of a gambler who had a friend lying dead in
the upper room of a gambling house. The man went out to see
about having services performed. “Better have it at the grave,”
said the parson to whom he applied. Jim shook his head as if
he feared the proper honors would not be paid his friend. The
other then suggested they should find the minister and leave
it to him. “Well,” said Jim, “yes, I wish you’d do just that,
for I ain’t much of a funeral ‘sharp’ myself.” He told me also,
as a sign of the wonderful recklessness which had pervaded San
Francisco, that at one time there was a glut of tobacco in the
market and, a block of houses going up at the same period, _the
foundations of those houses were laid of boxes of tobacco_.
Bret Harte, as the world calls him, is natural, warm-hearted,
with a keen relish for fun, disposed to give just value to the
strong language of the West, which he is by no means inclined
to dispense with; at ease in every society, quick of sense
and sight. Jamie, who saw him more than I, finds him lovable
above all. We liked his wife too,—not handsome but with good
honest sense, appreciative of him,—and two children. She is
said to sing well, but poor woman! the fatigues of that most
distressing journey across the continent, the fêtes, the heat
(for the weather is unusually warm), have been almost too much
for her and she is not certainly at her best. They dined and
took tea here last Friday.
[Illustration: _Facsimile page from an early letter of Bret Harte’s_]
_Tuesday, September 5, 1871._—J. went to Boston. I wrote in the
pastures and walked all the morning. Coming home, after dinner,
came a telegram for me to meet J. and Bret Harte at Beverly
station with the pony carriage. I drove hard to catch the
train, but arrived in season, glad to take up the two good boys
and show them Beverly shore. Stopped at Mrs. Cabot’s returning
to see Mrs. ——, etc. They were all glad to have a glimpse of
Bret Harte. The talk turned a little upon Hawthorne, and I was
much amused to hear Mrs. —— say, drawing herself up, “Yes, he
was born in Salem, but we never knew anything about him.” (The
truth was, Mrs. —— was the last person to appreciate him.) ...
Fortunately Miss Howes was present, whose father was one of
Hawthorne’s best friends; so matters were made clear there. We
left soon and came on to Manchester, where, after showing him
the shore, we sat and talked during the evening.
Mr. Harte had much to say of the beautiful flowers of
California, roses being in bloom about his own house there
every month in the year. He found the cloudless skies and
continued drought of California very hard to bear. For the
first time in my life I considered how terrible perpetual
cloudlessness would be! He thinks there is no beauty in the
mountains of California, hard, bare, snowless peaks. Neither
are there trees, nor any green grass.
He is delighted with the fragrant lawns of Newport and has, I
believe, put into verse a delightful ghost story which he told
us.[33] He has taken a house of some antiquity in Newport,
connected with which is the story of a lady who formerly lived
there and who was very fond of the odor of mignonette. The
flower was always growing in her house, and after her death,
at two o’clock every night, a strong odor has always been
perceived passing through the house as if wafted along by the
garments of a woman. One night at the appointed hour, but
entirely unconnected in his thought with the story Mr. Harte
had long ago heard, he was arrested in his work by a strong
perfume of mignonette which appeared to sweep by him. He looked
about, thinking his wife might have placed a vase of flowers
in the room, but finding nothing he began to follow the odor,
which seemed to flit before him. Then he recalled, for the
first time, the story he had heard. He opened the door; the
odor was in the hall; he opened the room where the lady died,
but there was no odor there; until returning, after making a
circuit of the house, he found a faint perfume as if she had
passed but not stayed there also. At last, somewhat oppressed
perhaps by the ghostliness of the place and hour, he went out
and stood upon the porch. There his dream vanished. The sweet
lawn and tree flowers were emitting an odor, as is common at
the hour when dews congeal, more sweet than at any other time
of day or night, and the air was redolent of sweets which might
easily be construed into mignonette. The story was well told
and I shall be glad to see his poem.
Many good stories came off during the evening, some very
characteristic of California; ones such as that of an uproar in
a theatre and a man about to be killed, when someone shouts,
“Don’t waste him, but kill a fiddler with him.” Also one of the
opening nights at the California theatre, the place packed,
when a man who has taken too much whiskey wishes a noise;
immediately the manager, a strong executive man, catches him
up with the help of a policeman, and before anybody knows the
thing is done or the disturber what is the matter, he finds
himself set down on the sidewalk outside in the street. “Well,”
said he with an oath, “is this the way you do business here;
raise a fellow before he has a chance to draw?” (referring to
the game of poker).
Mr. Harte is a very sensitive and nervous man. He struggles
against himself all the time. He sat on the piazza with J. and
talked till a late hour. This morning at breakfast I found him
most interesting. He talked of his early and best-loved books.
It appears that at the age of nine he was a lover and reader of
Montaigne. Certain writers, he says, seem to him to stand out
as friends and brothers side by side in literature. Now Horace
and Montaigne are so associated in his mind. Mr. Emerson, he
thinks, never in the least approaches a comprehension of the
character of the man. With an admiration for his great sayings,
he has never guessed at the subtle springs from which they
come. The pleasant acceding to both sides in politics, and
other traits of like nature, gives him affinity with Hawthorne.
By the way, he is a true appreciator of Hawthorne. He was moved
to much merriment yesterday by remembering a passage in the
notes, where he slyly remarks, “Margaret Fuller’s cows hooked
the other cows.” Speaking of Dr. Bartol, he said, “What a dear
old man he is! A venerable baby, nothing more!” But Harte is
most kindly and tender. His wife has been very ill and has
given him cause for terrible anxiety. This accounts for much
left undone, but he is an oblivious man oftentimes to his
surroundings—leaves things behind!!
_January 12, 1872._—Bret Harte was here at breakfast. It is
curious to see his feeling with regard to society. For purely
literary society, with its affectations and contempts, he has
no sympathy. He has at length chosen New York as his residence,
and among the Schuylers, Sherwoods, and their friends he
appears to find what he enjoys. There is evidently a _gêne_
about people and life here, and provincialisms which he found
would hurt him. He is very sensitive and keen, with a love and
reverence for Dickens almost peculiar in this coldly critical
age. Bryant he finds very cold and totally unwilling to lead
the conversation, as he should do when they are together, as
he justly remarks, he being so much younger—but never a word
without cart and horses to fetch it.
Bret Harte has a queer absent-minded way of spending his time,
letting the hours slip by as if he had not altogether learned
their value yet. It is a miracle to us how he lives, for he
writes very little. Thus far I suppose he has had money from J.
R. O. & Co., but I fancy they have done with giving out money
save for a _quid pro quo_.
_February, 1872_ [during a visit to New York].—We had promised
to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Harte early and go to the theatre
afterward, therefore four o’clock found us at their door. He
welcomed us by opening it himself and only this reassured
Jamie. We had driven up in a “Crystal,” much to my amusement,
in which J. had insisted I should sit until he discovered if
that was the house. The scene was altogether comic. I shortened
the ludicrousness as much as possible by jumping out and
running quickly up the steps. Mrs. Harte was not ready to see
me, but I found Mr. Barrett the actor with Mr. Harte in the
parlor, and soon being invited upstairs, found Mrs. Barrett and
Mrs. Harte together. We had a merry dinner together, the young
actor evidently quite nervous with respect to the evening’s
performance. He went an hour before us to the play. We sat in
the stage box; the play was “Julius Cæsar.” It is useless to
deny Edwin Booth great talent, exquisite grace and feeling.
Both the young men, the first, Barrett, a man of intellect, and
Booth, a man of inherited grace and feeling as well as good
mind, have the advantage moreover of being born to the stage.
Their stage habits fit them more perfectly than those of the
drawing-room and they walk the stage with the ease that most
men do their own parlors. During the performance Booth invited
us into his drawing-room; a short carpeted way led from the box
into the small room where he was sitting in Roman costume, pipe
in mouth; he rose and called “Mary,” as we approached, when the
tiniest woman ever called wife made her appearance. She is an
ardent little spark of human flame and he really looks large
beside her.
But his grace, his grace! His dress too, was as usual
perfect—more, far more than all, both the actors had such
feeling for Shakespeare and for their parts with which they
are filling the stage nightly, that they were deeply and truly
enthusiastic. It was a sight to warm Shakespeare.
[Illustration: BRET HARTE AND MARK TWAIN
_From early photographs_]
_Saturday, September 18, 1875._—Bret Harte came on the ½ past
12 train. He came in good health, save a headache which ripened
as the day went on; but he was bubbling over with fun, full of
the most natural and unexpected sallies. He wished to know if
I was acquainted with the Cochin China hen. They had one at
Cohasset. They had named him Benventuro (after a certain gay
Italian singer of strong self-appreciation who came formerly
to America). He said this hen’s state of mind on finding a
half-exploded firecracker and her depressed condition since
its explosion was something extraordinary. His description was
so vivid that I still see this hen perambulating about the
house, first with pride, second with precipitation, fallen into
disgrace among her fellows.
He said Cohasset was not the place to live in the summer if
one wanted sea-breezes. They all came straight from Chicago!!
He fancied the place, thinking it an old fishing village, not
unlike Yarmouth. Instead of which they prided themselves upon
never having “any of your sea-smells,” and, being five miles
from the doctor, could not be considered a cheerful place to
live in with sick children. He said he was surprised to find J.
T. F. without a sailor’s jacket and collar. The actors among
whom he had been living rather overdid the business; their
collars were wider, their shirts fuller, and their trousers
more bulgy than those of any real sailor he had ever observed,
and the manner of hitching up the trousers was entirely
peculiar to themselves and to the stage.
We went to call upon the Burlingames. In describing Harrisburg,
Virginia, where he had lectured, he said a committee-man came
to invite him to take a walk, and he was so afflicted with a
headache that he was ready to take or give away his life at
any moment; so he accepted the invitation and walked out with
him. The man observed that Harrisburg was a very healthy place;
only one man a day died in that vicinity. “Oh!” said Harte,
remembering the dangerous state of his own mind, “has that
man died yet today?” The man shook his head gravely, never
suspecting a joke, and said he didn’t know, but he would try to
find out. Whereat Harte, to keep up the joke, said he wished
he would. He went to the lecture forgetting all about it and
saw this man hanging around without getting a chance to speak.
The next morning very early, he managed to get an opportunity
to speak to him. “I couldn’t find out exactly about that man
yesterday,” he said. “What man?” said H. “Why, the one we were
speaking of; the Coroner said he couldn’t say precisely who it
was, but the one man would average all right.”