JAMES T. FIELDS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND PERSONAL 
 SKETCHES 
 
 WITH 
 
 UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS AND TRIBUTES 
 FROM MEN AND WOMEN OF LETTERS 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
 BOSTON 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1882 
 
Copyright, 1881, 
 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 ?*?*- 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
P45 
 
 n y a pour les dmes d autre solitude que celle de Voubli. 1 
 
 
IN MEMORY. 
 
 As a guest who may not stay 
 Long and sad farewells to say 
 Glides with smiling face away, 
 
 Of the SAveetness and the zest 
 Of thy happy life possessed 
 Thou hast left us at thy best. 
 
 Warm of heart and clear of brain, 
 Of thy sun-bright spirit s wane 
 Thou hast spared us all the pain. 
 
 Now that thou hast gone away, 
 What is left of one to say 
 Who was open as the day ? 
 
 What is there to gloss or shun ? 
 Save with kindly voices none 
 Speak thy name beneath the sun. 
 
 Safe thou art on every side, 
 Friendship nothing finds to hide, 
 Love s demand is satisfied. 
 
 Over manly strength and worth, 
 At thy desk of toil, or hearth, 
 Played the lambent light of mirth, 
 
 Mirth that lit but never burned; 
 All thy blame to pity turned ; 
 Hatred thou hadst never learned. 
 
 Every harsh and vexing thing 
 At thy home-fire lost its sting; 
 Where thou wast was always spring. 
 
7^ MEMORY. 
 
 And thy perfect trust in good, 
 Faith in man and womanhood, 
 Chance and change and time withstood. 
 
 Small respect for cant and whine, 
 Bigot s zeal and hate malign, 
 Had that sunny soul of thine. 
 
 But to thee was duty s claim 
 Sacred, and thy lips became 
 Reverent with one holy Name. 
 
 Therefore, on thy unknown way 
 Go in God s peace ! We who stay 
 But a little while delay. 
 
 Keep for us, O friend, where er 
 Thou art waiting, all that here 
 Made thy earthly presence dear. 
 
 Something of thy pleasant past 
 On a ground of wonder cast, 
 In the stiller waters glassed ! 
 
 Keep the human heart of thee : 
 Let the mortal only be 
 Clothed in immortality. 
 
 And when fall our feet as fell 
 
 Thine upon the asphodel, 
 
 Let thy old smile greet us well, 
 
 Proving in a world of bliss 
 What we fondly dream in this, 
 Love is one with holiness ! 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEK. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 IT will be observed that great care has been 
 taken in these pages to omit, so far as possible, 
 all personal mention of living friends. Some of 
 those only who have passed beyond this narrow 
 scope and vision have been recalled as making 
 part of a life not to be altogether forgotten. 
 
 A few poems and extracts from letters, where 
 friends may speak for themselves, have been in 
 corporated as properly forming a part of this 
 memorial. 
 
NIVERSITY 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 PERSONAL SKETCHES. 
 
 PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire s only seaport, 
 is one of the few places in America touched with 
 the hue of decay. During the Revolution, when 
 our humble navy consisted only of seven ships, 
 New Hampshire furnished one from the Ports 
 mouth navy yard. But the city reached "the 
 highest point of all" her "greatness" during the 
 latest five years of the last century, and a quaint, 
 fleeting glimpse of the old home world that so 
 called " greatness " was. Calm after storm, the 
 calm of closing day, was already brooding over 
 the town when the boy who is the subject of this 
 memoir was born, in 1816. His father was a 
 ship-master, u much respected," writes one of his 
 town s-people, " by all who knew him." His early 
 death at sea left his widow with the care of his 
 two little sons, and the ship-yards and wharves, 
 attractive to every boy, became places of danger 
 and distress in her eyes. The rapid Piscataqua, 
 
2 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 where the older and more adventurous boys loved 
 to launch their boats and be carried down to the 
 great sea, was forbidden to them. There was, 
 however, no disobedience to the maternal author 
 ity. James used to say, as it is quoted of Barry 
 Cornwall, " My mother was simply the kindest 
 and tenderest mother in the world." 
 
 The loss one Sunday afternoon of summer, in a 
 sudden squall, of a sailing boat containing a party 
 of his school fellows and one of their teachers, a 
 company James to his boyish sorrow had been for 
 bidden to join, was held up to him long afterward 
 as a righteous judgment on Sabbath-breaking as 
 well as an end to be looked for when boys entered 
 sailing boats. He never forgot this incident, re 
 ferring often in later years to the grief which over 
 spread the whole school at the loss of their beloved 
 teacher and comrades, but with a keen memory, 
 also, of the narrowness and folly which attempted 
 to instil the idea of a God made angry and re 
 vengeful by an afternoon of simple pleasure upon 
 the summer sea. 
 
 He was brought up in the straitest sect of the 
 Unitarians of those days, being carried twice and 
 frequently three times a day to Dr. Parker s 
 church, the front house-door being duly locked 
 as the little family party sallied forth. While he 
 trudged along holding his fond mother s hand, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 3 
 
 thinking, doubtless, of the box of unread books 
 which he had just unwillingly quitted, he was 
 unconsciously forming in his own mind a new 
 sense of what religion really signified and the 
 beauty of the world. That box of books ! He 
 never forgot what they were to him ! A friend 
 and neighbor of his mother having lately lost her 
 own only son, offered to let James enjoy his books. 
 They were to be borrowed a few at a time, read, 
 and returned before others should be taken. It 
 was not long before he knew every one the box 
 contained, and to his latest years, could name them 
 over. " I wonder if that good woman knew all 
 she did for me," he said latterly; "if I could 
 find her people I should be so happy to do some 
 thing for them now." 
 
 One of the privileges and pleasures of his early 
 life was connected with Dr. Parker s church. 
 There was a flourishing Sunday-school, chiefly, I 
 believe, under the minister s own care, but James s 
 teacher was a man of singular integrity and 
 beauty of character. " I think there never was 
 a better man than Mr. F.," he used to say, " and 
 his teaching was as simple and true as the man 
 himself. We could not help understanding it 
 or loving him. He was a model Sunday-school 
 teacher." There is a small book of prayers still 
 in my possession prepared by Dr. Parker for this 
 
4 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 school. He treasured this little volume to the 
 end, and it took the place of the prayer-book with 
 us, one of the last Sundays he passed on earth. 
 
 Although the boy was denied the pleasures of 
 boating and of horses, which were considered 
 equally dangerous and terrible by his careful par 
 ent, it must not be supposed that he was a 
 stranger to boyish sports and exercises. From an 
 early age he became a great walker and was fond of 
 open-air games. There never was a boy who was a 
 greater favorite with his companions. His out-of- 
 door life with them, in those quiet shaded streets, 
 or in their excursions to Rye Beach and shorter 
 wood-land rambles, or journeys to Dover and 
 Greenland, were always delightful reminiscenses. 
 Often by the half hour he would amuse others 
 as well as himself recalling the companions of 
 those days by the names they each assumed, 
 and recounting their boyish fun. Who can ever 
 forget, having once heard, the tales of " Gundy 
 Got" and "Shindy Clemmens" and others, whose 
 nicknames I cannot now recall ; or the story of 
 his first pocket-knife named "Sharper," and the 
 way in which the reputation of Sharper spread 
 among the boys ; or the Saturday afternoons in 
 the famous garrets of those days when they re 
 galed each other on sweetened water until one 
 boy, having made his beverage a week before- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 5 
 
 hand in order to be on time, was exposed by the 
 quick sense of James and brought to confession ? 
 Who ever failed to be amused at his own amuse 
 ment over these boyish follies ? His exuberance 
 and love of nature made every step of the long 
 road from the south end of Portsmouth to Eye 
 Beach like turning a fresh page of an unread book, 
 and to the end of his life the great book of nature 
 was his chief curiosity, his unchanged early love. 
 However tired other boys might become, he was al 
 ways fresh, with a first-rate appetite for luncheon, 
 when he arrived at the end of his walk. The 
 memory of those boyish pleasures made the old 
 places dear to him forever, and he was always 
 ready for " a day or two in Portsmouth." 
 
 In one of the little addresses given at some 
 academy in his later years, we find him say 
 ing, " Remember, boys, it is not so much the 
 books you study as the books you read which will 
 be of permanent value to you." In saying this he 
 was only speaking out of his own experience. 
 From the box of books to which I have referred, 
 it was an easy step to the Portsmouth library (the 
 Athenaeum), still preserved in the same pleasant 
 old building of the last century, looking out upon 
 the public street. The honors of the High School 
 seem to have been easily won, leaving time 
 enough beside for those hours in the broad win- 
 
6 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 dow seat of the old library room, which he loved to 
 point out to me in our visits to Portsmouth. The 
 window was shaded by a fine tree tempering the 
 summer sunshine, making his chosen retreat a 
 most delightful resort both in summer and in win 
 ter. Before the age of fourteen, when he came to 
 Boston, there were few books in the library which 
 he had not mastered. Everything possible to his 
 years, and much more, he seems to have read and 
 remembered. He used to say with amusement, 
 that he chose to go into a book-shop when he 
 came to Boston, because he thought he could sit 
 behind the counter and read all day ; but the first 
 thing he was told was that boys were not allowed 
 to read in business hours. 
 
 His companions and play time were not mean 
 while forgotten. Upon one of the numerous oc 
 casions of late years for calling together the 
 " Sons of Portsmouth," he said : " It is good for 
 us to be a troop of happy boys once more. I am 
 glad to see the companions of my school-days; 
 boys who have knocked the chip off my hat, boys 
 who have dared me out three times, boys who 
 have met me in those fierce encounters between 
 the Northern and Southern tribes of our native 
 town, and who are my excellent friends now that 
 these bloodless but terrible Saturday afternoons 
 are all over." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 7 
 
 When the boy of fourteen quitted his native 
 town " to go into business/ he left a happy mem 
 ory behind him. All the boys who could go, or 
 who were in any wise ready for college or business, 
 left when he did ; and he never forgot that morn 
 ing when the little company clambered up the 
 coach-side full of hope and excitement for an un 
 tried future. There was some boyish grief for his 
 mother and those who must be left behind. On 
 the whole, however, it was a very happy and ex 
 citing journey, the longest he had ever taken, and 
 he arrived in Boston full of new life for the days 
 to come. 
 
 I have before me now, carefully preserved 
 through these many years, the letter of Mr. Rich 
 ard Sullivan, telling James that he had found 
 a place for him according to his request, with 
 Messrs. Carter and Hendee. " Excellent young 
 men and much respected in Boston. If you like 
 the trade, and are pleased with the place, you can 
 come as soon as your mother pleases." It was in 
 accordance with this note that when the school 
 term was ended James came to Boston. His new 
 life was full of interest to him, in spite of his not 
 being allowed to read all day as he had fancied ; 
 but his employers were extremely kind to him, 
 soon discovering that he could be much better 
 employed than in the usual routine imposed upon 
 
8 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 boys. After, a very few days he was relieved 
 from the work of taking care of the shop and 
 given clerk s work instead, and he shortly became 
 one of the trusted members of the establishment. 
 
 Speaking of his employers in later years, Mr, 
 Fields said : " Mr. Hendee was an indulgent mas 
 ter and pleased to make the boys in his shop 
 happy. According to the fashion of those times 
 he had a box at the theatre, and always invited 
 one or more of the clerks to go every night. In 
 this way I saw the elder Booth, Fanny Kemble 
 as Juliet, her father, and in short all the good 
 actors who came to America at that time." 
 
 A certain wholesome pride of character early 
 manifested itself. He quickly learned all details 
 of business ; wholesale and retail prices, orders 
 needing to be filled, honest and dishonest buy 
 ers and sellers, persons prompt in payment and 
 otherwise, and with especial quickness at once ob 
 served by his masters, he was able to discover 
 what books were to be popular. He acquired also 
 a power, considered " very queer " by the other 
 clerks, of seeing a person enter the shop and pre 
 dicting what book was wanted before the wish 
 was expressed. For some time he kept this to 
 himself, but after a while, on its being discovered, 
 it was one of the interests for the day among the 
 clerks to see how many times James would be 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 9 
 
 right, and he seldom made amiss. He thought 
 no more of reading behind the counter, that idea 
 was only remembered as a boy s idle fancy, but 
 every night he would carry home an armful of 
 books, and he became acquainted with a goodly 
 portion of their contents before morning. In after 
 years he used to deplore the foolish habit, as he 
 called it, of doing without sleep, for his love of 
 nature and open-air life caused him to be up with 
 the dawn, that he might have an early walk and 
 taste the fresh air before the world was astir. The 
 fullness of life which never knows weariness ex 
 cept as the downward sweep of the pendulum, the 
 brightness of the sun of human existence, the un 
 tamed spirit of action and desire were never more 
 fully seen than in his nature. From the first he 
 was sumcient not only to take care of himself but 
 others, and as is universally the case with such 
 natures there were needs enough presented early 
 and always continued, to absorb a large portion 
 of whatever might be his. " The heart at leis 
 ure from itself to soothe and sympathize " was 
 native to him. The best thing he gave, or had 
 to give, was " that good which is effused by a 
 kind nature, and is not lost or wasted in vacancy. 
 The surrounding natures must catch a portion of 
 it, as of a portion of the sun or air, and diffuse it 
 in their turn." 
 
10 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 In the few pages of autobiography left by Barry 
 Cornwall, I find the following passage upon the 
 value and the choice of reading. I quote it here 
 because it is another spirit bearing testimony to 
 what was a religion with Mr. Fields, a code of 
 law reproduced by him for others, in some form, 
 every day of his life : 
 
 u In the village where I dwelt [wrote Mr. Proctor] , 
 there was a circulating library. Its contents were of a 
 very humble description. It contained the novels and 
 romances of fifty years ago, a score of old histories, and 
 a few volumes of biography now forgotten. The books 
 had been bought at sales for the value of waste paper. 
 Nevertheless it was out of this dusty collection of learn 
 ing that I was enabled to select a few books which 
 spurred me on the great road of thought. When we 
 encounter a new idea it surprises us, and we begin to 
 doubt and examine it, and this is thought. For it is not 
 simply the admission of another man s ideas, for these 
 sometimes present themselves so that we neither dissent 
 nor sympathize. They do not spur the mind on its road 
 at all. I had already read Caesar and Virgil, and Ovid, 
 and some parts of Theocritus, and passages of Homer ; 
 but these passed unprofitable over my mind, like shadows 
 over the unreflecting earth below. They were read as 
 words only, and left no trace or image. But now a more 
 effective agent was at work, which moved my heart at 
 the same time with my other faculties. Let no one de 
 spise the benefits which thus open the young and tender 
 heart. They are the gates of knowledge If I 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 11 
 
 had never become intimate with Le Sage, and Fielding, 
 and Richardson, with Sterne, and Inchbald, and Rad- 
 cliffe, I should, perhaps, have stopped at my seventeeth 
 year disheartened on my way. But they were my en- 
 couragers : they forced me to travel onwards to the In 
 tellectual Mountains. I have now forgotten all my 
 mathematics and arithmetic, all my Greek, and almost 
 all my Latin ; but I cleave to those who were true nurses 
 of my boyhood still." 
 
 It is interesting to read this passage in connec 
 tion with the following extracts from an informal 
 address made by Mr. Fields to the young men of 
 Phillips Academy, Exeter, in 1874. He says : 
 
 " FELLOW STUDENTS, I count myself still a scholar, 
 a seeker after knowledge and the true meaning of things. 
 And it is always a great pleasure to me when I stand 
 face to face with a hundred or more busy young gentle 
 men thirty or forty years younger than I am. You 
 would scarcely believe it to look at me now, but I was 
 really once young myself and studied Latin. I actually 
 once had a smooth cheek and dug away at my Greek 
 verbs, and spaded about among my mathematical roots 
 like yourselves. And so, as I have suffered in these 
 things myself, I know how to sympathize with you. You 
 can t tell me what it is to wake up in the morning with 
 a thundering great mathematical problem lying in wait 
 for you ! I know all about it. . . . Just see how sim 
 ple the whole matter of acquiring information is. Given 
 Brains (and we always claim the privilege of knock 
 ing a man down, if he disputes with us the fact of this 
 
12 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 possession), and all we can require, and must acquire, 
 are these three Attention, Perseverance, and Memory. 
 These can all be had for the asking ; they can all be 
 strengthened if they happen to be weak in any special 
 case. You notice I do not reckon in Morals, for I can 
 not conceive of a real student, a young man of brains or 
 common sense, who loves learning, and means to be a 
 first-rater, by and by, I cannot conceive of Ids having 
 any time or inclination for those idiotic immoralities 
 which turn a man into a brute. I take it, that sort of a 
 thing is not in our line, and so I do not intend to insult 
 you by mixing up baser matters with the things needful, 
 which we are all striving for, namely, the Great Truths 
 of life. Go in for fun and genuine enjoyment. It is a 
 capital rule to play a little every day of our lives." 
 
 This was quite as much as was w r ise or possible 
 to say to students still under their master s super 
 vision, but in his lecture on " Fiction " he reiter 
 ates his faith in the value of literature of the 
 imagination in forming the young mind. 
 
 James Russell Lowell has lately given expres 
 sion to this same truth, in his speech at the Lit 
 erary Fund Dinner in London. " Science," Mr. 
 Lowell says, " can never extinguish imagination, 
 nor that thirst which human nature feels for some 
 thing more piercing than facts are apt to be. I 
 think that as long as the human race lasts wonder 
 and delight in natural things, which, perhaps, are 
 not useful, and which are certainly not scientific, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 13 
 
 will be born into the world with every child." In 
 a sphere where the gospel of work is rigidly en 
 forced the rare individual natures who give ex 
 pansion as well as expression to something deeper 
 and more enduring within us cannot be too highly 
 prized. One of this beloved company has said, 
 :( If life itself were not a pleasure the utility even 
 of its necessaries might very well be questioned." 
 In rehearsing the story of a life the fact of pri 
 mal importance is the individual. Be careful to 
 preserve the corners, Goethe has somewhere said, 
 lest if we are too well rounded off there will be 
 no personal recognition in the hereafter. There 
 fore it is a happiness even to recall the limitations 
 of certain natures. Defining what they are not, 
 however, cannot define what they are. That is 
 quite a different labor. To define what they are 
 not would only be to lose ourselves in God s il 
 limitable plan. 
 
 " A man may earn the gratitude of the world by 
 speaking, writing, or acting admirably [writes Coventry 
 Patmore], but its most delighted and enduring thanks 
 are given to individuality of character, in other words 
 to a living addition to the visible scope and variety of 
 humanity. This individuality, whether in action or in 
 art, is always more or less, and often wholly, uncon 
 scious. Consciousness is the destruction of individual- 
 ity, ... but all true character is individual, and incapa- 
 
14 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 ble of being acquired by any amount of effort, or quite 
 abolished by any amount of neglect. It is so rare and 
 delicate a quality that to be able to recognize it at first 
 hand in a poem or other work of art is in itself a sort 
 of originality, the gift, or rather the grace of the few 
 whose verdict is sure to prevail after a time, commonly 
 a long time." 
 
 In this age of much scientific study and noble 
 advance, the character of which we write was 
 marked by quiet progress in its own direction. 
 The paths of science were reverently left to other 
 feet as quite outside his own province. By the 
 modest and almost unconscious acceptance of him 
 self he was laid open to much misapprehension 
 from the learned and dogmatic, but the recogni 
 tion universally and instinctively accorded to him 
 wherever simple human intercourse was possible, 
 made his life rich. He was incapable of envy, 
 and had no ambitions beyond doing his best in his 
 own direction. He was continually surprised, and 
 rejoiced afresh by the appreciation which came to 
 him. 
 
 One of Mr. Fields s earliest interests, outside his 
 business, was connected with the Mercantile Li 
 brary Association. Of this portion of his life, 
 Mr. Whipple has lately written in the " Atlantic 
 Monthly." These few extracts from his tender 
 and able tribute shall stand here to speak for 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 15 
 
 these years, more perfectly than any words of 
 mine could do : 
 
 44 My acquaintance with Fields began at the Boston 
 Mercantile Library Association when we were boys of 
 eighteen or nineteen. It happened that both of us were 
 inilamed by a passionate love of literature and by a cor 
 dial admiration of men of letters ; that we had read 
 of course superficially most of the leading poets and 
 prose writers of Great Britain, and had a tolerably cor 
 rect idea of their chronological succession ; that both of 
 us could write verse in various measures, and each then 
 thought that the ten-syllabled couplet of Dryden and 
 Pope was the perfection of poetic form ; and that Fields 
 had made his reputation a few days before our acquaint 
 ance began as the first anniversary poet of the associa 
 tion. Before a large audience he had read an original 
 poem which commanded general applause. 
 
 " It was my fortune, or misfortune, to follow Fields in 
 his brilliantly successful anniversary poem. Of what I 
 wrote I can hardly remember a line. The whole thing 
 has gone out of my memory as thoroughly as it has gone 
 out of the memory of the public. But what I do remem 
 ber is this, that Fields was anxious that I should suc 
 ceed. Being under the age when a free American can 
 vote, I naturally thought my couplets were quite bright. 
 Fields did all he could to confirm me in my amiable il 
 lusion. He suggested new 4 points ; worked with me as 
 though he desired that my performance should eclipse 
 his own ; and was the foremost among the lads who, 
 after the agony of delivery was over, were pleased to 
 
16 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 congratulate me on what was called my c success. This 
 disinterestedness made me at once a warm friend of 
 Fields. 
 
 " One of the most notable facts in the lives of clerks 
 with literary tastes and moderate salaries is the mysteri 
 ous way in which they contrive to collect books. Among 
 the members of the Mercantile Library Association, 
 Thomas R. Gould (now known as one of the most emi 
 nent of American sculptors), Fields, and myself had 
 what we called ; libraries before we were twenty-one. 
 Gould was a clerk in a dry-goods jobbing house, Fields 
 in a book-store, I in a broker s office. Fields s collec 
 tion much exceeded Gould s and mine, for he had in his 
 room two or three hundred volumes, the nucleus of a 
 library which eventually became one of the choicest pri 
 vate collections of books, manuscripts, and autographs 
 in the city. The puzzle of the thing was that we could 
 not decide how we had come into the possession of such 
 treasures. We had begun to collect before we were in 
 our teens, and as we had neither stolen nor begged we 
 concluded that our libraries represented our sacrifices. 
 In the evening, after the day s hard work was over, 
 Gould and I drifted by instinct to Fields s boarding- 
 house; and what glorious hilarity we always found in 
 his room ! He was never dull, never morose, never de 
 sponding. Full of cheer himself, he radiated cheer into 
 us. On one occasion Gould and I introduced the ques 
 tion of our salaries, and somewhat gloomily resented the 
 fact that there was no prospect of their being increased. 
 4 Look here, Tom and Ned, Fields broke out, I have 
 none of your fears in this matter. I was originally des- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 17 
 
 tined for Jupiter, but the earth caught hold of me, and 
 hauled me in. Don t you see, by thus impertinently in 
 terfering, the earth is bound to give me a good living ? * 
 This joyousness of mood lasted through his life. 
 
 " The conversation of Fields had, even in his boyhood, 
 the two charms of friendliness and inventiveness. The 
 audacities of his humor spared neither solemn respecta 
 bilities nor accredited reputations ; yet in his intercourse 
 with his friends his wildest freaks of satire never inflicted 
 a wound. His sensitive regard for the feelings of those 
 with whom he mingled was a marvel of that tact which 
 is the offspring of good nature as well as of good sense. 
 When he raised a laugh at the expense of one of his 
 companions, the laugh was always heartily enjoyed and 
 participated in by the object of his mirth; for, indulg 
 ing to the top of his bent in every variety of witty mis 
 chief, he had not in his disposition the least alloy of witty 
 malice. When seemingly delivered over to the most un 
 restrained ecstasies of his jubilant moods, when his ar 
 rows flew with lightning-like rapidity, hitting this person 
 and that on the exact weak point where their minds or 
 characters were open to good-natured ridicule, there never 
 was the least atom of poison on the shining edge of his 
 shafts. 
 
 u Those who knew Fields in his youth as well as in his 
 manhood must have noted that he was two widely differ 
 ent persons, according as he talked with intimate friends 
 or chance acquaintances. He never was his real self ex 
 cept in the company of the former, for with them he 
 had to put no rein on his impulsive feeling or his quick 
 intelligence ; but the latter utterly failed to comprehend 
 
18 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 him as he was in himself. To them, indeed, he appeared 
 as an eminently polite person, irreproachably dressed, 
 irreproachably decorous, guarded in his conversation, 
 pleasing in his manners, relying for his modest position 
 in literature on what he had privately printed for dis 
 tribution among his friends, and never presuming to be 
 anything more than a publisher, who not only sympa 
 thized with literary genius, but had a singularly swift 
 power to discern it. To us who were in his confidence 
 he was ever the maddest of mad wits, of inexhaustible 
 inventiveness and unconventional audacity. . . . 
 
 " I cannot help lingering on these early days of our 
 friendship, for his forth-rushing ebulliency of nature was 
 never more delightful than at that period, though his 
 capacity of self-command was even then as remarkable as 
 his spontaneity. 
 
 " As years rolled on, and Fields became a partner in 
 the house which he had served as a clerk, the proofs mul 
 tiplied that he was, among American publishers, one of 
 the most sagacious judges of the intrinsic and money 
 value of works of literature. . . . 
 
 " As I happened to witness the gradual growth of what 
 became one of the leading publishing houses of the coun 
 try, and as I know that its germinating root was in the 
 brain of Fields, I may be able to give some testimony as 
 to its rise and progress. Fields from the start had de 
 liberately formed in his mind an ideal of a publisher who 
 might profit by men of letters, and at the same time 
 make men of letters profit by him. He thoroughly un 
 derstood both the business and literary side of his occu 
 pation. Some of the first publications of the house be- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 19 
 
 longed to a light order of literature, but they still had 
 in them that indefinable something which distinguishes 
 the work of literary artists from the work of literary 
 artisans. 
 
 " One thing always puzzled me in reference to Fields, 
 and that was how he contrived to get time to attend to 
 his own affairs. His place of business always seemed 
 thronged with visitors. Some dropped in to have a chat 
 with him, and they dropped in every day ; others had 
 letters of introduction, and were to be received with par 
 ticular attention ; others were merciless bores, who se 
 verely tested his patience and good-nature. On some 
 forenoons he could hardly have had half an hour to him 
 self. Then he was continually doing kindly acts which 
 required the expenditure of a good deal of time. In 
 spite of all these distractions, he was a singularly orderly 
 and methodical business man. He made up for the hours 
 he lost, or was robbed of, by accustoming himself to 
 think swiftly and decide quickly on business matters. 
 .... I have done small justice to my own conception 
 of the brilliancy of his wit, the alertness of his intelli 
 gence, the variety of his information, and the kindness 
 of his heart. I shall have to take some other opportu 
 nity to speak of his numerous writings, and of his career 
 as a lecturer on literature." 
 
 Neither public interests nor private friendships 
 are sufficient to round the full life of the natural 
 man. The instinct of home is as deep in our na 
 tures as the instinct of common joy. During the 
 period of which Mr. Whipple has spoken, Mr. 
 
20 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Fields became engaged to a beautiful girl, Mary 
 Willard, eldest daughter of Mary (Adams) and 
 Simon Willard. She seemed in every way suited 
 to make him happy, but disease had laid its hand 
 upon her, and a few months after the engagement 
 she faded out of life. This was his first sorrow. 
 He felt incapacitated for the old routine of life 
 for the time, and as soon as possible he sailed for 
 Europe. Sea-sickness, lasting forty days, was a 
 novel experience, and one not to be repeated. 
 There were steamers even in those days, and he 
 returned in one after a visit of a few months, but 
 his fortune in the steamer was hardly better than 
 in the sailing vessel. His own diary shall serve 
 to give us particulars of this first rapid tour in 
 Europe. During the voyage he writes : 
 
 " Here my observation ceases for many days. That 
 dreadful destroyer of all personal comfort at sea got hold 
 upon me and kept me chained to my berth. At inter 
 vals I was able to enjoy the fine sights about me : the 
 rising and setting sun, the shifting clouds, the rolling 
 swarms of fish, from the huge black-fish to the little 
 nautilus. Life at sea is so new and strange to my expe 
 rience I have something to attract my attention every 
 hour of the day, and only want bodily strength to note 
 down what I witness of interest. My nights are passed 
 
 mostly in uneasy snatches of sleep. C reads to 
 
 me every night till ten or eleven, and I manage after 
 that to toil through the hours." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 21 
 
 The days and nights were chiefly a repetition of 
 the above, save when he was able to pursue his 
 studies of the French language and French and 
 English history. One day we find him reading 
 Lockhart s Scott. "I should like it better if I had 
 not read it so often/ he writes. 
 
 This hurried diary gives an interesting picture 
 of how much may be crowded into a single day, 
 and digested, too, by a young and enthusiastic 
 traveler. Days grow to be as long as weeks. 
 Such travelers may truly say, 
 
 " I moments live who lived but years." 
 
 "July 9, 1847. This morning we got into Havre 
 with the ship at about eight o clock. I jumped ashore 
 
 as soon as possible with the Captain and M , and 
 
 was enchanted at every step of the way. Everything 
 was so new, and land so glorious once again. After 
 breakfast I went about with a young French gentleman 
 who was kindly introduced to me in the counting-house 
 of MM. Lemaitre and Cie. We went first, at my 
 request, to the house in which St. Pierre, author of 
 4 Paul and Virginia, was born, now occupied by a re 
 finer of sugar. 1 Then to the end of the superb pier 
 head and to the Round Tower of Francis the First. 
 The day is a delightful one, and I never saw human 
 faces so happy before in the streets. Dined at two 
 
 1 Mr. Fields lias recorded the suggestions of this visit in his paper 
 upon " The Author of Paul and Virginia," included in his volume 
 of Sketches called Underbrush. 
 
22 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 p. M., and left for Rouen in the three P. M. train." [Then 
 follows a list of towers, castles, cathedrals, towns, and 
 villages, en route.] 
 
 " My companions were a young Scotchman and a 
 young Englishman, intelligent and most communicative, 
 one inviting me to visit Edinburgh, and the other Lon 
 don. . . . After dining [We may observe it was for the 
 second time that day, but he had divided the cherry and 
 made two of it] I sallied out and walked among the 
 crowds, the women in high Norman caps, and made my 
 way to the great Cathedral famous over Europe. It was 
 just vesper time, and the effect of the nuns singing be 
 hind the high altar was an utterance of music so thrill 
 ing it went to my heart. The light came dimly down 
 the aisles, and I lingered till the priests walked by me 
 to their cloisters. . . . The Seine runs directly by my 
 windows ; and as I write this a bugle from a descend 
 ing steamboat steals along the water like an echo. I 
 am tired, but could not help recording, before I slept, my 
 first day in Europe. . . . 
 
 "July 10. My second day in Europe. Rose at five 
 and went to the great Cathedral to attend matins." 
 [Here follows a description of churches, monuments, and 
 places seen before half past nine, when he returns for 
 coffee to the hotel, but sallying forth again directly he 
 visits and enjoys the market, Palais de Justice, Museum, 
 where he mentions particularly the autographs of Rich 
 ard Coeur de Lion and William the Conqueror. He 
 says of two old houses which he visits :] " They look 
 like carved objects that have escaped some great mu 
 seum. ... I have run into the flower-market twenty 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 23 
 
 times to-day and gaped with delight at the curious old 
 damsels who offer their bouquets in unknown tongues. 
 Notwithstanding I have got lost in a dozen streets, I 
 manage to come out right at last, everybody is so com 
 plaisant and so ready to go any distance with you to set 
 you going in the true direction again. . . . The old con 
 cert gardens near the St. Ouen Church are well worth 
 the half hour occupied in looking at them. 
 
 " Left Rouen at four P. M. for Paris, by the railroad, 
 which runs through a highly interesting country all the 
 way." [He gives a detailed account of every village, and 
 of glimpses of the Seine, its bridges, of chateaux, ave 
 nues of trees, scenes of historical interest, etc., until he 
 sees Paris " towering mistily into the skies."] 
 
 " My heart beat rapidly as I made out in the evening 
 light, indistinctly, familiar objects from the memory of 
 pictures I have seen." 
 
 And so ended the second day in Europe. 
 
 v L A K 
 
 The third day Jbeing jjunday, the be st day of 4*~- // 
 all, so it was crowded the fullest. Again we read, 
 " Rose at five, dressed, and sallied forth," and 
 after a long list of things seen and done, he 
 writes, " To bed at one." Speaking of his visit to 
 the Hotel des Invalides, he says, u I saw stumps 
 of men to-day, the major part of whose bodies 
 had been left scattered on battle-fields before I 
 was born." " Home to bed at twelve," and " rose 
 at half past four," or, the latest hour recorded, 
 " rose at seven," such were his habits as a trav 
 eler, the same as when at home. 
 
24 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Mr. Goodrich (Peter Parley), our consul, was at 
 this time living in Paris with his family, and our 
 traveler seems to have found a warm welcome at 
 his house. Mr. George Simmer was also in Paris, 
 and Mr. Henry Baird of Philadelphia. All three 
 gentlemen were his intimates, and he owed much 
 of his pleasure in Paris to their companionship. 
 From the Rhine he writes of himself as still inde 
 fatigable : " Went to bed at ten, got up and saw 
 the Drachenfels by moonlight ; saw the sun rise ; 
 walked out at five around the town. ... In the 
 cars we had opportunity of observing how a kind 
 deed or a gentle word atones for an ugly face." 
 
 His first day in London was, of course, full of 
 delight to him. 
 
 " Dined at a chop-house. Loitered in book-shops. 
 Went to Bath Court (Dr. Johnson s lodgings), Covent 
 Garden, The Cock and Magpie of Jack Sheppard mem 
 ory, and to Wolsey s house, now a barber s shop. . . . 
 Took a cab and drove to the booksellers , Moxon s, 
 Bonn s, Pickering s, and Murray s, whose rooms are in 
 teresting as connected with English literature. Mr. 
 Murray s nephew showed us about the apartment, where 
 are original portraits of Byron, Scott, Campbell, Moore, 
 Irving, and other eminent men." 
 
 It was during this first visit to London that 
 Mr. Fields enjoyed that exceptional evening at 
 the Italian Opera (Her Majesty s Theatre), when 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 25 
 
 Jenny Lind, Lablache, Gardoni, Coletti, Corelli, 
 and others made their appearance. Who of his 
 friends cannot remember his humorous description 
 of that night, the intense excitement, the won 
 derful fulfilment of excited expectation ? " After 
 the opera we had e Le Jugement de Paris. Tag- 
 lioni and Cerito were the principal dancers. We 
 went home at half-past twelve, entirely satisfied 
 that the fame of these singers and dancers had 
 not been overstated or overrated. Coming along 
 home we were accosted by a little child in the 
 street, who swept the sidewalks, begging for pen 
 nies, a contrast to the splendid scene we had 
 just left by no means pleasant." We find notes 
 at this period also of breakfasts, dinners, and 
 visits to Mr. John Kenyon, Mr. and Mrs. Howitt, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Procter (Barry Cornwall), and Mr. 
 and Mrs. S. C. Hall, all of whom became his life 
 long friends. 
 
 " Sunday, went to hear W. J. Fox preach. Fox gave 
 out a hymn, read a passage from the Bible, from Words 
 worth, Southey s translation of Michael Angelo, Milton, 
 and Herder. No text, but a consideration of the litera 
 ture of the day : Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, the * Econo 
 mist newspaper, etc. Told anecdote of the Society for 
 the Suppression of Mendicity. * What shall be done 
 with the poets ? Fine singing at Finsbury Chapel, and 
 an original preacher Mr. Kenyon recalled at Mr. 
 
20 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Procter s dinner-table Rogers s description of dining with 
 Sheridan, Talleyrand, and C. G. Fox. < Barry himself 
 told me more privately of his young days at school with 
 Byron and Sir Robert Peel. He also spoke of his love 
 of 4 Hyperion, by H. W. L. You don t drink, Fields/ 
 he said to me. Ah ! he is languishing for his Susque- 
 hanna ! . . . 
 
 " Left London for Brompton and The Rosary/ the 
 beautiful cottage of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall. Mrs. 
 Hall s library is a most tastefully decorated room. A 
 fine parrot, whom Mrs. H. calls her secretary, added by 
 his presence to the beauty of the apartment." 
 
 He describes an interesting company of persons 
 assembled at Mrs. Hall s, and returned to London 
 delighted with his visit. 
 
 " Walked through the college grounds at Eton, and 
 on towards Stoke Pogis." [Recalling, doubtless, as he 
 went, those exquisite lines of Gray, "Ye distant spires, ye 
 antique towers," which were favorites of his ; indeed, the 
 last words he heard on earth were from Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold s beautiful sketch of Gray s life, published in 
 Ward s " English Poets."] " Just as twilight came on 
 we rambled into Gray s churchyard, and read the tablet 
 nigh his tomb. The hour was happily chosen, and the 
 whole scene most touchingly beautiful." [Copied from 
 the tombstone in Gray s churchyard :] "In the same 
 pious confidence, beside her buried sister, here sleep the 
 remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful tender 
 mother of many children, one of whom alone had the 
 misfortune to survive her." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 27 
 
 A few days later he writes : 
 
 " In company with Leslie, the painter, visited Mr. 
 Rogers s house, in St. James Place. He was not in ; 
 saw his Rubens, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Rembrandt, and 
 all this beautiful collection by the most tasteful poet of 
 his time. . . . 
 
 " Tea with William and Mary Howitt at Clapton, 
 who gave me a hearty reception. Freilegrath came in 
 and stayed daring our visit, talking of Longfellow and 
 Bryant with enthusiastic admiration. . . . 
 
 " To-day Moxon showed me the remnant of Elia s 
 library, and gave me a copy of the 4 Rape of the Lock 
 that once belonged to Charles Lamb, and contained some 
 manuscript pages in his handwriting. . . . 
 
 "August 26. Had a delightful interview with the 
 author of Our Village. . . . 
 
 " Nine A. M. Rose at five, and rambled round the old 
 city of Bristol ; went to Radcliff church, and reconnoi- 
 tered the old place thoroughly, thinking of Chatterton 
 and his wretched life and death." 
 
 Of course his visit to Stratford is most enthusi 
 astically described, but there are no special points 
 to mention here. Mr. Fields s friends will never 
 fail to recall his amusing story of one of his stage 
 companions thither, who asked why he was so 
 eager to stop at Stratford. " Because Shakespeare 
 happened to live here," was the reply. " Shake 
 speare," said his interlocutor, " he d never been 
 thought anything of if he had n t written them 
 
28 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 plays! " Unhappily these little trifles do not bear 
 transcription. If occasionally they slip, as it were, 
 from the point of the pen, because the mind so 
 indissolubly connects them with certain places, 
 persons, or things, an apology should go with 
 them, since the voice and manner which gave 
 them grace are vanished. 
 
 "A kind note from Colonel Wild man inviting us to 
 Newstead Abbey. Saw an old lady at the Hut who 
 had seen Byron and his mother alight at the old place 
 which formerly occupied the ground, where the present 
 inn stands. Spent many hours at the Abbey, where we 
 saw the chapel, tomb over the dog, the drinking cup 
 (skull), tree with Byron s name beside his sister s. Also 
 from an eminence in the garden saw Annesley Hall, 
 (Mary Chaworth s residence), old mill at the lake side, 
 boat, Byron s canoe in the hall ; rode over to Hucknall 
 Church where Byron lies buried, sexton just locking 
 the doors, walked into the Byron pew ; saw the spot 
 where Byron lies ; tablet erected by his sister. . . . Ar 
 rived at Edinburgh at half-past five in the morning, the 
 castle looming proudly up in the sunlight. After rattling 
 over the pavements many a weary mile, the hotels being 
 all full, we were set down at 31 St. Andrew s Square, 
 and were received by the landlady at the top of the 
 stairs in her night-cap, nothing abashed at our presence. 
 
 Poor old Mrs. H , can I ever forget her welcome, and 
 
 her offer of all sorts of spirituous liquors ! . . . Went to 
 Blackwood s. Saw Wilson s portrait in his back room ; 
 strolled about this glorious old city. . . . Went into old 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 29 
 
 churches, and I made bold to ascend a Dissenter s pulpit 
 and think of John Knox. . . . 
 
 " Rode down to Gallashiels on top of the coach 
 beside a young Scotch lady who knew every inch of the 
 ground ; had seen Scott when a child, and knew Lock- 
 hart. She pointed out all the noted hills and castles, 
 and I was sorry when she bade us good-by at the door 
 of the little inn by the roadside in Gallashiels. At G. 
 we took what is called a dog-cart, a queer vehicle enough 
 but quite comfortable, and drove down to Abbotsford ; 
 we walked along in sight of Scott s proud growth of 
 young trees planted by himself with so much pleasure, 
 and pretty soon entered the gateway to his dwelling. 
 There it stood on the green and beautiful slope, so quiet 
 and still that it seemed the tomb of greatness departed. 
 Not a sound disturbed the solitude. . . . We walked 
 down the avenue to the hall door and rang the bell very 
 softly. The housekeeper bade us enter the apartment 
 first shown, where armor hung about the walls and 
 everything breathed of war and border minstrelsy. 
 
 " I sat in Scott s library chair, walked about among his 
 books, examined his pictures, looked upon his hat and 
 cane and the last coat he ever wore. After spending all 
 the time we could spare in the house we went into the 
 grounds and sat down by the Tweed side. A chamber 
 window was open and we imagined that room the one in 
 which Scott died. Lockhart describes the scene and no 
 one can forget it. ... As we sat in the evening in the 
 little parlor at the 4 King s Arms, Melrose, we heard 
 the voice of a woman singing one of Burns s songs in 
 another room. We rang the bell and the music ceased. 
 
30 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 It was the landlady s daughter who had been singing, 
 and who came to spread the table for our simple supper. 
 We read till midnight, and then as the moon had risen 
 sallied out into the quiet village. There stood the old 
 Abbey waiting for us. We rambled about in the moon 
 light and climbed into the broken windows. ... It was 
 a great night, that at Melrose. To bed but not to sleep. 
 " Up at five, a dull, misty morning, and set off in a 
 drosky for Dryburgh Abbey, where Scott lies buried. 
 As we went on the sun came out and the whole scene was 
 full of beauty. We passed the Eildon Hills, Chiefswood, 
 Ravenswood, and Wallace s Monument. Crossed the 
 Tweed in a small boat and leaped ashore just on the 
 rim of a waving forest filled with birds. Walked on in 
 silence through rows of superb trees till we reached a 
 low cottage, where reside the family who show Dry- 
 burgh and its grounds. The Tweed was rippling by us 
 as we stood around the grave of Scott, and a robin from 
 a neighboring tree kept up his morning melody undis 
 turbed. We picked some pebbles out of the river to 
 carry with us, and left a spot no change can ever wipe 
 from my memory." 
 
 It was upon this visit that Mr. Fields met John 
 Wilson (Christopher North) and William Words 
 worth, but he has recorded his memory of these 
 visits both in prose and verse more satisfac 
 torily than in these meagre jottings from his diary. 
 To return briefly to the journal : 
 " My last day in London. The old apple-woman at 
 the corner of Arundel Street wishes me all sorts of luck 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 31 
 
 wherever I may go I I have eaten her pears till she 
 seems like a friend I am leaving behind. ... 
 
 " September 5. Sunday. On board the steamer Bri 
 tannia. Wind fair. Head pretty steady. . . . Sat near 
 the bows ; read Bible and prayer-book. Began Irving s 
 Astoria. . . . 
 
 " September 8. Walked with Judge K. and a Scotch 
 gentleman who is to travel a year in America ; thinks 
 New York is in New England and New Orleans near 
 Boston. 
 
 " September 9. Bed most of the day. P very 
 
 funny, but I can t laugh at his jokes. Much obliged to 
 him, however, for trying to amuse me. 
 
 44 September 15. At five o clock this evening, while 
 
 lying in my berth talking with B , the steamer ran 
 
 ashore 
 
 " September 16. Leaking badly. . . . can t help 
 laughing at - behind his back. His courage has 
 dwindled to a pin s point. He has just left his state 
 room with a face like a tombstone. 
 
 " September 17. Leaking badly nearing Halifax. 
 . . . Jumped ashore and walked all over the city. . . . 
 
 "Sunday morning, Sailing up Boston Harbor. I have 
 walked the deck two long nights thinking of home and 
 friends." 
 
 Once more in the old places Mr. Fields took up 
 his renewed life with increased vigor. The fol 
 lowing note to Miss Mitford in 1849 gives a hint 
 of his literary occupations : 
 
32 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 BOSTON, U. S. A., November 10, 1849. 
 
 " DEAR Miss MITFOKD, Many weeks have elapsed 
 since I received your welcome letter, and I have delayed 
 answering it till now that I might send you a book I 
 have been editing. It is called fc The Boston Book, be 
 cause it contains the contributions of our metropolitan 
 writers. Among our Boston men you will find the names 
 of Webster, Prescott, Longfellow, and others not unknown 
 across the waters. I did not include Channing because 
 I have not printed the writings of any deceased authors. 
 The book is intended as a souvenir to be handed to a 
 friend as a memento of our city, and I am happy to say 
 a large edition is already sold. 
 
 " Mr. George Ticknor s History of Spanish Litera 
 ture is going through the press rapidly. It will be 
 ready in a few weeks for publication. 
 
 " I made your compliments as expressed in your lasfc 
 letter, and he in return, with his family, begs his kindest 
 regards. I have read some portions of his book, those 
 devoted to the ballad literature of Spain, and am greatly 
 charmed with the perusal. 
 
 " In the course of next month I intend to prepare, if I 
 get the leisure, a brief article on some of the less known 
 and more recent English poets for one of our Boston 
 periodicals, called the 4 Examiner, and hope to please 
 
 B by saying in print how well I like him. I am 
 
 busy just now superintending the republication of the 
 complete poems of Robert Browning, the first American 
 reprint. It will be issued by our house in a few weeks. 
 I asked my friend Mr. Whipple to send you a copy of 
 his Lectures, which, I am sure, you will like. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 33 
 
 " Mr. Webster has lately made one of his great 
 speeches touching Hungarian affairs. I think I have 
 never seen the lion more roused. 
 
 " Mr. Prescott is still busy with his 4 History of Philip 
 II. of Spain. He is not determined as to the extent 
 of his labor, but it will undoubtedly be one of his long 
 est efforts, and I think one of his most successful ones. 
 
 " With all my best wishes for your health and happi 
 ness, in which I am heartily joined by my friends, 
 " I remain, dear Miss Mitford, always 
 
 h Yours most truly, JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 "P. S. Has there ever been made a good engraved 
 portrait of yourself ? If so pray send me one. I have 
 that which appeared in Chorley s work some years ago, 
 but I should like a better one if possible." 
 
 In 1850 Mr. Fields married the younger sister 
 of his first betrothed, Eliza Willard. For a few 
 brief months they were supremely happy, but 
 before a second summer ended she also vanished 
 away. His suffering was very great. Being in 
 the full vigor of manhood he could not help feel 
 ing that his life, some life to him in this world, 
 still remained, and he must face it alone. He 
 was blinded and unequal to his duties, therefore 
 he was advised again to leave America and pass 
 a year in Europe. 
 
 The happy season of his marriage was also 
 fruitful of much labor in his career as a publisher. 
 In October, 1850, he writes to Miss Mitford : 
 3 
 
34 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "Many months have elapsed since I have had the 
 pleasure of writing to my kind friends in England. I 
 have been absent from home, and more than ever busy. 
 The older I grow, thicker and faster comes upon me from 
 every quarter, work, hard and unremitting work. The 
 matter of a publishing house never moves out of the 
 way, but is continually crowding itself before one s eyes, 
 so that I now find at night huge piles of unfinished labor 
 all ready to stare upon me in the morning." 
 
 Again lie writes : 
 
 BOSTON, January 7, 1851. 
 
 "MY DEAR Miss MlTFORD, A few days ago I read 
 from one of our American newspapers a fresh paper from 
 your delightful pen descriptive of English scenery in 
 and about your own residence. It was copied from the 
 4 Ladies Companion. How charmed I was with it, and 
 how it roused me again to wishing myself once more in 
 the dear old lanes of England. My passion for rural 
 life in your country amounts to a disease. Sometimes 
 when I get musing about my rambles in England in 
 1847, I become very impatient that I see no chance of 
 my visit being repeated the next summer. . . . Pray 
 accept my thanks for Carlisle s speech. It is well done, 
 and is another evidence of his honest good sense. I 
 send you a brace of volumes by his friend Charles Sum- 
 ner, a man whose splendid talents (albeit his politics 
 are unpopular) will send him to the Senate the next 
 spring we hope. I also send you Holmes s other vol 
 ume of poems and his late pamphlet. I am sure you 
 will like Holmes. He is a prodigious favorite in Bos 
 ton, and one of our most eminent physicians. Hillard s 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 35 
 
 address, which I enclose in the same parcel, is very 
 well thought of here and all over New England. Hii- 
 lard is one of oar most eloquent speakers, and idolized 
 greatly among the young men. We intended to repub- 
 lish Mrs. Browning s new edition, but another house in 
 New York claims the right, so we give it up. 
 
 " You would be amazed to see what a call we have for 
 Bonn s new edition of 4 Our Village, about Christmas. 
 I always order from him a good stock, but we generally 
 run out long before the New Year. By the steamer just 
 in (which brings me your kind letter), I see we have a 
 fresh lot, redolent of the woods and fields of Old Eng 
 land. 
 
 " I forget if I have sent you a few new pieces of mine 
 printed since the little volume. I will try, however, to 
 pick them up from the newspapers and enclose to you in 
 some future letter. Hawthorne is writing a new ro 
 mance, to be called The House of the Seven Gables. 
 When it is printed, I shall send it to you." . . . 
 
 We find the correspondence of this period in 
 cludes, almost without exception, all the men and 
 women of any literary note in America. His cor 
 respondence with some of them was only the be 
 ginning of friendships which were uninterrupted 
 to the end, and bringing the fruitage he most 
 valued to his life. Among the letters, beginning 
 at this time, from those who have gone from this 
 earthly scene, I find those of Hawthorne, Willis, 
 Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt, the actress, of whom 
 
36 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Edgar Poe wrote : " Her sympathy with the pro 
 found passions is evidently intense. . . . This 
 enthusiasm, this well of deep feeling, should be 
 made to prove for her an inexhaustible source of 
 fame. . . . Her step is the perfection of grace. 
 Often have I watched her for hours with the clos 
 est scrutiny, yet never for an instant did I observe 
 her in an attitude of the least awkwardness or 
 even constraint, while many of her seemingly im 
 pulsive gestures spoke in loud terms of the woman 
 of genius, of the poet imbued with the profound- 
 est sentiment of the beautiful in motion. ... A 
 more radiantly lovely smile it is quite impossi 
 ble to conceive." Mrs. Mowatt was much beloved 
 by her friends, and always counted Mr. Fields 
 among them. 
 
 Fitz Greene Halleck s letters are also before me, 
 and brief notes of Margaret Fuller and Mrs. Kirk- 
 land ; letters of Miss Catherine Sedgwick and 
 Epes Sargent, Lewis Gaylord Clark, J. G-. C. Brain- 
 ard (whose beautiful sonnet upon Niagara was one 
 of Mr. Fields s favorite poems), Bayard Taylor, 
 Charles Sunnier, and Henry B. Hirst. 
 
 The mention of Brainard s name recalls a half- 
 forgotten anecdote Mr. Fields related of him, as 
 told by Mr. S. G. Goodrich. Brainard was a young 
 lawyer, and had an office very near Mr. Good 
 rich s. They were too poor to keep a boy tf 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES. 37 
 
 make their fires in the winter, so they were in 
 the habit of going down together and making 
 them with their own hands. One morning Brain- 
 ard had his stove open ready to put in the fuel, 
 when the sonnet upon Niagara came to him. 
 He called G. in and repeated the lines. " Write 
 it down, write it down/ said G., " it is superb." 
 
 Mrs. Seba Smith, also, and the Davidsons, are 
 found in this somewhat heterogeneous collection ; 
 and Dr. Channing, George P. Morris, Rufus Gris- 
 wold, George S. Hillard, Thomas Crawford, the 
 sculptor, T. B. Eead, and many others. 
 
 The following lines were sent to Mr. Fields by 
 George S. Hillard, on the occasion of the publica 
 tion of the latter s " Six Months in Italy " in 
 1853: 
 
 " Dear Fields, it is a pleasant thing to find 
 My name upon a page with yours conjoined. 
 For us that launch upon a sea of ink 
 Our foolscap argosies, to swim or sink, 
 No better flag than yours to sail beneath, 
 E er felt the sunbeam s kiss, the breeze s breath. 
 The ogre publisher whom poets paint, 
 That sucks the blood of authors till they faint, 
 The stern pasha of Paternoster Row, 
 Whose scrawl portends the everlasting no, 
 Is a mere myth to us, who see in you 
 A heart still faithful to the morning dew. 
 Had I a draught of Hippocrene sustained, 
 T is to your health the goblet should be drained. 
 Large sales your ventures crown, and may your books 
 Reflect the cordial promise of your looks." 
 
38 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 The correspondence with Mr. Hillard is one of 
 the earliest date, and the friendship was sustained 
 until the end. In 1856, upon the introduction of 
 " the blue and gold " books, wherein the poets 
 were so many of them conveniently enshrined by 
 Mr. Fields, the following lines were again ad 
 dressed to him by Mr. Hillard : 
 
 TO J. T. F. 
 
 " When your new Tennyson I hold, dear friend, 
 
 Where blue and gold, like sky and sunbeam, blend, 
 
 A fairy tome of not too large a grasp 
 
 For queen Titania s dainty hand to clasp, 
 
 I feel fresh truth in the old saying wise, 
 
 That greatest worth in smallest parcel lies. 
 
 Will not the diamond, that fiery spark, 
 
 Buy a whole quarry-full of granite stark? 
 
 Does not the flaunting holly-hock give place 
 
 To that pale flower, with downward-drooping face, 
 
 Which summer fashions of the moonbeams sheen 
 
 And sets in tents of purest emerald green? 
 
 Well suits your book with this sweet month of June, 
 
 When earth and sky are in their perfect tune. 
 
 For, when I read its golden words, I think 
 
 I hear the brown thrush and the bob-o-link ; 
 
 I hear the summer brook, the summer breeze, 
 
 I hear the whisper of the swaying trees. 
 
 Between the lines red roses seem to grow, 
 
 And lilies white around the margin blow. 
 
 Cloud-shadows swift across the meadow pass 
 
 And fruit-trees drop their blossoms on the grass. 
 
 Thanks to the poet, who to dusty hearts 
 
 The balm and bloom of summer fields imparts; 
 
 Who gives the toil-worn mind a passage free 
 
 To the brown mountain and the sparkling sea; 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 39 
 
 Who lifts the thoughts from earth, and pours a ray 
 
 Of fairy-land around life s common way. 
 
 And thanks to you who put this precious wine, 
 
 Red from the poet s heart, in flasks so fine, 
 
 The hand may clasp them, and the pocket hold ; 
 
 A casket small, but filled with perfect gold. 
 
 G. S. H. 
 
 " June 6, 1856." 
 
 Willis writes with his accustomed grace in 1848, 
 " Your press is the announcing-room of the coun 
 try s Court of Poetry, and King People looks there 
 for expected comers." Again, " When are you 
 coming this way ? Slide down upon us with the 
 autumnal rainbow and see how lovely it is here." 
 
 In response to an invitation extended him 
 through Mr. Fields, to come to Boston to deliver a 
 poem, Willis writes : 
 
 " Saturday. 
 
 " MY DEAR FIELDS, I beg a thousand pardons for 
 my neglect to reply to your letter. The truth is, I took 
 the time to consider whether there could be such a thing 
 as an effective spoken poem. I am satisfied, now, that 
 my style depends so much on those light shades which 
 would be lost on more ears than two at a time, that I 
 should make an utter failure. I would risk even this, if 
 it was not in Boston, for (to confess the " morsel under 
 my tongue ") I have few plants growing in my hope- 
 garden like that of being one day acknowledged among 
 the Boston boys with whom I was snubbed and brought 
 up, as a good fellow and worth taking back into their 
 hearts. A failure would damage the growth of this. 
 
40 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 So, dear Fields, make my thanks and excuses acceptable 
 to the committee and believe me 
 
 " Yours much indebted and most truly, 
 
 " N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 "J. T. FIELDS, ESQ. 
 
 " Remember me to Whipple. 
 
 " What a ne plus ultra of a translation that is of 
 Consuelo by Shaw. And what a delicious book it is. 
 I have just finished it and am going to write a word 
 or two about it for Morris. 
 
 " Many thanks for your kindness to dear good Fanny 
 Forester." 
 
 In spite of his incessant occupation as a pub 
 lisher, Mr. Fields was continually writing and 
 printing verses and jeux $ esprit in the current 
 journals or magazines, or for occasions. Any con 
 tinuous literary work was of course out of the 
 question, but such as he could do was done cheer 
 fully for others or to stop some gap. Few, almost 
 none, of these early effusions has he wished to 
 preserve, but it is interesting to note the activity 
 of his powers. 
 
 As early as September, 1838, we find him in 
 vited to deliver a poem before the Mercantile 
 Library Society, and later the committee ask the 
 favor of printing his " Poetical Address." Doubt 
 less before this as well as later, his pen was busy, 
 indeed it was never idle. 
 
 In the autumn of 1851, Mr. Fields left America 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 41 
 
 for a prolonged visit in Europe. He wrote cheer 
 fully to Miss Mitford as usual, before his departure, 
 informing her of his plans, which were to go di 
 rectly to the Continent (after a possible call at her 
 cottage door), where he intended to remain until 
 the following spring, when he hoped to visit Eng 
 land. He never referred in speech, and scarcely 
 by letter, to his own grief, from the time he left his 
 bedroom after the first terrible shock to the day 
 of his death, never directly even to those nearest 
 to him, except to whisper once his gratitude that 
 he was to possess what he never again expected to 
 enjoy. The tender letters written him from his 
 friends at the time were carefully preserved, but 
 all was silence. 
 
 In the same letter to Miss Mitford already re 
 ferred to, he says : 
 
 " You ask me particularly about Hawthorne. He is 
 young, I am delighted to say. His hair is yet untinged 
 by Time s sure silver. ... A few days ago the author 
 of The Scarlet Letter came to Boston after an absence 
 of many months. Every eye glistened as it welcomed an 
 author whose genius seems to have filled his native land 
 quite suddenly with his fame. . . . He blushes like a 
 girl when he is praised .... I shall send you shortly a 
 new juvenile book from his pen, as fine reading, by the 
 way, for grown people as I happen to remember from the 
 press for many a day. . . . Cooper, the great novelist, is 
 gone. He died a few weeks since at his residence in the 
 
42 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 State of New York. His fame belongs to his country, 
 while his name is world-renowned." 
 
 The spring of 1852 was passed in England, as he 
 had proposed, and he writes again to Miss Mitford, 
 first from Rome, later from Paris, and finally from 
 Regent Street. 
 
 In Rome he says : 
 
 "I can see the almond trees in full bloom from my 
 window and hear the birds about the orange trees, but I 
 shall be glad once more to hear the English tongue even 
 in a bird s mouth, and look upon the hedges which skirt 
 the lanes down which we rode that fine autumnal day 
 which seems so long ago. ... I had a charming visit 
 while in Paris, to the Brownings, and only regretted I 
 could not see more of them. I was glad to find Mrs. 
 Browning in better health than I anticipated and hope 
 she will live to write many more great poems." 
 
 Again in Paris he writes : 
 
 " Partly on my own account and something on yours 
 (knowing your enthusiasm for the Bonapartes) I went 
 to the President s ball. It was a splendid affair. ... I 
 was looking intently at Jerome Bonaparte, who stood 
 talking with General M., when the President himself, 
 with Lady Cowley on his arm, came into the great hall 
 and took his seat directly in front of the spot where I 
 was standing. He looked pale, and although he bowed 
 with a smile to those who stood near, I thought I dis 
 covered a deeper meaning in his look than he meant to 
 be exhibited then and there. I cannot but think he is a 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 43 
 
 man for the time and will show himself competent to 
 carry out all his designs. His face I think better than 
 his portraits. It is folly to call him ill-looking. ... I 
 have seen a great genius since my last note, Rachel ; 
 you may judge how delighted I was a few nights since 
 to read her name underlined at the Theatre Fran^ais. 
 The play was Diane, a new drama of the time of Louis 
 XIII. When the curtain drew up she was discovered 
 coming down the stairs of a rude cottage with the step 
 of a queen. She advanced with a mien so noble and yet 
 so natural so simple and so regal at the same time, 
 that I hardly knew which to admire more, the quiet or 
 the majestic in her deportment. Throughout the whole 
 drama she was magnificent. At one time she stood such 
 a living monument of woe, that Niobe herself is not so 
 drowned in sorrow as she appeared. I was charmed 
 with this superb creature, and shall not soon forget her 
 splendid manner when she replied to a young gallant in 
 the first act as she was going off the stage. He followed 
 her crying out, 4 Ne saurai-je pas qui je salue ? She 
 turned round very quietly and said in a voice, that made 
 music of the reply, these simple words Une femme. It 
 was worth a voyage across the billowy Atlantic to hear 
 that voice and see that manner. You remember Fuseli s 
 remark, when some one in his hearing said the existence 
 of the soul was a doubtful problem. Rachel might truly 
 affirm, that, however badly off other people might be in 
 that way, she had a soul. I hope some day you may have 
 the opportunity of seeing this great creature on the stage. 
 She is worthy of all the praise that has been lavished 
 upon her. I understand she has had the good taste to 
 
44 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 preserve among the ornaments of her splendid salon, the 
 poor little guitar which used to accompany her voice 
 when a child she went about singing at the doors of the 
 cafes on the Boulevards. 
 
 " 1 am delighted at what you tell me about your por 
 trait and hope I may get an engraved copy to carry home 
 with me. I have now hanging up in my little library 
 room in Boston your likeness engraved for Henry Chor- 
 ley s Authors of England, and there is a nice little 
 niche for the engraving now on the tapis, wherein I hope 
 to place it. In a few weeks I hope to find you in Swal- 
 lowfield and as much improved in health as my heart 
 could wish. 
 
 " Very sincerely yours always, 
 
 " J. T. FIELDS." 
 
 " 72 REGENT STREET, LONDON, May 21, 1852. 
 
 " MY DEAE, Miss MITFOED, As soon as I sweep 
 away this load of pressing business I shall run down to 
 Swallowfield, and I must find you well again. Then 
 we will talk over the contents of your kind letter re 
 ceived in Paris a few days ago, and which I did not 
 answer as I knew I should so soon meet you again. 
 Your requests about a portrait of Louis Napoleon and 
 the Memoir of the President were curiously enough com 
 plied with before the receipt of your letter. I had al 
 ready packed away in my trunk a little bust of the 
 Prince and one of Beranger for you, together with the 
 Memoir, a recent one, and a copy of Galignani s edition of 
 your * Reminiscences. This last is not yet published, 
 but I got from the bindery a copy in advance, thinking 
 you would like to know how you look across the channel. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 45 
 
 When I go down to Swallowfield I will bring these with 
 me. I cannot tell you how delighted I am in the perusal 
 of your book, which I read in the cars between Paris and 
 Boulogne. How happy you must be in the thought of 
 what a world of pleasure you have given to your readers. 
 I must not forget to tell you that I found letters in Lon 
 don from Holmes, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, all of 
 whom are delighted with your praise. And I must not 
 forget to say how grateful I am for the too kind manner 
 in which my own name is mentioned. I see in the 
 American papers your chapter on Webster is copied 
 weekly everywhere. He cannot but be delighted with 
 your charming account of his visit. 
 
 " Hawthorne has just finished another romance. 
 Whipple, who has read the manuscript, says it is admira 
 bly done ; that it is full of thought and beauty, and pa 
 thos and humor. The story turns on the new ideas of 
 the day. One of the characters is a Woman s Rights 
 Woman, says Whipple, and although one is all along 
 doubting her system, she is of such surpassing loveliness, 
 in Hawthorne s description, that the reader falls in love 
 with her person. The sharp, penetrating, pitiless scru 
 tiny of morbid hearts which Hawthorne is so celebrated 
 for, appears in this new novel in some transcendent ex 
 amples. 
 
 " I am glad to see that Holmes is to be immediately 
 reprinted in London. Since you copied his Punch 
 bowl into your pages, that lyric has gone everywhere, I 
 am told. Holmes writes me that he wishes to be most 
 heartily remembered to you, and begs me to say how 
 much he feels your kind mention of him. Hawthorne 
 
46 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 says, tell Miss Mitford I mean to write her a letter one 
 of these days and thank her myself. 
 
 Again he writes : 
 
 "June 24. 
 
 " When I tell you I have eaten twenty-nine dinners 
 out of the house where I lodge, during the past month, 
 you will know how to pity me. A return to hard biscuit 
 and beef on board ship will be a relief. But ah, these 
 warm English hearts I ... De Quincey s daughter Mar 
 garet writes me from Lassvvade (near Edinburgh) with 
 reference to my Editorship as she calls my humble la 
 bors, and I think before I leave England I shall go down 
 and see the author and his family. . . . Ah, how much 
 I enjoy London ! Not the dinners and the opera sole 
 ly ; my tastes are low in some departments and what 
 many others would call ungenteel I dote upon. For in 
 stance, I like those small specimens of humanity in the 
 shape of ragged boys who sweep the crossings, and have 
 established such an intimacy with them that in certain 
 streets they scent my coming afar off, and run to receive 
 my trifling gratuity with a grin of satisfaction that is 
 perfectly delightful. It is my delight on returning from 
 an evening party, on foot late at night and sometimes 
 early in the morning, for Londoners keep untoward 
 hours, to encounter a poor devil barefoot and hungry, and 
 surprise him with a Niagara of hot coffee and a round of 
 meat-stuffs ordered for him at a cheap establishment 
 near Covent Garden, or in the Strand. One of these 
 boys I picked up a few nights ago, sitting on a pavement 
 smoking the end of a cigar which some passer-by had 
 thrown into the street. He looked as he crouched along- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 47 
 
 side the wall like a bundle of rags smouldering away in 
 the cold night air. I wish you could have seen those 
 sausages descend into his poor empty stomach, and hear 
 the gurgling of two pots of beer as they went down to 
 join company with the solids! This is my fun, better 
 sometimes than sitting through a play or an opera. 
 
 " I do not know how you will like Hawthorne s new 
 book, but it seems to me (I have read a few sheets only) 
 quite delightful in its way and full of fine pictures of 
 New England scenery. 
 
 " I must not forget to tell you what a charming morn 
 ing I had in Mr. Lucas s studio. . . . The portrait was 
 not in his house ; it is still at the engravers. 
 
 " Pardon this long note and believe me, 
 
 "Dear Miss Mitford, ever yours, 
 
 " J. T. FIELDS." 
 
 ft I have not seen Mrs. Browning yet. Sordello 
 himself I met a few days ago at Mr. Kenyon s, where I 
 had the honor of being sandwiched between Carlyle and 
 Landor at table. . . . While you were writing your note 
 to me I was walking with De Quincey home to his cot 
 tage from Roslin Castle, where we had been spending the 
 afternoon together. A more delightful day I do not re 
 member to have passed in this beautiful country. . . . 
 He is a most courtly gentleman." 
 
 In the autumn of 1852 Mr. Fields again re 
 turned to America, where he was beginning to be 
 sadly missed at " The Old Corner." The publish 
 ing business which he had enlarged and yet con 
 centrated so closely in Boston, began to need his 
 hand at the ship s helm. 
 
48 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Hazlitt s writings," he continues to Miss Mitford 
 after his return, "have been all reprinted in America or 
 I should at once set about it. De Quincey is still the 
 rage and I have got two new volumes which I shall send 
 you the very first opportunity. . . . That elegy on the 
 death of Mr. Webster was written by my friend, T. 
 W. Parsons, a fine poet who has done but little, yet 
 everything well. Have you seen Longfellow s lines on 
 the Duke? They are much admired here. Dear Dr. 
 Holmes, who has just asked for you and desires his love, 
 has been delighting all Boston with a most sparkling lec 
 ture on Poetry and Science. He will not publish or 
 I would send it to you. I told Hawthorne of his Rus 
 sian eminence. He says 4 Give my love to my dear 
 friend Miss Mitford and tell her I thank her heartily 
 
 for all her kindness. Mrs. S , Heaven forgive me, 
 
 I have not called upon yet. Since my return home my 
 friends have flocked about me so pressingly that I do not 
 sleep or eat as I once did. However, next week I shall 
 
 go to Cambridge and sit down with Mrs. S for a 
 
 long chat. She is a charming person. As you refer to 
 the ladies of England who have so modestly told us what 
 a set of wretches we are in America, I must tell you of a 
 paragraph which I introduced into a lecture a few weeks 
 ago before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. 
 4 Our country is sure to advance even its present position 
 if the Duchess of Sutherland and her illustrious coadjutors 
 can only be persuaded to remove their satin slippers from 
 the neck of the Republic. The allusion seemed to give 
 the audience I had 3,000 listeners great fun. 
 
 " Our President is only a General by appointment 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 49 
 
 from his native State in a volunteer regiment, conse 
 quently lie is only a General pro tern, and may give up 
 his honors in that way any week he chooses. How do 
 you do, Captain,"* said one Western man to another. 
 4 Call me Greneral, if you please, sir, replied the man 
 spoken to, fc l have killed a rattlesnake and am plain 
 Captain no longer ! 
 
 " How provoking it is that you do not own the copy 
 right of Our Village. By this steamer we have ordered 
 one thousand copies of Bohn. 
 
 " Yours, dear Miss Mitford, 
 
 JAMES T. FIELDS." 
 
 "BOSTON, U. S. A., March 8, 1853. 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss MITFORD : I am beginning to 
 feel sadly uneasy and fidgetty about these days. The 
 truth is my English fever is most strong upon me. I 
 want to turn my face toward the English land again and 
 I see no signs as yet that I shall be able to do so. Not a 
 day goes by but I think of the far-off country across the 
 ocean. I open a book in my library room of an evening 
 and try to read, but as I go on, straightway the printed 
 page slips from my mental vision and I am in distant 
 climes and lands remote. Now I am looking from the 
 roadside on a cricket ground. There is a small pony 
 chaise quietly resting on the opposite side of the way. 
 A very dear friend of mine is talking cozily with other 
 dear friends who cluster about her side. A gentleman 
 on horseback is looking across the fields. Somebody 
 says it is the author of Alton Locke. I walk up to the 
 aforesaid gentleman, but am disappointed. It is some 
 4 
 
50 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 other fine-looking man who has come out to enjoy the 
 day. There is a picturesque old mansion in sight. The 
 air is clear and bracing and off we go to explore the 
 grounds. Sam talks to us by the way of by-gone 
 times when merry scenes were going on within the fine 
 old house. Now all looks dull and dreary. There are 
 dilapidated houses where the dogs used to live on the 
 fat of the land. Now the whole scene is changed and 
 the tall ancestral trees seem to sigh amid the desolation. 
 Now I am riding through the Duke s grounds and the 
 pony is full of spirit and dashes through the gates like 
 mad. Cattle are grazing all around, and I can smell the 
 hay among the meadows. Now I am sitting in your 
 pleasant room looking out across the road. K. has sent 
 away several carriages, and we all listen while you read 
 to us dear friend Bennoch s charming May poem, c And 
 welcome in the glorious May. I can hear it as distinctly 
 as when we sat together that pleasant afternoon (it 
 seems but yesterday) and heard your beautiful and 
 never-to-be-forgotten reading of those verses. Now we 
 are at your hospitable dinner table and I am trying to 
 carve, an art I never shall learn. Then the carriage is 
 ready and we say good-by, and drive toward the 
 station, talking of the happy hours we have spent with 
 our dear friend, the lady of c Our Village. 
 
 " Oh, those days ! When shall we all meet again un 
 der those glorious old trees and under your cottage roof ? 
 
 " It seems as if I could not possibly get through the 
 summer without taking the voyage once more. My 
 friends hang on to the skirts of my coat and say, You 
 shan t go again ! But I will. I want to see Swallow- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 51 
 
 field and Miss Mitford and that famous illustrated copy of 
 the Recollections. I want to shake off the Yankee dust 
 for a season and revel in a good substantial English fog. 
 I want to see English faces and hear English voices once 
 more. In short, I want to be in England and embrace 
 the whole Island ! I like England and I can t help it, 
 and I don t want to help it ! Why could I not have 
 been born with a stout traveling fortune, ample and suf 
 ficient for me to see the shores of Great Britain as often 
 and as long as I would like to ? What a plague is this 
 busy atmosphere of books all about us." . . . 
 
 "Ever, my dear Miss Mitford, affectionately yours, 
 
 JAMES T. FIELDS." 
 
 In June, 1854, Mr. Fields again sailed for 
 Europe, but he became very ill and was carried 
 ashore at Halifax. In writing to Miss Mitford of 
 his disappointment, he enclosed some farewell lines 
 addressed to him by T. W. Parsons the day he 
 went on board the steamer. In October of that 
 year, however, he writes again in a different vein, 
 asking her " if she has room in her heart for one 
 more American ? Her name is Annie Adams, and 
 I have known her from childhood, and have held 
 her on my knee many and many a time. Her fa 
 ther (and this must recommend her to your favor) 
 is one of our leading physicians, and a great ad 
 mirer of Miss Mitford. ... On the 7th or 10th 
 of next month we go to church." 
 
52 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 The Divine Disposer who " shapes our ends " 
 had thus far denied something which seemed in 
 dispensable to his existence. He felt the power 
 and sacred rest which a home can give as deeply 
 as it is possible to understand it, but hitherto he 
 had been turned, as it seemed, violently from such 
 hope or rest to stand in the white light of the 
 world. His gay temper and conversation allowed 
 no one else to feel the void and unrest ; but when 
 at last the doors of home opened to him he en 
 tered reverently, and with a tenderness which 
 grew only with the years. What an exceptional 
 experience, also, for a young girl, a younger mem 
 ber of a large family, with less reason for special 
 consideration than any other person of the house 
 hold, to be swept suddenly out upon a tide more 
 swift and strong and all-enfolding than her imagi 
 nation had foretold ; a power imaging the divine 
 life, the divine shelter, the divine peace. The 
 winds of heaven might not visit her too roughly, 
 and every shadow must pass first through the 
 alembic of his smile before it fell upon her. 
 There was no more thought of Europe for the 
 present ; by and by he wished his wife to go, and 
 they would travel together. He desired nothing 
 further for himself, working with fresh interest 
 and vivacity over his plans for new books, and for 
 the extension of influence and usefulness of the 
 firm of Ticknor and Fields. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 53 
 
 Mr. George William Curtis has lately portrayed 
 with beautiful skill and feeling the publisher and 
 friend as he knew him in these and previous years : 
 
 " The annals of publishing and the traditions of pub 
 lishers in this country will always mention the little 
 Corner Bookstore in Boston as you turn out of Wash 
 ington Street into School Street, and those who recall it 
 in other days will always remember the curtained desk 
 at which poet and philosopher and historian and divine, 
 and the doubting, timid young author, were sure to see 
 the bright face and to hear the hearty welcome of James 
 T. Fields. What a crowded, busy shop it was, with the 
 shelves full of books, and piles of books upon the coun 
 ters and tables, and loiterers tasting them with their 
 eyes, and turning the glossy new pages loiterers at 
 whom you looked curiously, suspecting them to be mak 
 ers of books as well as readers. You knew that you 
 might be seeing there in the flesh and in common clothes 
 the famous men and women whose genius and skill made 
 the old world a new world for every one upon whom 
 their spell lay. Suddenly, from behind the green cur 
 tain, came a ripple of laughter, then a burst, a chorus ; 
 gay voices of two or three or more, but always of one 
 the one who sat at the desk and whose place was behind 
 the curtain, the literary partner of the house, the friend 
 of the celebrated circle which has made the Boston of 
 the middle of this century as justly renowned as the 
 Edinburgh of the close of the last century, the Edin 
 burgh that saw Burns, but did not know him. That cur 
 tained corner in the Corner Bookstore is remembered 
 
54 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 by those who knew it in its great days, as Beaumont re 
 called the revels at the immortal tavern : 
 
 What things have we seen 
 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble and so full of subtile flame, 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest! 
 
 What merry peals ! What fun and chaff and story ! 
 Not only the poet brought his poem there still glowing 
 from his heart, but the lecturer came from the train 
 with his freshest touches of local humor. It was the ex 
 change of wit, the Rialto of current good things, the hub 
 of the hub. 
 
 "And it was the work of one man. Fields was the 
 genius loci. Fields, with his gentle spirit, his generous 
 and ready sympathy, his love of letters and of literary 
 men, his fine taste, his delightful humor, his business 
 tact and skill, drew, as a magnet draws its own, every 
 kind of man, the shy and the elusive as well as the gay 
 men of the world and the self-possessed favorites of the 
 people. It was his pride to have so many of the Amer 
 ican worthies upon his list of authors, to place there if 
 he could the English poets and belles-lettres writers, 
 and then to call them all personal friends. Next year it 
 will be forty years since the house at the Corner Book 
 store issued the two pretty volumes of Tennyson s poems 
 which introduced Tennyson to America. Barry Corn 
 wall followed in the same dress. They caught all the 
 singing-birds at that corner, and hung them up in the 
 pretty cages so that everybody might hear the song. 
 Transcendentalism and The Dial were active also at 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 55 
 
 the same time. The idyl of Brook Farm was proceed 
 ing in the West Roxbury uplands and meadows on the 
 shores of the placid Charles. The abolitionists were 
 kindling the national conscience at Chardon Street 
 Chapel and Marlborongh Chapel. Theodore Parker was 
 appalling the staid pulpits and docile pews. There was 
 a, universal moral and intellectual fermentation, but at 
 the Corner Bookstore the distinctive voice was that of 
 4 pure literature ; and hospitable toward all, and with 
 an open heart of admiration for the fervent reformers, 
 Fields had also the most humorous appreciation of the 
 apostles of the newness, but minded with zeal what he 
 felt to be especially his own business. 
 
 " It was a very remarkable group of men indeed, it 
 was the first group of really great American authors 
 which familiarly frequented the corner as the guests of 
 Fields. There had been Bryant and Irving and Cooper, 
 and Halleck and Paulding and Willis in New York, but 
 there had been nothing like the New England circle. It 
 was that circle which compelled the world to acknowl 
 edge that there was an American literature. Of most 
 of these authors the house at the corner came to be the 
 publishers, and to the end they maintained the warmest 
 relations with Fields, who was not their publisher only, 
 but their appreciative and sympathetic friend." 
 
 In spite of his pleasant preoccupations behind 
 " the green curtain/ a whole new life began with 
 his marriage. No threads of this unseen weaving 
 were ever dropped or forgotten. The day seldom 
 wore from end to end during all the years of his 
 
56 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 business life without some brief note or token 
 sent homeward from his part of the city. "As 
 this is a day to pick and choose and be dainty in 
 the selection of a book for the fireside hours, I 
 send you a couple of volumes more than you 
 have in our bright room." Or, "It is such a 
 fine walking day I shall call for you." Or again, 
 " Here are three letters, they are only intended 
 for your perusal. They are not well done, I 
 fear ; but it is difficult to manage the pen over 
 such a subject. A woman could have said what 
 I wanted to say much better than I have done, 
 but I doubt if any one could FEEL more in this 
 sad business " 
 
 Within this note I find enclosed the two letters 
 to which he refers. They were indeed intended 
 only for the persons to whom they were addressed, 
 but they may be of use or comfort now to some one 
 else whose eye may chance to fall upon this page 
 when the writer and those for whom they were 
 intended have gone beyond and above the diffi 
 cult problems presented to them. 
 
 " BOSTON, October 6, 1854. 
 
 " MY DEAR . Your letter has given me more real 
 
 heart-grief than I express when I tell you it has cost me 
 a sleepless night. But I know not what to say in reply 
 to your communication. You ask my advice in a matter 
 so delicate and unusual that I feel almost like asking you 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 57 
 
 to release me from tendering a word of counsel. But 
 our friendship of so many years, and the tender affection 
 expressed in your letter, will not suffer me to be silent. 
 
 "You say you have lost the love of your husband, 
 and that he no longer makes you his confidant or even 
 
 his friend. Do not, I pray you, my dear , hastily 
 
 conclude on this point. A man s love is not quenched 
 so suddenly. Do not mistake my meaning. I have al 
 ways been of the opinion that the affection of a man is 
 equal, nay, may I say it, stronger oftentimes than that 
 of a woman. If F. does not evince the same fondness 
 for your presence as formerly, and treat you with the 
 same tender regard as of old, may he not be won back 
 to your heart, and join his as fervidly to yours by a 
 deeply expressed solicitude on your part to gain back the 
 love of other days. It too often happens in married life 
 that husband or wife do not come more than half way 
 in reconciliation. It is hard, very hard to doubt and 
 weep alone the loss of affection. Let me tell you what 
 I would do if my case were yours, as you describe it. I 
 would hang about my husband with a gentle kindness, 
 and although I would not hide my grief for the loss I had 
 felt, I would still be as cheerful and kind as I could be. 
 Love begets love. Try to make home necessary to a 
 man s happiness and you will almost always succeed. 
 Your husband is a man of intellectual tastes and habits. 
 Feel an interest in his pursuits and spring to his side 
 with a smile and a kiss of welcome, for a sensitive shy 
 scholar must appreciate this, and I am sure another in 
 fluence will be exerted in his bosom. I would not abate 
 one jot of womanly tenderness in your daily life toward 
 
58 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 F., but I would rather increase in it. Depend upon it 
 no man constituted as he is will repulse the feeling of a 
 true wife. With regard to your suspicion that he has 
 conceived a liking and perhaps a love for another, 
 don t believe it. I know whom you mean and I know 
 all her attractions for a student like F., but I also know 
 the human heart. She is too vain and overbearing in 
 her intellectual gifts to win his regard even. A poetical 
 temperament like his clings to a warm nature and a 
 simple, beautiful character rather than to a showy intel 
 lect and cold heart. You have every quality in the way 
 of attraction that a man gifted as F. is demands in a 
 woman. Gcfd bless you. I pray that all may yet be 
 clear in your way of duty and love. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 J. T. F." 
 
 "BOSTON, October 8, 1854. 
 
 " Mr DEAR FRANK, I am glad to hear from your 
 welcome letter that you and yours are well again, that 
 the cloud of sickness has been withdrawn from your 
 dwelling. In your prosperous country you cannot but 
 succeed in your profession. Be industrious and you 
 will be happy is a motto so strongly recommended in 
 Gray s letters that I have never forgotten its meaning. 
 Yon speak of jolly times among the natives of your 
 city, and days and nights of pleasant intercourse with 
 your friends in the country. I am glad to hear, if you 
 are happy, of your new friendships. 
 
 " Dear Frank, did it ever occur to you how dependent 
 a wife is on her husband s constancy at home ? Did it 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 59 
 
 never strike you how strangely a word or a look falls on 
 a woman s heart if wrongly applied ? We men, knock 
 ing about the world and jostled by one another, are apt 
 to forget how much a word signifies or how much a tone 
 implies. I let fall this sentence simply because your let 
 ter led me to suppose your pleasures were mostly away 
 from your own dwelling. Come now, my dear fellow, 
 
 let us be honest with each other. is unhappy that 
 
 you do not seem to her the same as in former days, the 
 affectionate lover of times past. You must have seen 
 unquiet thoughts were gathering in her heart. Be a man, 
 my dear Frank, and heal the temporary wound that has 
 been inadvertently opened in her young bosom. The 
 female character demands something more than the forms 
 of life. I hold that husband and wife should be lovers 
 all their days. Why not? You speak of your hum 
 drum life at home. This ought not so to be, my dear 
 fellow. In your beautiful library, beside that glorious 
 well-filled book table, the evening lamps lighted, your 
 sweet wife sewing opposite to your chair, listening to 
 your rich voice as you read to her from Tennyson or one 
 of your own ballads, there is no hum-drum in all this, 
 depend upon it, for it will last when your out-of-door 
 friends fail and disappointment comes in to break up your 
 intimacies. Don t call me foolish and think me officious. 
 I love you too well not to drop a word of suggestion even 
 in your excellent heart. 
 
 " All your friends here are well. Longfellow finds 
 plenty to do, and Lowell is probably laying up treasures 
 for the Lowell Institute, where he lectures this year. 
 " Ever yours, my dear Frank, 
 
 "J. T. F." 
 
60 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Five busy, peaceful years at home succeeded 
 his marriage. These years included a period of 
 large literary activity among our American au 
 thors, and Mr. Thackeray s second visit to our 
 shores. Closer friendships were formed, partly by 
 means of a social club, then first established, and 
 visits to New York created ties between Mr. Bry 
 ant and his family, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, and 
 Washington Irving. In Boston, Mr. Emerson was 
 delivering his wonderful lectures, surely never to 
 be forgotten, this master and helper, with the 
 voice and manner of a lover and a seer ; and Starr 
 King was preaching at Hollis Street Church, and 
 illumining the air with his bright presence. 
 
 After collecting books enough, " to read on the 
 voyage," to answer for three voyages, as his 
 wife thought, the midsummer of 1859 was passed 
 in Europe, chiefly in England. In an old diary I 
 find:- 
 
 " LONDON, June 27. Mr. Hawthorne and Julian (an 
 interesting boy) came to breakfast. Hawthorne wishes 
 us to take a villa near Florence, where they lived ; he 
 said the bells of the city sounded exquisitely there, 
 besides the place was haunted ! Talked nervously about 
 his new romance, the muscles of his face twitching, and 
 with lowered voice ; he thought some time he might print 
 his journal also. . . . 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch kindly obtained places for us 
 at lunch at the Lord Mayor s. The occasion was made 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 61 
 
 in order to present Durham s bust of the Queen to 
 Madame Goldschmidt. Her sweet face was calm, yet 
 there were unmistakable signs of deep emotion. A gen 
 tleman, a relative of Florence Nightingale, spoke of the 
 happiness Madame Goldschmidt had given Miss Night 
 ingale by her interest in the cause. (Madame Gold 
 schmidt had arranged and sung at a concert, the pro 
 ceeds of which were very large, and devoted to the care 
 of the soldiers at the Crimea.) Mr. Grote, the historian, 
 also spoke. . . . 
 
 " Friday, the 21th. Mr. Tennyson is in London, at 
 the Temple. . . . Went to see Robson in The Por 
 ter s Knot. He is a man of original power. . . . The 
 second time we saw Robson, he played Uncle Zach- 
 ary and Mr. Benjamin Bobbin. Nothing could be 
 more touching than the former characterization. When 
 Uncle Zachary comes up to London in his best clothes, 
 with that most excellent Tabitha (Mrs. Leigh Murray), 
 to visit the little un, the mixture of pathos and comi 
 cality seems almost too much to endure ; also in the 
 drunken scene, when it becomes so unfortunately easy 
 for him to see people and things as they really are, and 
 he recognizes Wiggins the barber under his stately dis 
 guise ! It is inimitable, indescribable, unrivaled ! . . . 
 Mr. Dickens came in the morning, . . . Arrived at Mr. 
 Thackeray s, . . . passed the evening with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Mai tin. ... It was nearly eleven o clock before 
 we reached Mrs. B. s house, where we were to meet 
 Elizabeth Sheppard, the author of 4 Charles Auches- 
 ter. " . 
 
62 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 This interview was the first and the last we 
 ever enjoyed with this interesting woman, she 
 died shortly after. Not, however, until we had 
 received notes and manuscripts from her hand, 
 chiefly short stories, which were printed in the 
 " Atlantic Monthly," and some stories for chil 
 dren. Beside these, the friend who was con 
 stantly by her side during the last six years of 
 her life frequently wrote, giving us particulars of 
 Miss Sheppard s condition. This friendship seems 
 to have been one of those absorbing relations be 
 tween two women which are occasionally to be 
 seen. In one of her first letters this friend writes : 
 " I must feel for those who appreciate one whom 
 I venerate as I do my only friend. . . . She has 
 been my companion since I was ten years old." 
 In speaking of the article which appeared in the 
 " Atlantic Monthly," after Miss Sheppard s death, 
 she writes : 
 
 " Will you allow me to say that the notice of the 
 Author of Charles Auchester, considered merely as a 
 composition, is perfection, as a criticism, it is most 
 subtle and powerful, and could only come from the pen 
 of an accomplished writer, showing, as it does, that mi 
 nute appreciation of difficulties surmounted and beau 
 ties achieved, which only the initiated can display; but 
 more than all, it touches so tenderly and reverently the 
 memory of lierself and her writings, that it renders any 
 comment unnecessary. . . . There is only one trifling 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 63 
 
 mistake, which I am sure you will forgive me for rectify 
 ing. I allude to the surmise that Miss Sheppard was not 
 a great reader. It is, indeed, a perfectly harmless error, 
 as it proves how perfect her taste must have been, and 
 shows she had that charm as an author which is alike 
 the test of good writing and good breeding, an absence 
 of all mannerism. But she was indeed and truly a book 
 worm : she read everything, or rather devoured every 
 thing, from the most abstruse works, such as Gall s and 
 Reichenbach s (taking in all metaphysical writings) the 
 ology, occult books, history and travels, physiology, poe 
 try, children s story books, etc., and she read in French, 
 German, and Latin with equal ease ; nothing escaped 
 her. Yet again you are right in saying she could not be 
 called a student, for (setting aside all partial views 
 which I might be supposed to entertain) she made all 
 information her own as if by magic, and her memory was 
 wonderful. As a child of eight years old she learned 
 4 Childe Harold through, in twice reading it, during 
 play hours ; Shelley s 4 Prometheus Unbound as quick 
 ly ; and everything, by the same kind of intuition, she 
 mastered in the spirit while others were hammering 
 away at the letter. Goethe and Schiller she translated 
 from with ease at fifteen, and amused her teacher by 
 writing long German critiques and imaginary magazine 
 articles as an exercise. 
 
 " I mention these particulars knowing you must like 
 to hear everything about her that I can tell. Also I 
 approach the latter part of her dear life with a cowardly 
 sickness at the heart, which is only like 8 life in death. 
 Now I will endeavor to answer every point of your let 
 ter without delay. 
 
64 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " She often talked of you and . Her sufferings 
 
 made all reading and writing impossible for some time 
 before her death. I inclose a little sketch in her own 
 handwriting, which you may like to keep. . . . For the 
 poems, I have quantities. . . . 
 
 " No stranger ever touched her or looked at her, or 
 knew anything about her. Thank God ! We were by 
 ourselves till the last few hours of her life, when a dear 
 Hebrew cousin of mine, who knew her intimately and 
 loved her as a brother, came into the room. . . . To 
 have had her to talk to, to consult on every intellectual 
 subject, leaves me in that sense alone, now she is gone. 
 . . . You made a good guess at Cecilia." . . . 
 
 Several manuscript poems are found among 
 these letters and papers. One is headed " Ex 
 tracts from Memorials of the Flight of Mendels 
 sohn," but they seem to be productions chiefly of 
 her early youth, and such as would not advance 
 the maturer reputation of " Charles Auehester." 
 Personally she was not handsome, but with a fine 
 brow and presence, sensitive, and refined. 
 
 The diary continues : 
 
 " June Wth. Drove to Hammersmith, where we 
 found Leigh Hunt and his two daughters awaiting us. 
 It was a very tiny cottage, with white curtains and flow 
 ers in the window, but his beautiful manner made it a 
 rich abode. The dear old man talked delightfully about 
 his flowers, calling them gentle household pets. He 
 told us also about Shelley, declaring it was impossible 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 65 
 
 for his loving nature to hate any one, yet once he said 
 4 Hunt, we write love songs, why should n t we write 
 hate songs. He said he meant to, sometime, poor fel 
 low, added our host. Shelley disliked the second Mrs. 
 Godwin, particularly, believing her to be untrue. He 
 used to say, when he was obliged to dine with her, he 
 would lean back in his chair and languish into hate. 
 No one could describe Shelley, continued Leigh Lunt, 
 4 he was always to me as if he were just arrived from 
 the planet Mercury, bearing a winged wand tipped with 
 flame. . . . 
 
 " P. J. Bailey, the author of 6 Festus, came to lunch. 
 Fine brow and head. He is a student by nature, and 
 confessed to his hatred of crowds. He told us he passed 
 two charming evenings with Hawthorne, who did not 
 know^ him nor discover him to be a writer. . . . 
 
 " Went to Cheltenham to see Captain Robertson, the 
 father of Frederick Robertson of Brighton. Saw the 
 various portraits of Robertson, also the few notes and 
 papers remaining in the hands of his parents. Captain 
 Robertson has made extracts from his son s sermons, 
 which will be published by Ticknor and Fields for the 
 benefit of the children. Mrs. R. a most lovely woman, 
 such as I hoped to find the mother of Robertson. She 
 gave me her son s history. . . . They have lost four 
 daughters also. . . . 
 
 "Later Captain Robertson wrote: 4 What you say of 
 your being continually bereft of your copies of the ser 
 mons is gratifying indeed. ... I fear the publication of 
 the letters on theological and other subjects may be de 
 layed. I hear they are of great interest. Indeed, the 
 5 
 
66 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 dear departed told me they might some day be pub 
 lished. . . . The last of the Napiers is gone. You rec 
 ollect seeing the portrait of my friend, that glorious sol 
 dier, Sir Charles Napier, in our sitting-room. ... In 
 the early part of February, as I had taken my seat in 
 the College Chapel, a little before three P. M., I had a 
 mental vision that Sir William was at that moment 
 dying. Next morning I said, Mark my words, Sir 
 William Napier died yesterday afternoon while I was 
 in chapel. . . . Tuesday morning brought a letter saying 
 that Sir William died on the Sunday afternoon without 
 a sigh. Two other instances in my life have occurred 
 of this spiritual communication with me of departing 
 friends, so that I can have no doubt of the intercourse 
 of spirits in this nether world ; and I think we may see 
 from Holy Writ that even departed spirits have held 
 communion with those not yet glorified. . . . Sir Wil 
 liam said he had a second self following him continually, 
 and essaying to be joined to him. I have no doubt that 
 the second self of which Sir William spoke, was the 
 one, to use the words of the sermons, attendant on a life 
 of spirituality : A living Redeemer stands beside him, 
 goes with him, talks with him, as a man with his friend. 
 ... I have had some most interesting and extraordi 
 nary letters sent me, to be added to the forthcoming vol 
 ume of my son s letters. What editions have the Ser 
 mons reached in Boston ? Do my dear friends indulge 
 me occasionally with a few lines. ... I am seventy- 
 three years old, and am anxiously looking forward to the 
 publication of my son s correspondence. 
 
 " I received lately a letter from a Mr. , a strangei 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 67 
 
 to me, whose name is a household word at Brighton, say 
 ing, < Bigotry and prejudice prevented me ever hearing 
 your son preach. I have now read his works (and by way 
 of amend), have had a marble bust executed (from a cast 
 taken after death), and have had it put up in the Pavilion , 
 thus corroborating what the Saturday Review said a 
 year or two ago, Many a man either in secret or in public 
 has been constrained to do penance at the graves of Ar 
 nold or Robertson of Brighton. In fact, the voice from 
 the grave is doing more than even the voice from his pul 
 pit. ... I am glad to find the approbation you speak of 
 regarding the Corinthians. ... I have the Boston edi 
 tions of all the other works, and I hope to have them in 
 every tongue in which they shall appear. I have a Ger 
 man copy of the first volume published at Manheim, an 
 English edition by Tauchnitz of Leipsic ; and I hope 
 soon to have the sermons in French, as they are coming 
 out in Paris; also two of them, l The Glory of the Di 
 vine Son, and 4 The Glory of the Virgin Mother, which 
 are translated into Italian for distri] 
 over Italy. . . . 
 
 The diary continues : (( UNIVERSITY 
 
 " Arrived at Cleve Tower the 
 Dobell. Mr. Dobell came down the 
 companied by his fine deerhound, a gift from the family 
 of Flora Macdonald. We clambered up the little lane, 
 fascinated by his talk, and soon wholly at our ease. An 
 interesting and delightful home. Mr. and Mrs. Dobell 
 are of the same age. Engaged at fifteen and married at 
 twenty, they are, which is not always true of such 
 
68 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 early marriages, deeply attached. Alas ! they are nei 
 ther of them in good health. . . . We slept at the cottage 
 in the garden, with a lovely panorama stretching far and 
 silently below. . . . We can never forget the wonderfully 
 varied flow of Dobell s conversation. . . . Came to dine 
 in Magdalen College, Oxford, in one of the queer old 
 rooms (the place was built in 1485), with a cider cup 
 in the middle of the table quite as old as the College, 
 of silver overlaid with gold. Heard C. R. s interesting 
 talk. . . . He finished reading to us that night, his last 
 new story, A Good Fight. 
 
 " He has a cheerful, affectionate smile, and seems truly 
 beloved by all about him. . . . 
 
 " ZURICH, September 1. This evening the news of 
 Leigh Hunt s death reached us. It came most unex 
 pectedly, following closely upon his last letter." 
 
 Unhappily the letter in question I do not find : 
 only two or three notes full of personalities, which 
 are not possible to reproduce here. 
 
 From early youth Mr. Fields suffered from pros 
 trating headaches, lasting from twenty-four to 
 forty-eight hours, when he would lie pale and 
 cold, and conscious only of intense agony. Noth 
 ing could be found to arrest them hot and cold 
 baths and inhalations of ether being only useful 
 palliatives. The climate of Switzerland was more 
 conducive to them apparently than that of Eng 
 land, but no change seemed to prevent their occa 
 sional recurrence. Only those persons, and alas ! 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 69 
 
 they are too many, who suffer in this way know 
 all that the word " headache " signifies ! How 
 many good days and good things lost! For those 
 who watch by the bedside, also, their part is not 
 to be forgotten. The interrupted plans to be 
 explained, the disappointed persons to be satis 
 fied, the letters to be answered, and above all 
 the utter stillness to be preserved at all hazards; 
 the word " headache " is full of significance to 
 them and often full of awe, bringing them face to 
 face with the sudden semblance of death. No 
 habitude can make the coming less terrible. 
 From the diary : 
 
 " PARIS, December 18, 1859. A sadly eventful 
 week. The news of Washington living s death and 
 of De Quincey s reached us on two successive days, 
 
 and on the third l . . . Met Mr. Thackeray on 
 
 the Boulevard, like his old self and delighted to be in 
 Paris. 4 Father Prout (Mr. JVJahoney) held him by 
 the arm. At night, dining at the Trois Freres, whom 
 should we see but Thackeray again. He came and sat 
 with us, chatting during the evening in his inimitable 
 way. He said Father Prout was < good but dirty ! As 
 we parted, he shouted Good-by, neighbor, from down 
 the Arcades in his own gay fashion." . . . 
 
 " FLOKENCE, February. Drove to call upon Walter 
 
 1 The space which is not filled signifies the death of John Brown, 
 and the unspeakable sorrow and fear for the future of our country, 
 which took possession of every American. 
 
70 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Savage Landor. He remembered his friend of ten years 
 ago perfectly, and his reception was most cordial. Ah ! 
 said he, I am eighty-six now, and forget everything. I 
 can t remember the name of my new book published the 
 other day by Nichol in London. Deuce take it ! Talk 
 ing of Louis Napoleon and of Mrs. Browning s faith in 
 him, he said, 4 If that woman should put her faith in a 
 man as good as Jesus, and he should become as wicked 
 as Pontius Pilate, she would not change it. No ! not 
 wicked as Pilate, because he was n t so bad, perhaps ; he 
 fulfilled the laws of his country only, but any wretch 
 we might name. He has around him but a handful of 
 pictures from his large collection. They are mostly at 
 his villa, now occupied by his son. . . . He showed us 
 what he believed to be original portraits of Petrarch s 
 Laura and her husband, and a fine head by Salvator 
 Rosa. He said the whole collection was the finest private 
 gallery of old paintings in the world except that of the 
 King of Bavaria, and would we go out to see them with 
 out giving his name ? The name might make the pic 
 tures inaccessible. 
 
 " He spoke of George Washington as the greatest hero 
 in the noble galaxy. He had a large hand/ he said, 
 4 which is an excellent sign. Assassins have small hands. 
 Napoleon, the most wholesale of assassins, had a very 
 small hand. . . . 
 
 " Dined with Mr. Landor ; were waited upon with 
 wonderful tact by Wilson, an old friend and servant of 
 Mrs. Browning. A missing spoon would have been quite 
 sufficient to cause the thunderbolts of wrath to descend, 
 which seem to stand ever ready at the smallest bidding 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 71 
 
 of this old man. Fortunately the regiment of spoons 
 and forks was unbroken, and all went smoothly. Wilson 
 had reserved a little surprise for him in a dish of cignale 
 which he said was certainly the best thing in the world. 
 The deep rich purple of the Montepulciano wine re 
 called to his mind a song of Redi, which he repeated 
 most musically. Then he told us how Italian wines 
 had degenerated, and of once meeting a man in his 
 travels whom he asked to dine with him at a way sta 
 tion. Sir, said he, I fear if you knew my trade 
 you would not ask me. Pray what may that be? 
 said Landor. A wine-taster, sir. Oh ! then come 
 in by all means. I follow that trade myself sometimes. 
 And so, continued Landor, 4 I learned something in 
 our after-dinner talk, which is, that powdered orris-root 
 put into good claret will make fine Burgundy. Two 
 teaspoonfuls dissolved in brandy will work the won 
 drous charm. ... I have seen some famous people in 
 my time, and not the least among them was Kosciusko. 
 A young girl who had heard him say he would like 
 to see me brought me to his door. She knocked and 
 said, " General Kosciusko, I have brought a friend to 
 see you." "I am sorry, my dear," he answered, "but 
 lean see no one." "I knew you wished to meet Mr. 
 Landor " " What Landor " and in one instant he 
 started from his couch and came forward to embrace 
 me. He had been severely wounded on the head, and 
 his pale face, bound about with broad black bands, 
 gave him a look of deathly whiteness. He was read 
 ing, as he lay, a volume of my poems, and called my 
 attention to the coincidence. . , Garibaldi is the 
 
72 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 greatest man of modern times, he went on to say ; he 
 it is who has saved Italy, he has done all that is done, he 
 is the regenerator and savior of this distracted land. I 
 hope to see him in Florence before long ; he writes me to 
 that effect. 
 
 " While he was talking thus his grandchild came in, 
 bringing him some trifling gift. At once he was like a 
 child with her. He seemed perfectly happy to hold her 
 on his knee and watch her playful ways. 
 
 u I asked if he ever met Byron in Italy. No, he 
 said, because some speech of his was repeated once to 
 Byron which put him in a great rage ; B. wished to chal 
 lenge him, but on receiving the information that Mr. 
 Landor was quite ready, and a much better shot than 
 himself, nothing ever came of the proposed rencontre. 
 . . . Before parting, Mr. Landor took from his walls a 
 painting which he believed to be an original Gtiido and 
 presented it to me. . . . Yesterday Mr. Landor took the 
 pains to walk round to make me a visit. He had not 
 walked so far for an age, he said. His little dog Giallo 
 came with him. Ah, dear, he said to him, I wish 
 they would make a collar for the Pope, these people, and 
 give me a piece of it to put round your neck. 
 
 I find only two notes of Mr. Landor ; they were 
 written after this period, chiefly about the publi 
 cation of his books. There were many others. I 
 remember them especially, because he became 
 very angry with Mr. Fields for withholding what 
 he calls " His Defense," from the public. This 
 was an unfortunate paper, written in his extreme 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 73 
 
 age, giving the details of a quarrel he had with 
 a lodging-house keeper. It was sad enough to 
 have such a paper in existence, but it was an act 
 of the truest kindness to keep it from the public. 
 Often Mr. Fields would say, laughingly, " How I 
 wish poor Landor could be translated before he 
 has time to write me again about his Defense." 
 Unfortunately he lived long enough to be very 
 angry with this friend as with so many others. 
 Before matters came to this conclusion, however, 
 the two notes at least, to which I have referred, 
 were received ; the rest, like so much else of in 
 terest in epistolary form, seem to have been 
 plucked away by those devourers of the literary 
 land autograph hunters. One of these brief 
 letters runs as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I am reminded of the hazard you 
 offered to take in the publishing of my Latin poems. 
 They would occupy about seventeen pages. I had just 
 sent them to my friend Mr. Hare. Intelligence has 
 this day reached me that he is somewhere on his trav 
 els. My parcel is not likely to follow him. Now, if 
 you think it convenient to publish them, the peril would 
 be less by the addition of a hundred pages more, partly 
 poetry and partly prose, including my Defense, which 
 is far more important to my fame than any other ad 
 dition. Our friend Mr. Browning will show you a 
 specimen of the poetry, which, I hear, does me no dis 
 credit. In my hands is much more of it, certainly not 
 
74 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 worse in the more important part. Some portions have 
 been published of the prose. I would rather that you 
 should possess these different pieces than any other pub 
 lishers. I desire no advantage from them. If you 
 think them worth your attention, I will transcribe them 
 legibly. 1 . . . 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 "WALTER SAVAGE LANDOK. 
 
 "Feb. 2. Via NUNCIATINA 2671, FLORENCE. 
 " My c Honores are not come." 
 
 This was the period of Mr. Fields s first intimate 
 acquaintance with Charlotte Cushman, a woman 
 of great energy and ability. Many of the pleas- 
 antest clays in Rome that winter were passed un 
 der her roof and at her table. Here was to be 
 seen, from day to day, everybody of interest either 
 among the residents in Rome or the chance vis 
 itors to that city. Her dramatic talent and her 
 courage made her a power in the social circle. 
 Miss Cushrnan was a keen observer and apprecia- 
 tor of that disinterested power of doing for others, 
 which was one of the distinguishing characteristics 
 of her friend s disposition. It is amusing to see 
 how full her letters are of suggestions for forward 
 ing her own plans or those of others in whom she 
 was interested. 
 
 1 The idea of the publication of this book was given up by Mr. 
 Fields because of Mr. Landor s insistance on the subject of The 
 Defense. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 75 
 
 " A thousand thanks about the something for me to 
 read next season. Show, show, show ! It would have 
 rejoiced your sympathetic soul to have seen 2,000 people 
 under the influence of the Young Gray Head. . . . 
 You would have seen the reward of your search, and 
 in pointing it out to me as a reading." 
 
 " I want very much to introduce to you the bearer of 
 this, . . . and you will make something of him, ... for 
 you seem to have the power to make of people what 
 you will. I think you are the great original philoso 
 pher s stone." . . . 
 
 Again she writes : 
 
 " I want you to come to see me and give me some 
 vitality. ... I want to be taken up bodily and made 
 to do whatever is right, and good, and pleasant. . . . 
 We unite in declaring you are the most wonderful fellow 
 for finding out just what will suit the friends you love 
 and honor with your gifts. I sit down with double-bar 
 reled determination to write and say I am keeping well, 
 seeming to contradict the 4 malignancy of disease which 
 my surgeon feared for me. . . . Tell me one thing. 
 Do the lines in the Adonais of Shelley, beginning at 
 stanza 31, Midst others of less note, etc., refer to By 
 ron ? or to whom ? Please tell rne. ... I know you are 
 very busy, and I would not trouble you, but we cannot 
 get to any action save through your personal press 
 ure. ... I will beg you to assume this responsibility. 
 . . . E. S. has made such a lovely little figure of the 
 Angel of Youth, . . . and a colossal head of the orig 
 inal (secesher, I call it) Rebel, 4 The Archangel Ruined * 
 
76 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 as she calls it, alias Lucifer, which is full of power, and 
 ought to be ordered by somebody at home. . . . How 
 wonderful are the 4 Biglow Papers ; there is more said 
 in those papers than has been said by any writer ana 
 speaker yet." 
 
 The diary continues : 
 
 " Came to Jermyn Street. When Walter Scott was 
 in London he always lived in this street, usually at the 
 Cherry Hotel, just opposite." 
 
 "Met Mr. Edward Jesse at the British Museum at 
 one o clock. Through him we were able to see and un 
 derstand many things of which we should otherwise have 
 been ignorant. He introduced us to Professor Owen, 
 who kindly escorted us over the department in which he 
 is chiefly interested. Mr. Jesse is over eighty years old, 
 but hale and hearty." 
 
 A few extracts from the correspondence with 
 this aged naturalist may not be out of place here. 
 Mr. Jesse s books have given him a niche with 
 lovers of out-of-door life and students of natu 
 ral objects. 
 
 " EAST SHEEN, MORTLAKE, SURREY, 1854. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. FIELDS : I am become an old fellow 
 and do not much like to look into futurity, as having any 
 certainty of a prolonged existence, but if I am alive 
 next year you have not any one in England who will be 
 more glad to see you than myself. ... I send you my 
 last note from Mr. Mitford, received to-day. He alludes 
 to a large mass of papers of Shenstone the poet, now in 
 my possession. I am afraid that the unfair attack made 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 77 
 
 upon him by Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets has 
 done him an irreparable injury, though Shenstone was a 
 charming poet as well as letter-writer, and I have many 
 of his unpublished letters. 
 
 44 1 will send you my Country Life as you desire. 
 Murray calls it a third edition, that he might introduce 
 the prints of former editions, but in fact nearly the whole 
 
 of the matter is new." 
 
 " BRIGHTON, 1862. 
 
 " Old age creeps upon me very fast. I am rapidly 
 advancing to my eighty-fourth year. ... It is time to 
 thank Mr. Flint for his beautiful and most interesting 
 work. It beats any of our modern works in binding, 
 printing, and paper. The subjects are most carefully 
 colored, and it is altogether a work that does its author 
 the greatest credit, and gave the recipient the greatest 
 pleasure. . . . We are very comfortably settled at this 
 place, though I miss our pretty cottage and its garden, 
 but I feel that I am doing some good among the fishing 
 population of Brighton, to whom I continue to give lec 
 tures, chiefly on Natural History, and which, when pub 
 lished, I shall hope to send you. . . . 
 
 " Professor Owen has been giving a very interesting 
 lecture here to a large audience. In the course of it he 
 did me the great honor to say that he was indebted to 
 my earlier works for his first love of Natural History. 
 This was a pleasing compliment from the first Naturalist 
 in Europe. . . . Mr. Agassiz illustrated catalogue is a 
 curious and valuable book. Do you claim, him as an 
 American ? " 
 
 Again we find in the diary : 
 
78 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Our kind friend Mr. Flower, of Stratford, accom 
 panied us to the door of Joseph Severn the artist, and 
 friend of Keats. We found Severn a man of kindly 
 nature with true devotion to his art. 4 How strange 
 it is, he said, that we never tire of our labor ! I 
 have enjoyed working upon this picture more, I think, 
 than upon any other in my life, and last summer I used 
 to get up at six o clock to steal the flowers from the Park 
 to paint from. l . . . He has just finished a picture of 
 Keats s tomb by moonlight. It is filled with all the ten 
 der feeling for the spot which haunts his heart. 2 He 
 showed us a letter, the last Keats ever wrote, in which he 
 says his pain at parting from Miss Brawne would cause 
 death to hasten upon him, but he never wrote a line, 
 nor did Severn ever hear him speak a word, to intimate 
 that newspaper criticism had caused him mortal grief. 
 Severn told us several incidents showing the exquisite 
 kindliness of Keats s nature, and while he told them the 
 unbidden tears would overflow his eyes. One day, he 
 said, c when Keats was dining with one of the Royal 
 Academicians whose picture had been refused, while 
 Severn s was admitted, the conversation turned upon 
 this subject, and some one declared in a loud voice that 
 Severn was an old man whose pictures had been sent and 
 refused every year until this one was finally accepted 
 
 1 Mr. Severn was at this time over seventy years old. 
 
 a I find this description of the picture in Mr. Severn s handwrit 
 ing : " The scene is moonlight at the Pyramid of Caius Cestius. and 
 a Roman Pastore is resting and sleeping against the poet s tomb, 
 whilst a moonlight ray illuminates his face, and thus faintly realizes 
 the story of Endymion. On the tomb is the inscription, * Here lies 
 one whose name is writ in water. " 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 79 
 
 out of charity. Keats rose upon hearing this, declared 
 Severn to be a young man who had never before sent a 
 picture to the Academy, and a friend of his. " 1 can no 
 longer sit," he said, " to hear his name calumniated in 
 this manner without one person to join me in defense of 
 the truth." Saying this he seized his hat and abruptly 
 retreated from the room. 
 
 There are a few letters from Mr. Severn before 
 me, and although we may recognize the truth 
 expressed in an article printed just after Mr. 
 Severn s death, " that he does not appear under 
 his own name in any biographical dictionary," 
 yet when all biographical dictionaries have floated 
 into oblivion, Shelley s words will crown him with 
 an aureole. In the preface to the " Adonais," the 
 poet has written, after speaking of Severn s de 
 votion to Keats, 
 
 " Had I known these circumstances before the com 
 pletion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add 
 my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recom 
 pense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection 
 of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with 
 a reward from such stuff as dreams are made of. His 
 conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future 
 career. May the unextinguished spirit of his illustrious 
 friend animate the creations of his pencil, and 
 against oblivion for his name." 
 
 I quote from Mr. Severn s letters : 
 
80 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "BRITISH CONSULATE, ROME. 
 
 "You will be interested by the romantic incident 
 in my Keats paper, of my charming meeting with 
 the poet s sister in Rome, and that we have become 
 like brother and sister. She lives here with her Spanish 
 family ; her name is Llanos ; she was married to a distin 
 guished Spanish patriot and author, and has two sons 
 and two daughters, one of whom is married to Brock- 
 man, the Spanish director of the Roman railways. 
 
 " She has been so kind as to get me from Madrid 
 some fifty letters of her illustrious brother the poet, but 
 as they were addressed to her when she was a little girl, 
 they are not so interesting as his published letters. . . . 
 
 "I am officious (sic) representative for all the liber 
 ated Italian nations, and in my one year s consulate I 
 have been able to liberate, indirectly, some fifty-five suf 
 fering political prisoners. The state of things at this 
 moment would form a romance." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I am glad you saw my posthumous portrait of Keats. 
 It was an effort to erase his dead figure from my mem 
 ory, and represent my last pleasant sight of him." 
 
 Finally, on New Year s Day, 1879, from Rome, 
 Scala Dante (when eighty-five years old), he 
 writes : 
 
 " To begin with Keats, I am anxious to know your 
 opinion of the thirty-nine letters to Fanny Brawne, which 
 I confess to you gave me great pain. . . . Lord Hough- 
 ton s Life I admire very much, except that he has most 
 obstinately given the poet blue eyes, whereas over and 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 81 
 
 over again, I told him that the poet s eyes were hazel 
 brown, all his family having blue or gray eyes, and I 
 have always considered that it was a trait of nature to 
 characterize the poet. ... I am still at work, occupied 
 on my Marriage of Cana, or the miracle of the wine. 
 ... I cannot finish without alluding to the wonderful 
 translation of Dante by Longfellow, which I am now 
 reading, and which I consider the first translation made 
 by any poet. 
 
 " Good-by, my dear friend. 
 
 " Your ever faithful 
 
 " JOSEPH SEVERN." 
 
 It would be a work of supererogation, after Mr. 
 Fields s own reminiscences of Barry Cornwall, to 
 recall further particulars regarding him, or mem 
 ories of his hospitable home. Mr. Coventry Pat- 
 more writes in his memorial volume to Mr. Procter : 
 "Among his friends in later life no one seems to 
 have won from him so much genial confidence and 
 self -communication as Mr. Fields, to whose charm 
 ing papers the reader may be referred for more 
 information about the poet s ways and opinions 
 than is to be found elsewhere." 
 
 This acknowledged power to win " genial confi 
 dence and self-communication" must excuse, if 
 excuse be needed, the publication in these pages 
 of so many fragments from the correspondence of 
 various persons. It is curious how differently the 
 same nature unfolds to different correspondents. 
 
82 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 We may learn to know a friend by what he un 
 consciously draws from others almost as well as 
 by his own conscious expression. 
 
 The diary continues : " Drove to Lasswade to 
 see the daughters of De Quincey." It is impossi 
 ble to reproduce or to quote from the private let 
 ters of these ladies, but it is most interesting to 
 see their affection for their father and the care 
 they took of him. They were of valuable assist 
 ance to Mr. Fields while he was editing De Quin- 
 cey s works, giving him the dates when certain 
 papers were written, and hunting up many details 
 which would have been difficult if not impossible 
 to discover otherwise, with the ocean rolling be 
 tween him and the libraries where he must have 
 searched. Very tender, grateful, and sparkling 
 letters these ladies wrote, as to a trusted friend, 
 full of home-like and individual touches. 
 
 " Alexander Smith called. Conversation interesting 
 and sympathetic. He laughed about his unwilling con 
 finement at the Isle of Skye in a storm of seven weeks 
 duration, which was the origin of his delightful paper 
 called The Sky Bothie. He talked especially of 
 Carlyle and Dobell, giving a strong picture of the harsh 
 and rough side of Carlyle. A. S. is a man of health and 
 energy, who gives promise of a long literary career." 
 
 What could any record of Edinburgh be worth 
 which should omit a tribute to Dr. John Brown, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 83 
 
 our friend of many years. The world is still made 
 better worth living in by his presence, and though 
 illness may prevent hirn from bearing an ex 
 pressed share in this memorial, we are none the 
 less confident of his unexpressed feeling and sym 
 pathy. "Rab" was not to be seen when we 
 were there, save in the spirit, but " Dick," the 
 household friend, was very well indeed. 
 
 In July, 1860, we returned to America, Mrs. 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family, and Mr. 
 Hawthorne and his wife and children, accompany 
 ing us. It was an excellent passage, though all 
 our little party were happy to touch the shores of 
 home, I believe, except Hawthorne, who used to 
 declare he would like to sail on thus forever, and 
 never come to land. A large number of letters 
 received at Liverpool were premonitory to the 
 busy publisher, and he was soon again estab 
 lished in his home in Charles Street, Boston, with 
 every moment occupied. 
 
 It was during this absence, though of course 
 not without correspondence and consultation, that 
 <- The Atlantic Monthly " was purchased by Tick- 
 nor & Fields. Established in the year 1857, by 
 Phillips, Sampson & Co., under the editorship of 
 James Russell Lowell, it was already recognized 
 as a power, when the failure of the firm who first 
 gave it existence threw it into other keeping. 
 
84 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 In 1861 Mr. Lowell resigned the position into Mr. 
 Fields s hands, who continued to fill the place until 
 1871, when Mr. W. D. Howells became the editor. 
 In 1881 he was succeeded by Mr. T. B. Aldrich. 
 
 From the diary : 
 
 "July 26,1863. Yesterday morning came an article 
 from H. G. upon Gerald Griffin, author of 4 The Col 
 legians ; at noon came two little lyrics from , pure 
 
 in feeling, but not adapted for publication. At night a 
 paper was returned from the printing office, a mass of 
 corrections, nearly a week having been exhausted by 
 the proof-reader vainly endeavoring to correct a bad 
 style. Much must be omitted. This morning comes 
 
 a poem from . Something had been done by the 
 
 editor to bring it into rhythmical shape. The author 
 writes that the deficiencies were intentional, never 
 theless accepts the amendment ! 
 
 " The Atlantic Monthly is a striking feature just 
 now in American life. Purely literary as it is, it has 
 a subscription list, daily increasing, of 82,000. The 
 labors of the editor and publishers are not light. . . . 
 Looking over a historical article fear poison the 
 author is a fierce democrat. has just sent a pleas 
 ing woman with a volume of poems. The first one is 
 about 4 The Frost, but the fabric the frost builds melts 
 in the sun before we can see what it is all about ; so 
 with each one ; of course they must be refused. Pro 
 fessor sends a pleasant and quaint article ; the 
 
 only objection is he threatens to send more ! Excellent 
 paper upon De Quincey, written with great ability. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 85 
 
 De Quincey stands in danger of being wronged by undue 
 or unjust praise. 
 
 Have been in Concord this week, making a short visit 
 at the Hawthornes. He has just finished his volume of 
 English Sketches, about to be dedicated to Franklin 
 Pierce. It is a beautiful incident in Hawthorne s life, 
 the determination, at all hazards, to dedicate this book 
 to his friend. . . . 
 
 "Visit from Charles Sumner. He is to speak next 
 week in New York upon Our Foreign Relations. 
 Meantime he has prepared an address upon 4 Our Do 
 mestic Affairs, with which it was his intention to open 
 the next session of Congress, but events move forward 
 so rapidly he thinks it better to print his discourse at 
 once in The Atlantic Monthly. After this matter 
 was satisfactorily arranged, Mr. Sumner proceeded to 
 speak confidentially of Mr. Prescott and of their old 
 friendship. On the day of his return to Boston after 
 he was struck down in the Senate Chamber, a proces 
 sion escorted him past Mr. Prescott s residence to his 
 own house. 4 1 had no sooner entered the door, con 
 tinued Mr. Sumner, ( than Mr. Prescott s servant rang 
 with a note containing these words : " Welcome home, 
 my dear Sumner ; I hope you saw me wave you a greet 
 ing from my piazza. What is the earliest moment you 
 can appoint that I may call upon you. When he came 
 on the following day at the time suggested, he said, 
 " How I wish I had known of the reception earlier, that 
 I might have draped my house with flags and had a 
 canvas printed in enormous letters, Welcome home! 
 with yesterday s date, and underneath May 22, the date 
 
86 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 you received your injuries; under these should have ap 
 peared the words : 
 
 1 Then I and you and all of us fell down, 
 Whilst bloody treason flourished over us. " 
 
 He was full of feeling during the interview. Mr. 
 Sumner was not only pleased with this sign of friend 
 ship, but he felt there had been some misrepresentation 
 of Mr. Prescott s political position, and the idea had 
 gone abroad that he was inimical to himself. There 
 fore he was glad to make this little incident known. 
 
 u Speaking of style in writing, Mr. Sumner said he 
 had re-read Mr. Hawthorne s paper called 4 Civic Ban 
 quets, just printed, three times, for the style. I sup 
 pose De Quincey and Landor are the masters of style 
 among moderns, he continued. . . . 
 
 Signed a paper yesterday, just put into circulation, for 
 raising 50,000 colored troops from New England. . . . 
 
 Letter from , saying his article in the A. M. was 
 
 shamefully mutilated. , standing by, says it is the 
 
 editor s duty to cut off people s heads. It does not make 
 this duty more agreeable, however. . . . Franklin Pierce, 
 formerly President of these United States, joined us un 
 expectedly as we were walking in the woods. He is at 
 least a most courteous gentleman and interesting man, 
 kindly and thoughtful. . . . 
 
 " September, 1863. This autumn a most attractive 
 list of books will be published by T. & F. Browning, 
 Tennyson, Richter, Hawthorne, Ticknor, and not least, 
 though last, a new volume just finished, called The 
 Wayside Inn. . . . 
 
 " October 14. Inauguration of the Union Club. Mr. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 87 
 
 Everett made a fine address. . . . Have laid plans for 
 placing several works of art upon the walls. Two are 
 already in position. . . . 
 
 " A rough old man from the Cape, half fisherman, 
 half farmer, came in to see Mr. Fields. Said he, ; Mr. 
 Agashy has been down to see the Cape, and we went 
 exploring it together. We discovered some wonderful 
 things down there, some things that air to come out in 
 the next number of your paper (meaning the A. M.). 
 But I wrote to Mr. Agashy and told him there was one 
 partikler thing I was afraid he hadn t got in his article, 
 something very important, and he wrote back and said, 
 when he got through with his article I might write the 
 rest and finish up the matter. What was the new 
 discovery which he had omitted? Why, t was just 
 this, and I think I d better write about it. Yer see, 
 they ve been a-planting cranberries down on that are 
 Cape and plantin and plantin . Now yer see V aint no 
 more use than if they was planted down here in Wash 
 ington Street ; they won t grow. You see, the soil down 
 there is all either shelving or luvial, and t wont do for 
 cranberries. Now I should like to finish Mr. Agashy s 
 article, for he is a real good, queer man. 
 
 " TUESDAY, November 3. Dinner given to the organ 
 builders of our beautiful organ in the Boston Music 
 Hall. Governor Andrew surpassed himself in interest 
 ing conversation. O. W. H. read a lyric, and J. T. F. 
 a little drinking song." 
 
 January, 1864. Mr. Fields received frequent 
 visits at this period from Professor Ticknor, whose 
 life of William H. Prescott had been lately issued: 
 
88 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Ticknor is delighted to have completed the work, 
 and to see it in so fitting a dress. He has much that is 
 interesting to relate about the incidents of his life, and 
 as the years increase finds a greater pleasure than ever 
 in recalling his memories of distinguished men whose 
 careers have been parallel to his own. 
 
 " He has never ceased to be generous with his most 
 precious possession, namely, his library. Not infre 
 quently two hundred and fifty volumes at a time have 
 been absent from his shelves, for he seldom refuses an 
 applicant. It has been the same also with the loan 
 of money in small sums. No one has been refused. He 
 tells some interesting anecdotes of narrow escapes, and 
 of irresolution, upon his own part, when total strangers 
 have asked to borrow his books. One night has been 
 enough to restore his generosity. 
 
 " Called on Professor Ticknor. He said he should be 
 happy to allow his picture of Sir Walter Scott, by Leslie, 
 to be photographed if Mr. Fields desired it. It is, of 
 course, a great privilege, and will be done immediately. 
 
 " Sir Walter was pleased with Mr. Ticknor when he 
 visited him as a young man. and yielded to his wish to 
 sit for a portrait. Therefore, in 1815, Leslie painted 
 this one. Mrs. Lockliart preferred it to all the other 
 likenesses of her father, and was unwilling to have it 
 leave the country. Leslie at length concluded to make 
 a copy in miniature, and this copy is still in England 
 in one of the fine collections there." 
 
 March 5, 1864, came the news of Starr King s 
 death. " It is hard to think of him as elsewhere. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 89 
 
 He seems necessary still to our cause, which he has 
 served nobly." 
 
 He was an early friend of Mr. Fields, and from 
 among his letters I have been able to gather a 
 few passages which may give some idea of his 
 rollicking fun : 
 
 "PIGEON COVE, SUNDAY, July 9, 1854. 
 
 " Heartiest thanks for your bundle and Walton. It s 
 a luscious copy. I shall begin it this glorious Sunday 
 afternoon which you have slighted. That will go into 
 the choicest spot of my best book-case. 
 
 " I had a rich interview with old K last evening, 
 
 at Sunset Rock. He said : 4 I knowed suthin would hap 
 pen that week the nigger was lugged out er Boston, cos 
 the old Farmers said, Look out for Causaltis and Ras 
 calities this week. 
 
 " Somehow lawyers came into our talk, and especially 
 
 . He grew eloquent on our legal friend. 4 The 
 
 d d cuss pled agin me once. I watched him, GowodI 
 He can cant his countinince so ez to draw the tears out 
 of the eyes of the jury in two minits. Some Biblical 
 criticisms were equally shrewd, reverent, and rich. . . . 
 " Sir ! with great regard, 
 
 " Your friend and servant, 
 
 T. S. KING." 
 
 " BOSTON, March 30, 1860. 
 
 " MY DEAK JAMES : I leave Boston to-morrow, and 
 New York April 5th. Can it be ? No King in Boston 
 after this ! No portly frame, and handsome mouth and 
 
90 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 nose which drives the artists crazy, belonging to the 
 Presbyter of Hollis Street, to enter the dear old sanctum 
 on the corner, and pester the poet-bibliopole ! Is it 
 possible ? 
 
 " And then I go where there is no such compound as 
 yourself. Fields there may be in California. Chinamen 
 are there, and perhaps tea fields, but no James T. alas ! 
 4 He was very kind to me, sir ! . . . 
 
 " J. and I laughed over your note till we cried." . . . 
 
 " SAN FRANCISCO, October 29, 1862. 
 
 "... We are chipping the shell here, and are coming 
 out northern eagles, not southern buzzards as the inten 
 tion was. We have gone through a hard and very im 
 portant fight, in fact have achieved the most remarkable 
 revolution which the war has witnessed. The State must 
 be northernized thoroughly, by schools, Atlantic Month 
 lies, lectures, New England preachers, Library Associa 
 tions, in short, Ticknor and Fieldsism of all kinds. I 
 have worked the last eighteen months within an inch of 
 my life, in speaking, preaching, orationizing, traveling, 
 organizing, etc., and have arranged to deliver there six 
 lectures, in addition to other labors, in order to set the 
 taste of our irrepressible and noble community in the 
 right path, and clinch the political nail that we have 
 driven through the State. . . . Do help me and you shall 
 be rewarded in this life, and shall have a copyright for 
 the lyrics of Gabriel. . . . 
 
 " Your obliged friend, 
 
 " T. S. K." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 91 
 
 " SAN FRANCISCO, February 10, 1863. 
 
 ..." Last night I spoke to a grand audience on 
 Holmes. You should have seen and felt the reception 
 of his tremendous lyric, Choose You Whom, etc. I 
 could hardly get out the line, And the copperhead coil 
 round the blade of his scythe, before the crash came, 
 which shows that the lightning struck. . . . Lowell has 
 sent me a perfectly charming poem showing his two 
 faces, the humorous and the transcendental, and conveying 
 the most delicate compliment to California bounty that 
 the finest fibre in his brain could devise. ... I shall 
 clear about $2,000 for our organ. Oh, how I want to see 
 you all, and to take our little Hesperus to an Eastern 
 sky ! Don t die, don t turn secesh, don t let the coun 
 try break in two. . . . How I want to see you. How 
 glorious Emerson s Titmouse is ! What vitality in the 
 Biglow Papers ! What excellence in the Atlantic 
 generally ! Here we have been nearly two years, and 
 have n t seen you for three ; and we still live, eat three 
 meals per diem, and are supposed to be tolerably content 
 with existence ! . . . I can t imagine what I should do 
 if we should see Boston and you all once more. I fear 
 the tether wouldn t hold. . . . 
 
 " Yours, always, 
 
 "T. S. KING." 
 
 This year was marked not only by the incidents 
 of war, but by the death of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 His passing was like losing a portion of our own 
 household, so closely interwoven had become the 
 interest and affection of the two families. The 
 
92 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 season of that parting was in the beautiful month 
 of May, as Longfellow has so exquisitely recorded. 
 Mrs. Hawthorne was not only uplifted herself 
 through the infinite beauty of spring, and the si 
 lence which surrounded her, in her wayside home 
 at Concord, but she shared a large measure of her 
 feeling with her friends when she sent them the 
 following letter. I print it because it contains a 
 breath of true life, and may breathe again upon 
 some soul whose joy is departed. 
 
 " MONDAY NIGHT. 
 
 "BELOVED; When I see that I deserved nothing, and 
 that my Father gave me the richest destiny for so many 
 years of time to which eternity is to be added, I am 
 struck dumb with an ecstasy of gratitude, and let go 
 my mortal hold with an awful submission, and without a 
 murmur. I stand hushed into an ineffable peace which 
 I cannot measure nor understand. It therefore must be 
 that peace which 4 passeth all understanding. I feel 
 that his joy is such as the heart of man cannot con 
 ceive, and shall I not then rejoice, who loved him so far 
 beyond myself ? If I did not at once share his beati 
 tude, should I be one with him now in essential essence ? 
 Ah, thanks be to God who gives me this proof beyond 
 all possible doubt that we are not and never can be 
 divided ! 
 
 " If my faith bear this test, is it not beyond the ut 
 most scope and vision of calamity ! Need I ever fear 
 again any possible dispensation if I can stand serene when 
 that presence is reft from me which I believed I must 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 93 
 
 instantly die to lose ? Where, O God, is that support 
 ing, inspiring, protecting, entrancing presence which sur 
 rounded me with safety and supreme content ? 
 
 " It is with you, rny child, saith the Lord, and seemeth 
 only to be gone. 
 
 " c Yes, my Father, I know I have not lost it, because 
 I still live. I will be glad. 4 Thy will be done. 
 From a child I have truly believed that God was all good 
 and all wise, and felt assured that no event could shake 
 my belief. To-day I know it. 
 
 " This is the whole. No more can be asked of God. 
 There can be no death nor loss for me for evermore. I 
 stand so far within the veil that the light from God s 
 countenance can never be hidden from me for one mo 
 ment of the eternal day, now nor then. God gave me 
 the rose of time ; the blossom of the ages to call my 
 own for twenty-five years of human life. 
 
 " God has satisfied wholly my insatiable heart with a 
 perfect love that transcends my dreams. He has decreed 
 this earthly life a mere court of the house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens. Oh, yes, deal- 
 heavenly Father! 4 I will be glad," that my darling has 
 suddenly escaped from the rude jars and hurts of this 
 outer court, and when I was not aware that an angel 
 gently drew him within the palace-door that turned on 
 noiseless golden hinges, drew him in, because he was 
 weary. 
 
 " God gave to his beloved sleep. And then an awak 
 ing which will require no more restoring slumber. 
 
 " As the dew-drop holds the day, so my heart holds the 
 presence of the glorified freed spirit. He was so beauti- 
 
94 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 ful here, that he will not need much change to become 
 a 4 shining one ! How easily I shall know him when my 
 children have done with me, and perhaps the angel will 
 draw me gently also within the palace-door, if I do not 
 faint, but truly live, ( Thy will be done. 
 
 " At that festival of life that we all celebrated last 
 Monday, did not those myriad little white lily-bells ring 
 in for him the eternal year of peace, as they clustered 
 and hung around the majestic temple, in which he once 
 lived with God? They rang out, too, that lordly incense 
 that can come only from a lily, large or small. What 
 lovely ivory sculpture round the edge. I saw it all, 
 even at that breathless moment, when I knew that all 
 that was visible was about to be shut out from me for 
 my future mortal life. I saw all the beauty, and the 
 tropical gorgeousness of odor that enriched the air from 
 your peerless wreath steeped me in Paradise. We were 
 the new Adam and new Eve again, and walked in the 
 garden in the cool of the day, and there was not yet 
 death, only the voice of the Lord. But indeed it seems 
 to me that now again there is no death. His life has 
 swallowed it up. 
 
 " Do not fear for me, dark hours. I think there is 
 nothing dark for me henceforth. I have to do only 
 with the present, and the present is light and rest. Has 
 not the everlasting 
 
 Morning spread 
 Over me her rich surprise? 
 
 " I have no more to ask, but that I may be able to 
 comfort all who mourn as I am comforted. If I could 
 bear all sorrow I would be glad, because God has turned 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 95 
 
 for me the silver lining; and for me the darkest cloud 
 has broken into ten thousand singing birds as I saw in 
 my dream that I told you. So in another dream long 
 ago, God showed me a gold thread passing through each 
 mesh of a black pall that seemed to shut out the sun. I 
 comprehend all now, before I did not doubt. Now God 
 says in soft thunders, 4 Even so ! 
 " Your faithful friend, 
 
 " SOPHIA HAWTHOBSTE." 
 
 Again the diary : 
 
 "April 3, 1865. Forever memorable! Our armies 
 entered Richmond, General Weitzel, with the colored 
 troops ahead. The bells of the little town of Manches 
 ter, where we passed the afternoon, were ringing, and 
 the sea and sky were in unison with the joyous sounds. 
 Returning home we found Mrs. Hawthorne lying on the 
 couch, where she might see the lovely sunset and moon 
 rise over the Charles River bay. 
 
 " . . . * Carleton delivered to John G. Whittier be 
 hind c the green curtain the key of the Richmond 
 Slave Prison. He saw fifty slaves emancipated from 
 this den a few days since." . . . 
 
 April Wth. " Saturday Club Dinner. Mr. Brownell, 
 author of The Bay Fight, was present, as Dr. Holmes s 
 guest." 
 
 The Saturday Club was established in the year 
 1857, and has been maintained with unabated 
 interest to the present date, meeting on the last 
 Saturday of every month, at two or three o clock 
 
96 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 in the afternoon, in order to accommodate Mr. 
 Emerson, Judge Hoar, and other out-of-town 
 members. It is entirely social, and therefore of 
 necessity rather small, the whole number of mem 
 bers from the beginning until now amounting to 
 but forty-five persons. Whatever may be said of 
 the lack of social spirit in New England, this club 
 will forever stand as a living contradiction to such 
 assertion. I believe there is not a parallel in the 
 world of such a company. Not more proud of 
 each other s fame or achievement than they are 
 attached to one another by sincere confidence and 
 affection, they are enabled to speak freely when 
 together, upon the subjects affecting them most 
 nearly. When we consider the individual charac 
 ter of its members and its duration, it will remain 
 as an exponent of our time. Jealousies, so often 
 rife among men of kindred labors, have never 
 darkened these friendships or altered the freedom 
 of communication. Each member is privileged to 
 bring one invited guest, and thus opportunity is 
 made for any distinguished visitor who may be 
 in our vicinity for coming face to face with the 
 individuals who have made New England famous. 
 Henry Howard Brownell, a man of high poetic 
 gifts, was thus first introduced among his peers. 
 His talent had already been recognized by Mr. T. 
 B. Aldrich, who has written a beautiful sonnet to 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 97 
 
 his memory, which should be reproduced in any 
 mention of the poet. 
 
 HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. 
 
 " They never crowned him, never knew his worth, 
 But let him go unlaurelled to the grave: 
 Hereafter there are guerdons for the brave, 
 Roses for martyrs who wear thorns on earth, 
 Balms for bruised hearts that languish in the dearth 
 Of human love. So let the lilies wave 
 Above him, nameless. Little did he crave 
 Men s praises. Modestly, with kindly mirth, 
 Not sad nor bitter, he accepted fate 
 
 Drank deep of life, knew books, and hearts of men, 
 
 Cities and camps, and war s immortal woe, 
 Yet bore through all (such virtue in him sate 
 His spirit is not whiter now than then !) 
 A simple, loyal nature, pure as snow." 
 
 The unrivaled tribute by " the Professor " in 
 the Atlantic Monthly also, must not be passed 
 unmentioned. It was a generous and fitting rec 
 ognition. 
 
 Who can forget having been present at that 
 first reading of " The Bay Fight " in the Charles 
 Street library one evening, when Dr. Holmes 
 thrilled the little company with his impassioned 
 presentation of the poem ; from that moment we 
 all felt that we knew Brownell, and whatever the 
 future should bring us from him would be of value 
 in our eyes. 
 
 7 
 
98 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 The diary says : 
 
 " Brownell s home is in Connecticut by the sea, where 
 he lives with his widowed mother. He visits at a few 
 houses only in Hartford, he says, but he finds a fisherman 
 by the water-side who is blind, one J. H. (an excellent 
 machinist also, and man of affairs), whom he likes much 
 and whose companionship he often seeks. Brownell has 
 a Life of Farragut under way, which he thinks would 
 outvie Southey s 4 Life of Nelson, if he had eyes to fin 
 ish it." 
 
 In connection with Brownell and his proposed 
 Life of Farragut, I find the following extract from 
 the diary : 
 
 " August, 1865. Dr. Townsend called, at whose house 
 Admiral Farragut stayed while he was in Boston. The 
 Doctor came, bearing a courteous message from Mrs. 
 Farragut, and her thanks for a copy of Ticknor s Life 
 of Prescott. He said he begun his professional life as 
 surgeon in the United States Navy, and he was upon the 
 same ship with Farragut, who was then a midshipman 
 fourteen years old. He was a clever, affectionate lad, 
 whose observation nothing escaped, and a warm friend 
 ship grew up between them. The old surgeon remem 
 bers distinctly often holding the boy upon his knee. 
 The intimacy between them has never ceased. Farragut 
 is a marvel of muscular and physical power. He ^s 
 sixty years old now, but on his tour to Rye Beach a few 
 days since, he repeatedly walked up a five barred gate 
 and stood upon the upper bar without touching anything. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 99 
 
 His life has been a varied one, and, of course, of pro 
 found interest to Americans at present. 
 
 " When the government sent to beg his acceptance of 
 some prominent position with a high salary, or the min 
 istry at some foreign court, he declined, saying he wished 
 to die as he had lived, in the navy. It was then asked 
 what station he would prefer and what style of house, as 
 they wished him to be appointed and settled where he 
 liked best, but he replied, give your positions and houses 
 to the men who need them, for they are many. I am 
 well off, and shall prefer to live simply and take care of 
 myself." 
 
 Mr. Brownell became personally attached to his 
 publisher, and many jocose little notes passed be 
 tween them. In one of them he says : 
 
 " I don t know whether you like dedications. What 
 do you think of this one ? If you approve it return it to 
 me, and I will send it to the Admiral, and see if he is 
 willing that it should appear. Tell me just what you 
 think about it. ... I am taking you behind the scenes 
 so much, in our rehearsal of this piece, that I m afraid 
 you will think t is like Mr. Weller s watch opens an 
 shows the vorks ." Again he writes, " I see that you 
 are doing me a kindness in a very delicate way. Accept 
 my sincere thanks. I am not above receiving a favor 
 from a man like you." 
 
 "EAST HARTFORD, February 28, 1866. 
 
 " MY DEAR FIELDS, By some divine magnetic in 
 stinct, I had already, two days ago, anticipated one of 
 your objections, and written to you to change the line to 
 
100 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 4 its breath ; so you might let me have my way about 
 the other. 
 
 " Ae half the prayer wi Phoebus grace did find, 
 The tither half he whistled down the wind." 
 
 " Don t be afraid of now for it, it was the first line 
 written, and is the very nucleus and key-note of the 
 piece, and is really the only good thing in it. Be it 
 known to you, Senor Gil Bias, said the Bishop, 4 that I 
 never composed a better homily than the one you ex 
 cept to. 
 
 " However, I would alter it if I could, since you wish 
 it, but really don t see how. 
 
 " It is, indeed, the merest trifle after all, and if it wont 
 go as it is, send it back. I shan t regret it, except that 
 it does not please you, whom I truly wish to please. . . . 
 
 "H. H. B." 
 
 December, 1868. " Brownell has just returned from a 
 voyage to Europe in the frigate Franklin with Admiral 
 Farragut. He is now forty-eight years old. He has 
 accomplished only six months traveling during his ab 
 sence of a year and a half, the rest of the time being 
 passed in monotonous sea-life. His vivid description of 
 ship-board talk, long yarns, arguments where nobody is 
 persuaded ; tales of the sentry who tramped every night 
 above his head until he found himself frequently com 
 pelled to sit up and meet the dawn ; of the wonderful fall 
 of a man through the rigging, one hundred and forty 
 feet, who recovered his perfect health, all these things 
 told in his own striking manner, became exceedingly in 
 teresting. Also his sense of utter shallowness under 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 101 
 
 such circumstances, though he seems to have been the 
 life of the ship from his humanity and love of literature 
 and fun. He was full of appreciation of 4 Mark Twain. 
 Presently he spoke of the delight he experienced in find 
 ing himself on Shelley s ground. Spezzia, Pisa, the 
 Lido (where he picked up shells as Shelley did with 
 Byron), at his grave, and the baths of Caracalla. He 
 spoke of the injustice done to Byron ; of his marvelous 
 descriptions ; how they reveled in his words as they stood 
 looking at Hymettus which flamed like a white pillar 
 on the sky. He was deeply moved at the sight of our 
 copy of c Diogenes Laertius ; the one owned by Shelley 
 and Leigh Hunt. Brownell reads Greek fluently ; in 
 deed, he has translated something of Homer, scholars say 
 remarkably, into hexameters. But this work was done 
 fifteen years ago, and will never be continued, he says. 
 . . . There is a pervading honesty in Brownell, by which 
 you recognize his religion. A full man. He has a small, 
 finely cut head." 
 
 The diary proceeds : 
 
 "Went to see Mrs. and Miss Thoreau. They pro 
 duced thirty-two volumes of Henry s journal and a few 
 letters. Their idea is to print the letters. . . . Their 
 house was like a conservatory, it was so filled with 
 plants in a beautiful condition. Henry liked to have 
 the doors thrown open that he might look at them 
 during his illness. . . . Miss Thoreau did not feel in 
 any haste to find the editor for her brother s journal. 
 She did not see the man, she said, but she thought he 
 would come." 
 
102 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Mr. Fields had no intimate acquaintance with 
 Henry Thoreau. " I like to see him come in/ 
 he would say, " he always smells of the pine 
 woods." The published volume of Thoreau s let 
 ters is selected with great care, and I do not 
 find anything new or more important in those 
 before me. We one day went to Lexington, and 
 drove down to Bedford Springs, five and a half 
 miles. We found a little lake there quiet and 
 full of sunshine in the autumnal afternoon. The 
 keeper of the house came to us while standing 
 by the lake side and offered to row us about. 
 The man had known Thoreau, and we found 
 ourselves on Thoreau s ground. There were the 
 houses for the musk-rats which he describes, and 
 the red berries of the alder and the purple asters 
 he loved so well. The brilliant trees and mov 
 ing clouds lay reflected in the lake as he had 
 seen them. Occasionally a hawk would glide over 
 on still wings, but no human sounds were heard 
 until the children came from school. We were 
 delighted to watch some ducks in the pond. They 
 were not wild, but they jumped into the pond as 
 soon as they could move, and had fed and cared 
 for themselves ever since. How calm and peace 
 ful the scene was ! 
 
 It was in the spring of 1863 that Forceythe 
 Willson first became known as a poet. The two 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 103 
 
 poems, "The Color Sergeant" and "In State," 
 chiefly gave him his reputation. One of our emi 
 nent men, who first extended the right hand to 
 that young poet, said, " He is as shy as Hawthorne, 
 and has not learned that the eagle s wings should 
 sometimes be kept down as we people who live in 
 the world discover." 
 
 Willson had the singular power of reading char 
 acter by the touch of manuscript. There was 
 something almost weird at times in his presence 
 and conversation. He took great pleasure in Mr. 
 Fields s cheerful friendly character, and seemed to 
 draw near to him as to a protecting and befriend 
 ing presence, 
 
 I give one of his characteristic letters : 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, August 22, 1865. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, Monday morning I promised myself 
 this should be Lazy Week no engagements no work 
 nothing positive; that I should drift and float, and 
 not lift a hand, forget myself and, as much as possible, 
 everybody else (on the Mutual Insurance principle). 
 Next week if you don t interpose I 11 be on hand 
 for a tramp with you ; but out upon chaises and civili 
 ties, for I want to ride a whale bareback. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "F. WILLSON. 
 
 " N. B. I shall bring no poems." 
 
 In one of his notes he says : 
 
104 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "DEAK MR. FIELDS, Please draw your pencil along 
 the margin of the intrusive stanzas, and return me the 
 
 po ttery. Your Friend, 
 
 " WlLLSON." 
 
 And again he signs himself " Yours ever 
 
 " F. W. 
 " Maker of earthen vessels." 
 
 " CAMBRIDGE, August 26, 1865. 
 
 " MY DEAK ME. FIELDS, When the wind is south 
 erly I know a hawk from a handsaw ; and unless it abso 
 lutely rain on Thursday morning I shall come without 
 regard to the weathercock. 
 
 " Just this moment finished reading Lowell s ode. 4 VI. 
 is a good strophe, the only thing of decent proportions 
 I ve seen on the subject in verse. 
 
 " There has really been no ode written in English (that 
 I know of) since Dryden ; but some of the shorter lines 
 in l X are almost up to the old strain. 
 " As for poems tut tut ! 
 
 " (the gods have quit making em !) 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " F. WlLLSON." 
 
 Mr. Fields was a warm friend of Charles 
 Sprague, who one day told him an incident relat 
 ing to the composition of his fine Shakespeare 
 Ode, which should not be forgotten. Mr. Fields 
 had mentioned one passage which he thought es 
 pecially good, the one descriptive of the murder. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 105 
 
 " Ah I " said Mr. Sprague, " how well I remember the 
 day I wrote that. I was keeping a grocer s shop on Tre- 
 mont Row at the time. It was a cold, stormy winter s 
 day and I was alone in the shop sitting over a sheet-iron 
 stove. I had just reached this passage and was hoping 
 nobody would come in, when a man opened the door and 
 asked for a quart of train-oil. Well, sir, I filled his ves 
 sel for him and handed it back, and then, my hands reek 
 ing with train-oil, I finished that passage." 
 
 The diary continues : 
 
 " One of the printing offices in revolt, which compli 
 cates Atlantic responsibilities, and as for disappointed 
 authors ! they seem to hedge us in and shake their 
 threatening beards." 
 
 " Went to get a few oysters for lunch. The oyster- 
 man lay down his guitar, upon which he had been impro 
 vising, and began to pry open the bivalves, singing as he 
 pried, I call thy spirit back to earth ! 
 
 " Note from , thanking the editor for his frank 
 ness in telling him his poem was bad, but disagreeing 
 with his opinion ! " 
 
 During these years I find references to the 
 constant increase of business responsibilities. A 
 weekly journal was started called the " Every 
 Saturday," which gave the firm a quarterly, 
 monthly, weekly, and juvenile magazine. The re 
 sult was, that ultimate decisions on a large variety 
 of matters were referred to Mr. Fields. In the 
 diary he says : 
 
106 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " An overwhelming week. Affairs crowd until it be 
 comes impossible to accomplish what should be done. 
 The sight of a manuscript is like a sword-fish now-a-days, 
 it cuts me in two." 
 
 Again, 
 
 " A most fatiguing day. Numberless persons with 
 
 books which must be refused ; among others , who 
 
 was full of grief, therefore it was harder to say No. 
 Beside his book is a good one ; . . . but Ticknor & 
 Fields have too many books already to make it best to 
 accept anything new at present." 
 
 The first letter I find from Mr. Bryant is dated 
 shortly before this period and the friendly corre 
 spondence remained unbroken until his death. 
 He writes in 1864 : 
 
 " DEAR MR. FIELDS, I send you a poem for the 
 4 Atlantic. Ask me for no more verses. A septuage 
 narian has past the time when it is becoming for him to 
 occupy himself with 
 
 ** The rhymes and rattles of the man and boy. 11 
 
 Pope was twenty years younger than I am, when he said 
 to Bolingbroke , 
 
 1 Why wilt thou break the Sabbath of my days ? 
 and, 
 
 * Public too long, ah, let me hide my age/ 
 
 Uhland, who died in his seventy-sixth year, did not in the 
 last twenty years, or twenty-five, was it ? add a hundred 
 lines to his published verses. Nobody in the years after 
 seventy can produce anything in poetry except the thick 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 107 
 
 and muddy last runnings of the cask from which all the 
 clear and sprightly liquor has been already drawn." 
 
 Again in 1867, he writes from Boslyn, Long 
 Island : 
 
 " DEAR, MR. FIELDS, It would give me great pleas 
 ure to be a guest at your dinner next week and to testify 
 my admiration of the writings of Mr. Longfellow, in par 
 ticular of his translation of Dante, but for the occupa 
 tions in which I am now engaged and I must say, also, 
 the habit of seclusion, incident to my time of life, and 
 gaining strength as I grow older. Allow me to plead 
 these as my excuse for not coming to the dinner to which 
 you have so kindly invited me. Meantime I take this 
 opportunity to express in words what my presence could 
 not express more emphatically. Mr. Longfellow has 
 translated Dante as a great poet should be translated. 
 After this version, no other will be attempted until the 
 present form of the English language shall have become 
 obsolete, for whether we regard fidelity to the sense, 
 aptness in the form of expression, or the skilful trans 
 fusion of the poetic spirit of the original into the phrases 
 of another language, we can look for nothing more per 
 fect. It is fitting that Mr. Longfellow s friends should 
 congratulate him, as I heartily do, on the successful com 
 pletion of his great task. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, very truly yours 
 
 " W. C. BRYANT. 
 
 "JAMES T. FIELDS, ESQ." 
 
 This letter refers to the dinner planned by 
 Mr. Fields and given by " the firm " in honor of 
 
108 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 the completion of Mr. Longfellow s translation of 
 Dante. The Dante Festival, as it was called, be 
 cause it was given on the six hundredth anniver 
 sary of Dante s birth, was a beautiful and success 
 ful occasion. Mr. Bryant s absence was regretted, 
 but there was a full company of " Kepresentative 
 Men." 
 
 Again, Mr. Bryant writes in 1871 : 
 
 "I ca,ii no more get up the necessary excitement for 
 writing a poem at the present time than I can go back 
 to the days of my youth. I have the Odyssey on hand, 
 which takes up most of my leisure ; then there is the 
 1 Evening Post, which I cannot neglect, and other matters, 
 small in themselves, but numerous, the effect of which is 
 to load me with so many petty tasks, and keep me fuss 
 ing so, that I sometimes feel what used to be called, 
 when people had no scruple about using a Latin word 
 now and then, tedium vitce. So you see that you ask 
 what is as impossible as if you were to wait a few years 
 and ask it of my tombstone. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 
 
 "W. C. BKYANT." 
 
 " NEW YORK, April 25, 1871. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. FIELDS, There was no need that 
 you should exhort me to be diligent in putting the Odys 
 sey into English blank verse. I have been as industrious 
 as was reasonable. I understand very well that at my 
 time of life such enterprises are apt to be brought to a 
 conclusion before they are finished, and I have therefore 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 109 
 
 wrought harder upon my task than some of my friends 
 thought was well for me. I have already sent forward 
 the manuscript for the first volume. You may remember 
 that I finished my translation of the Iliad within the 
 time that I undertook, and this would have been done 
 without any urging. In the case of the Odyssey I have 
 finished the first volume two months sooner than I prom 
 ised. 
 
 44 1 do not think the Odyssey the better part of Homer 
 except morally. The gods set a better example and take 
 more care to see that wrong and injustice are discouraged 
 among mankind. But there is not the same spirit and 
 fire, nor the same vividness of description, and this the 
 translator must feel as strongly as the reader. Let me 
 correct what I have already said, by adding, that there is 
 yet in the Odyssey one more advantage over the Iliad. 
 It is better as a story. In the Iliad the plot is to me un 
 satisfactory and there is besides a monotony of car 
 nage you get a surfeit of slaughter. . . ." 
 
 The following brief extracts from the diary giv 
 ing a sketch of Mr. Bryant in his own beautiful 
 home at Roslyn, may not be out of place : 
 
 " June^ 1871. Last night Mr. Bryant met us in the 
 train for Roslyn. He is nearly eighty years old, hale 
 and strong, his intellect clear as ever. He showed us 
 Long Island with pride, as having a kind of ownership 
 in the whole place apart from his actual possession. His 
 influence has been incalculable in the proper planting 
 and civilizing of the whole district. He pointed out the 
 farm where Cobbett lived and wrote his book upon 
 
110 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 American Agriculture ; the plains where the Indians cut 
 off the trees where the railroad now runs ; indicated 
 the growth of towns, Jamaica especially, which was a 
 very small place twenty-five years before when he came 
 to Roslyn. ... In the morning Mr. Bryant walked to 
 the village for the mail, and we wandered about the place 
 rejoicing in the beauty of the trees and flowers. Every 
 thing in the way of foliage contrasts strongly with our 
 own rugged shores of Massachusetts. . . . Wandered 
 into the library. The broad window where the poet s 
 table stood overlooked the garden with its white lilies 
 and the lake below. The Odyssey, opened at the four 
 teenth book, lay upon the table, where he had already 
 been at work in the early morning. It was the library 
 of a student and scholar." 
 
 In the spring of 1863 Mr. Fields found a com 
 fortable farm-house on a hillside in Campton, N. H., 
 about a mile from that village, where during sev 
 eral consecutive years he " met the spring " and 
 rested in absolute retirement. There was no rail 
 road nearer than the town of Plymouth, eight 
 miles distant, over a sandy and difficult road, and 
 no post-office nearer than the village of Camp- 
 ton, whither the mail was brought by an express 
 wagon, which was a whole long day toiling be 
 tween Plymouth and that place. But for one who 
 loved the country as he did, to whom the green 
 growing things were a constant joy, who reveled 
 in them always as children do, not like a botanist, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. Ill 
 
 or an astronomer, or story-writer, or thinker, and 
 still less like a man of business, or an editor, but 
 going out to play, finding wild roses, or columbine, 
 or pimpernel, whatever it might be, and bringing 
 it home, forever guiltless of the Latin name, like 
 a conqueror, as if it were just created ; to one 
 who loves nature in this way she is sufficient ; she 
 takes him to herself and gives him rest on many a 
 green pillow. 
 
 He was never tired of going to New Hampshire. 
 " They are my native hills, you know," he would 
 say half in excuse, and although the climate of 
 Campton itself did not suit him he continued to 
 go thither for many years. 
 
 The following notes of the life there will give 
 some idea of his love of country enjoyments. 
 
 " June 7th. Raining like a day in April ; began our 
 walks before breakfast. The ferns are only half awak 
 ened and the wayside is blue with violets. The hermit 
 thrush and robins are busy enough. What the farmers 
 call real growin weather. Mad River bridge is un 
 safe. They say here 4 the buttonments are weak. The 
 ford too is impassable from the heavy rains. Read Nie- 
 buhr s letters aloud, also the memoirs of Lord Herbert 
 of Cherbury. The only external excitement is when 
 the country wagons pass up and down the road to and 
 from Plymouth. . . . Heard the Peabody bird here for 
 the first time. . . . 
 
 "Sunday Went to the village church. The sermon 
 
112 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 was not unsuited to the bearers, and the service was 
 earnest and interesting. In the afternoon climbed to 
 the very top of Willey s Hill. We saw the sun go 
 down while still near the summit. What an even 
 ing ! The streams are fuller than we have seen them 
 before." 
 
 "June 11. Drove to Sanborn s Inn, and wandered 
 about in the sunshine all the afternoon. Two boys were 
 fishing for trout in a full blue pond near by, where logs 
 were floating. We sat on one of the logs near to the 
 brink, and watched their agility in springing from one 
 to another, with utter fearlessness of slipping. No 
 trout yet, they said, in answer to our inquiries. Drove 
 to Farmer A. s. Met him just below his house. He 
 walked by the side of the wagon, talking. Such a place ! 
 It was a Paradise. The mountains opened before us, the 
 meadow and river lay below. What a magnificent resi 
 dence this would be ! Comparing favorably in natural 
 features with the finest the world can show. . . . Think 
 of it : a patriarchal domain at an expense of one hundred 
 and eighty dollars a year ! 
 
 " June 12. Went up to the W. s farm on the hill 
 side. There is no road leading there ; only a grassy 
 lane. Found the farmer hoeing his corn thoughtfully on 
 the hillside. He believed there would be frost to-night. 
 The northwest wind was blowing lustily over the young 
 shoots, and it was quite cold. At the door of the cot 
 tage the mother greeted us joyfully. We went in to see 
 her sick daughter. . . . 
 
 " The green hills stretch up behind the cottage, and 
 slope down in front of it, and the solitude is undisturbed. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 113 
 
 The lilacs were waving in the sunshine as we left the 
 sick girl ; the birds were hovering about the door, sun 
 shine and health were everywhere without, pain and 
 fading were within. . . . 
 
 " In the afternoon walked to Farmer G. s, and came 
 home through June Avenue (he christened all the 
 walks and drives and climbs during these visits). Farm 
 er G. said his taxes were very heavy, equal to fifty dol 
 lars a year, all told, but then t was wuth somethin to 
 live in the village of Campton ! 
 
 " Last night Don Santiago Duello arrived in Camp- 
 ton, the world-renowned contortionist. The people 
 said this morning he did all he said he would, and they 
 had their money s worth. Seeing him drive away, Mr. 
 Fields said, A more decayed, miserable set than the 
 44 Don " in his buggy, . . . his wife and child and baby 
 and rattletraps, which preceded him, could not easily 
 be conceived. 
 
 44 June 15. Hills veiled, rain, rain, rain. Later, 
 thick fog, and signs of clearing. Finished Massey s book 
 on Shakespeare s sonnets ; read Mozart s letters in the 
 evening. Walked many miles ; visited the school-house ; 
 was interested in the teacher, a lame girl, with a passion 
 for study. She intends going next year to the Seminary 
 at South Hadley ; earns about three dollars and a half a 
 week, besides her board, while teaching here. Has for 
 ty-two scholars. These people pick up much of the 
 knowledge they possess from experience. Mr. Fields 
 asked, 4 how old is the school-house ? * Well, I can t 
 tell ye exackly, but I helped to take up the old fence 
 the other day, and the oak-posts was rotten ; naow it 
 8 
 
114 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 takes jest twelve years for oak-posts to begin to rot, so 
 it must have been built twelve years at least. 
 
 " The air is filled with a chorus of birds. We strain 
 our ears to listen, and, as far as sound can travel, there 
 are the birds voices calling to each other in the silence. 
 The sun warms us through ; soft white clouds come 
 upon the sky to break the fierceness of the sudden 
 heat, ferns unroll, the trees are odorous, 
 " All the world is gay. 
 
 " Found the linnaea in bloom. Drove to K. Hill ; 
 asked the younger daughter of the house to accompany 
 us, and climbed the height. The hill-top was like a 
 baronial park of perfect maple trees. We found a 
 mighty sugar-house there, with two hundred buckets 
 and huge pans, suggesting plenty of sweet spoil. 4 How 
 dull it looks here now, said the girl. < In sugar time 
 it is lovely ! The snow is on the ground, but the air 
 at mid-day is not very cold at the season we generally 
 choose. It is real pleasant going up to the sugar-house 
 then. 
 
 " We climbed to the very top, and, sitting on moss 
 thick as a good sponge, looked off upon Moose Hillock, 
 and down into the Franconia Notch, over the winding, 
 glancing beauty of the Pemigewasset, with the fertile 
 meadows. Upwards of a hundred sheep were nibbling 
 on the near hills belonging to the K. s ; saw also oxen 
 and cattle and a large orchard of apple and pear trees. 
 
 " These people are proud as the lords of old, but 
 they need assistance in their labors, and, failing this, 
 their whole farm life is, in one sense, a failure. They 
 overwork, and neither attain their ends nor enjoy their 
 lives. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 115 
 
 "June 16. Walked over the hills before breakfast. 
 Startled a cow, who gave quite a human jump of as 
 tonishment. 
 
 " PLYMOUTH, N. H. (en route for Campton), June, 
 1868. Sunday Passed the morning on the piazza of a 
 deserted house on the hill-top overlooking the town. 
 The whole Franconia range in sight. Whittier was our 
 companion (in pocket form this time). It was a heavenly 
 season. Mr. Fields told me he dreamed last night that 
 L. had returned to pass a few hours with him. They 
 talked very fast, there was so much to be said, and yet 
 when he asked about the honors conferred on the banks 
 of the Cam, or the public demonstrations, L. would only 
 laugh, with a characteristic gesture, and say nothing. 
 He talked incessantly of the loveliness of England, of the 
 lake district in particular, while he hummed from time 
 to time the refrain of a poem. c I know you have writ 
 ten something to show me, said Mr. Fields. You 
 would never have come without that. Then L. took 
 out a short poem ; but they soon fell again into talk ; 
 this time about C. D. s house where L. is now staying. 
 4 It is perfect, said L. ; 4 you cannot hear the wheels go 
 round. 
 
 " CAMPTON, July 2. One of the farmers amuses us 
 by talking of sidlm" 1 land, meaning hilly. 
 
 "July 3. Very, very warm. The morning clear and 
 of unspeakable beauty. We read Comus before break 
 fast. The thrushes sing plenteously and life is harmoni 
 ous, silent, and apart. How far apart it seems, indeed, 
 after such close contact with it as we have had ! 
 
 " July 4. Hot, hot. The trees stand motionless. Mr. 
 
116 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Fields could do nothing yesterday afternoon but watch 
 the cloud scenery, which was marvelous in its beauty. 
 
 U t7wn, 1872. A splendid vision upon the mountains 
 at sunset, and a rainbow in the east. We shall remem 
 ber this sunset, with the scene at Interlachen. 
 
 " In the morning the atmosphere like crystal and de- 
 liciously melodious and fragrant. Read Spenser s Fae 
 ry Queen aloud in the evening. 
 
 " June 20. Roses in torrents. Climbed the hill to 
 wards night and saw a tree cut down, a hemlock. He 
 fell solemnly at last, and then only a short distance, 
 being upheld by his fellows. Finally he was dragged 
 down disgracefully by his hair. The squirrels ran for 
 it!" 
 
 One of the pleasures of this period of Mr. Fields s 
 life was his acquaintance, nay friendship, with Mr. 
 Agassiz, and any record would be incomplete which 
 failed to recall the delightful hours passed in his 
 society. " Did you have a pleasant Club to-day? " 
 " Yes, Agassiz was there ! " was often the answer 
 heard from his lips. The glimpses here of their 
 association must be of the briefest, for every rea 
 son, but such memories are too precious to be 
 omitted and allowed to perish altogether. Agas 
 siz was so beloved by all who knew him, and all 
 who knew Fields loved him so, different as they 
 were, that I can but recall in tbis relation a pas 
 sage from the writings of Lacordaire. He says, in 
 speaking of Ozanam : 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 117 
 
 " C est un rare secret que celui de la popularity, j en- 
 tends la popularite veritable, celle qui ne s achete point 
 par de laches concessions aux erreurs d un siecle, mais 
 qui entoure d une aureole pre mature e 1 honnete homrne 
 vivant. . . . Toutes les conditions remplies, il n est pas 
 impossible qu un homme echappe a la popularity, si 
 quelque chose de bienveillant ne tempere en lui la force 
 du caractere et n abaisse la hauteur du genie. C est la 
 bonte qui rend Dieu populaire, et I homme a qui elle 
 manque n obtiendra jamais 1 amour." 
 
 In 1866 Mr. Fields one day accompanied a 
 young English gentleman to Agassiz Museum. 
 They found the Professor hard at work, his hands 
 in oil, fishes, and alcohol. " How sad for a natu 
 ralist to grow old," he said. " I see so much to be 
 done which I can never complete." The stranger 
 had brought with him specimens or drawings from 
 Professor Huxley for Mr. Agassiz. He was at once 
 cordially received and invited to lunch with him 
 the following day. 
 
 Again, from the diary : 
 
 " Mr. Fields received a call to-day from our consul at 
 Mauritius, who has brought to Boston two skeletons of 
 the Dodo, the extinct bird of that island. The consul is 
 anxious to see Mr. Agassiz. It is said there are no other 
 complete skeletons. He suspected the possibility of their 
 existence in a certain tract of marshy ground, and sent 
 the natives in nearly to their necks in mud and water to 
 feel about. After a time they struck these bones, with 
 
118 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 which he returned at once to New England, being con 
 vinced of their value as belonging to the real Dodo. . . . 
 Mr. Agassiz seems to have enjoyed the 4 Dodo bones. 
 They are not perfect, but valuable notwithstanding, and 
 the best we have in America. Mr. Fields asked him if 
 the 4 Dodo was good to eat! 4 Yes, indeed; what a pity 
 we could not have the Dodo at our Club! A good din 
 ner is humanity s greatest blessing. What a pity ! But 
 the Dutchmen carried a ship with rats to Mauritius who 
 sucked the fine eggs, as large as a loaf, and everybody 
 found the bird so good they did eat him, so he has be 
 come extinct. We know of but one other bird of recent 
 date who has become extinct, the Great Northern Auk. 
 The Bishop of Newfoundland did send rne his bones, 
 a treasure indeed. " 
 
 New specimens overflowed from every side. His 
 plans grew in proportion, and their only chance of 
 fulfilment seemed to be in the continuous labor 
 of those nearest him who could further the details 
 of his great work. 
 
 Agassiz friendship for and appreciation of Pro 
 fessor Pierce were always manifest when occasion 
 offered. One day an album was produced in which 
 Pierce had inscribed a half leaf about the stars and 
 the far-reaching power of the mind of man tran 
 scending the limits of the spheres. The passage 
 was most impressive in its eloquence. Agassiz was 
 delighted, crying, " Do you hear ! That is Ben ! 
 Who but Ben could do that ! It is enough to say 
 that." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 119 
 
 In 1868 a private dinner was given to Mr. 
 Longfellow upon his departure for Europe. Mr. 
 Agassiz was present. Some one expressed a strong 
 desire to see the Nile. "Ah! " said Agassiz, "I, 
 too, long to see the Nile, but because I wish to 
 study the fishes in it ! " He sustained a hearty 
 struggle with a Darwinite at the table, but was 
 equally full of science and of fun. His gayety 
 and tenderness were unusual even for him. It 
 was on a subsequent occasion that he described 
 the Brazilian woodland, where he had seen one 
 hundred and twenty-seven different kinds of wood 
 growing within the space of a half mile ; also the 
 splendor of the red passion-flower shut in by the 
 dark green of the forest, green so dark that it is 
 black. 
 
 A most interesting gathering of the Saturday 
 Club came together to welcome him upon his re 
 turn from Brazil. On that occasion he is remem 
 bered as seizing Dr. Holmes in his arms and 
 taking him quite off his feet in the warmth of his 
 embrace. He spoke there also of the greatness 
 of Brazil, of her glorious woodlands ; and described 
 the Brazilian ants as swarming into the houses 
 and remaining for three days at a time, forcing 
 the family meanwhile to move away ; said he had 
 counted one hundred and forty-eight varieties of 
 wood, whereas in New England we have only 
 
120 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 about fifty ; and spoke of the vast room for en 
 terprise in such a land where not a sawmill was 
 then in existence. He enlarged also upon the 
 distinguished intelligence of the Emperor, and 
 mentioned his intended visit to this country. 
 Agassiz accompanied Longfellow and Fields as far 
 as Lynn after the dinner. As they looked from 
 the windows of the car into the moon-lighted 
 landscape, Fields asked if that scene were not as 
 beautiful as anything Brazil could offer. "Ah! " 
 was the reply, "I was just reflecting how sterile 
 was the appearance of New England after the lux 
 uriant beauty of Brazil." He was sadly troubled 
 to find the " old hack politicians " whom he hoped 
 the war had slain, corning out again in renewed 
 force. 
 
 The diary continues : 
 
 " Mr. Agassiz often seems to have left half his heart 
 with his work when he is away from it, except when he 
 is like a child running over with fun and frolic. ... It 
 was after Mr. Whipple s fine lecture on Bacon that 
 some one fell to discoursing about imagination. c Let us 
 stop here, said Agassiz, we each define imagination dif 
 ferently. Imagination is to me the perfect conception of 
 truth which some minds attain, of what cannot be proved 
 through the senses. For instance, the planet Jupiter is 
 so many miles from us, it has a certain determined size, 
 and certain peculiarities. The mind that can compre 
 hend and use this knowledge as clearly as if the senses 
 had touched the planet, that mind has imagination. " 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 121 
 
 Mr. Fields asked him at one of these gather 
 ings if he thought man ever would draw nearer 
 to the mystery of birth and death. " I am sure 
 he will," was his reply, " the time will come when 
 all these things will be made as clear as this table 
 now spread before us." 
 
 Three Scotch professors were the guests at the 
 Saturday Club of August, 1871, and it was pro 
 posed that Walter Scott should be remembered as 
 if it were his birthday. Agassiz presided, and the 
 matter in hand seemed likely to be forgotten. 
 Fields recalled the subject for the day to the 
 president. " Thank you," he said, " my dear 
 Fields, I had entirely forgotten it. I have been 
 busily discussing scientific subjects with my friend 
 here. I ought also to confess to this company 
 that I have read only one of the novels of Walter 
 Scott, that is ( Ivanhoe ; but if God please, before 
 my death I will read two more. My time is 
 always much occupied in other directions, and it 
 was not until I came to this country that 1 read 
 even Ivanhoe/ 
 
 This pleasant bit of autobiographical confession 
 opened the hearts of all present and the talk which 
 followed was of unusual interest. 
 
 I recall two memorable opportunities of the en 
 joyment of Agassiz peculiar eloquence, an elo 
 quence not to be outshone ; one a social meeting 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL .VOTES 
 
 rhen he described die action of 
 the surface of North America: the 
 other a public discourse aaoa naliijiafUjj. Hie j 
 are never to be forgotten, and were appreciated 
 by none mcancaely than by the "cfcar spirit" 
 
 r. 1S73. the diary aMJiaam: 
 is very fll probably dying. What 
 world it wffl be to us without him. 
 Soch a rich, expansive, lo\ing nature. The Sat 
 urday Club wffl feel this to be their severest 
 
 From his emifajt jean Mr. Fields had been a 
 later of die Iniliinaii art. I hate already re 
 ferred to the opportunities afforded him for seeing 
 the best acting while he was still a youth, and it 
 was a taste fostered in his later years. He was 
 not, in die common acceptation of the term, a 
 
 he* he aai not jaelet his own library to the 
 in any dieatre, hut when those occasions 
 ? Charies Dickens Ufed to say of 
 an audience " in himselL He 
 
 done, the difficulties to be surmoimted 
 
 to^ ii !. 11 ! an m Anvr 
 ------- " -- - - 
 
 -ce achieved he was among the fir-t to 
 pay tribute to the artist. His knowledge <rf the 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 123 
 
 literature of the stage was wide and accurate, 
 and as Charles Lamb said of the fat woman sitting 
 in the door-way, " it was a shrewd zephyr that 
 could escape her," so it was a shrewd slip of the 
 text, accent, rhythm, pronunciation, which could 
 escape his keen observation and memory. The 
 artists themselves were the first, of course, to rec 
 ognize such an audience, and the almost universal 
 tribute of their friendship was one of the pleas 
 ures of his life. Many members of the profes 
 sion will recall happy hours passed under his roof, 
 but of two or three of the most eminent who have 
 gone from us, a brief record has been preserved, 
 I have already spoken of Mrs. Mowatt and of Char 
 lotte Cushman. 
 
 Among Mr. Fields s letters from one of the most 
 famous of our living actors, I find the following 
 sentence of pathetic significance : " Any notice of 
 any actor now-a-days, which is assuredly both un 
 solicited and unpaid for, is a refreshing rarity, and 
 deserves a place in the most important part of 
 ( our shop/ among the cur iosi ties. " 
 
 We believe the day is happily past for neglect 
 either of artistic painstaking or artistic success. 
 In Mr. Fields s opinion, both painstaking and suc 
 cess upon the stage demanded the same recogni 
 tion that these qualities demand in any other 
 sphere of art. But his enjoyment of the society 
 
124 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 of actors was quite apart from any such reasoning. 
 Nature first, and afterward the business of the ac 
 tor s life, has caused the entertainment of others 
 to become his study. " Going to the play," means 
 " a good time," and rest to the careworn. Any 
 human being who has learned the science of en 
 tertaining, has indeed possessed himself of a beau 
 tiful gift. Many a dark mood may be cheated 
 out of existence by this fine science. And it was 
 a gift which always gave Mr. Fields an exquisite 
 pleasure to see exercised. It would be a vain task 
 to mention the names of living actors, men and 
 women, who have turned to him continually as to 
 a friend ; but the satisfaction he himself took in 
 these relations is no less a satisfaction to recall 
 now. 
 
 His acquaintance with Charles Matthews must 
 have begun with Matthews s first visit to America, 
 for I remember an anecdote he used to relate of 
 him long before the visit of 1871. Mr. Fields had 
 enjoyed Matthews s playing sincerely ; it seemed 
 to him perfect of its kind. " Matthews," he ex 
 claimed, when they met, " I enjoyed your per 
 formance beyond expression." "Ah, that is just 
 it," said Matthews, " you don t express anything. 
 How can your people expect to get the best out 
 of an actor, if they don t speak or try to tell him 
 so. They will never know what we can do. It is 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 125 
 
 impossible to give one s best under such circum 
 stances." It was an excellent suggestion to a 
 thoughtful hearer, and left the door wide open 
 for some kind of expression in the future. In 
 June, 1871, Mr. Matthews returned to Boston. 
 It was not a convenient time to go to the theatre, 
 but returning to town just in season one evening, 
 we took a cup of tea at a restaurant near by, and 
 went to see " 1000 a Year," which was followed 
 by a short comedietta of his own, called " Toddle- 
 kins " (and something else). His acting had a last- 
 century flavor in it ; also it possessed the rapidity 
 and perfection of the modern French stage, while 
 it was altogether English. It was a very fine 
 house, proving that the absolute perfection of his 
 own style had at length brought him the recogni 
 tion he deserved. 
 
 Later we saw him in " The Critic," Sheridan s 
 play, but re-adapted by himself for our stage. 
 The requisitions of the modern theatre were in 
 geniously engrafted upon the old play. Matthews 
 had great talent, and inherited talent. He was at 
 that time sixty-seven years old, without a sign of 
 decadence. 
 
 Where could be found a more brilliant man, 
 a more fascinating companion, than Sothern ? As 
 swift in wit as a French woman, as swift in action 
 as a juggler, lie combined with these gifts great 
 
126 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 tenderness and charm of nature. I am sorry to 
 find no record of our intercourse with him except 
 what is set down on the treacherous tablets of the 
 memory, but I remember his coming was always 
 a signal that the thermometer was rapidly rising 
 and everything beginning to glow with a mid 
 summer radiance of feeling and color. 
 I find in the diary : 
 
 " February, 1870. Mr. Fechter came to lunch. Talked 
 freely of his own conception of Hamlet. Finds his Bos 
 ton audience wonderfully appreciative. . . . Told a touch 
 ing story of Mademoiselle Mars during her last years. 
 She came upon the stage one night to personate one of 
 the parts she had made famous in her youth. When 
 she appeared some heartless wretch threw her a wreath 
 of immortelles as it were for her grave. She was 
 shocked : 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 Frederick Le- 
 maitre. 4 The second-class actors were always arguing 
 with him (only second-class people argue) and saying, 
 4 Why do you wish me to stand here, Frederick ? I 
 don t know, he would say, only see that you do it. . . . 
 
 " It is odd that Fechter s eyes should be brown after 
 all ! They look so light in the play. . . . His description 
 of Dickens, as Fechter often saw him from the lawn at 
 work at his desk, or when he rose, to join him at lunch, 
 with tears on his cheek and a smile on his mouth, was 
 close to life and delightful. . . . 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 127 
 
 " Saw Fecbter in the Duke s Motto. He was won 
 derfully fine. This is the play of which Dickens gave us 
 such a humorous description. Fechter wished him to 
 adapt it (John Brougham did it at last) ; and he went 
 through the plot in such a rapid way with a baby in his 
 arms, made up of a pillow which he snatched from the 
 couch in Dickens s study, that it was perfectly impossible 
 to understand a single word he said, English and French 
 getting entangled in an inextricable medley. 
 
 " June 14. Fechter has been here, plunged in deepest 
 grief for the loss of his friend Charles Dickens. He 
 was pathetic. . . . At the very hour we were talking to 
 gether the body was brought into Westminster Abbey. 
 
 "August. Dined with Fechter at Nahant. He had 
 been in England, but had returned with many question 
 able and perverted notions of people and things. He 
 was dramatic in his representations of persons, and made 
 himself entertaining." 
 
 " December, 1871. Just returned from seeing Fechter 
 in Ruy Bias. The public had heard the news that he 
 was to leave the Globe Theatre in four weeks. (He had 
 made an engagement there for the winter.) The result 
 was an enormous house. He played with great fire and 
 care. He had a wretched cold, and his pronunciation 
 was not only thick but very French, as it is apt to be 
 come when he is excited ; and we found it difficult some 
 times to catch a word ; but his audience were determined 
 to be pleased, and they caught and applauded all his 
 good points." . . . 
 
 Dickens possessed a strong influence over Fech 
 ter, and while he lived seemed to keep him from 
 
128 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 sinking. He said, however, when Fechter decided 
 to come to America : " He will doubtless make a 
 great impression, but whether anything can pre 
 vent him from overturning his own fortunes re 
 mains to be seen. I shall do the best I can for 
 him." 
 
 The following passage from Mr. Fields s lecture 
 on Cheerfulness will not be out of place here : 
 
 "Whoever has the magic gift, like Warren and Soth- 
 ern and Owens, and Raymond and Boucicault, and Gil 
 bert and Clarke and Jefferson, and dear, sensible, funny, 
 friendly Mrs. Vincent (whom heaven preserve, big bon 
 net and all, for many years to come), whoever has that 
 special endowment to raise a continued shout of honest 
 laughter every evening in our various theatres, is a bene 
 factor to be greeted everywhere. When I go to see and 
 hear these genuine sons and daughters of Mourns, who 
 bring to us so many hours of unalloyed happiness, I can 
 but rejoice at every peal of hilarious pleasure that rings 
 to the roof from my over-brain worked countrymen and 
 women ; for each outburst from the audience seems a di 
 rect expression of Down with the bridge of sighs and up 
 with the bridge of joy ! Having been honored with the 
 acquaintance (on and off the stage) of many of these 
 ushers of mirth, these furrow dispensers from the brow 
 of care, these helpers to good digestion, these half-ficti 
 tious, whole-hearted, most attractive people, I confess 
 myself their insolvent debtor, who can never hope to 
 pay even a dime on the dollar for all the delight they 
 have given me." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 129 
 
 I return to the diary : 
 
 " December ,1867. Ole Bull and his son came in. 
 Ole was like a sunny apparition and stayed but a mo 
 ment. He proposes to return to-morrow, however, to 
 breakfast. He was eager to tell us of a young Norwe 
 gian poet, Bjornson, thirty years old only, a man sure to 
 be famous, who has written many beautiful things, among 
 others a poem called The Merry Boy. Mr. Fields asked 
 him which was his favorite audience. The Norwegians 
 of my native town, was his immediate reply. His pan 
 tomime is extraordinary. He half acted, half told how 
 men, women, and children gathered about him there 
 when he was to play, and how he drew his themes from 
 subjects and objects familiar to him from childhood. He 
 was never more exquisitely expressive, nor his handsome 
 little son more appreciative. . . . One night, after play 
 ing in the Music Hall to an enormous audience, Ole Bull 
 gave us the pleasure of his presence at supper. He 
 talked much of his scheme for a new piano, which was 
 absorbing him. The idea was betrayed to you by your 
 violin, said L. 4 Yes, responded Ole, delightedly, with 
 that long dwelling upon the short word of assent pecul 
 iar to him. He described the various qualities of the 
 4 Amati, the Stradivarius and other violins. 4 How 
 about strings, one asked. Oh ! there is a great differ 
 ence even in strings, said he, your muttons must not be 
 too civilized. 
 
 " In a letter to Mr. Fields describing his new piano, he 
 says : 4 Ericsson has been extremely kind in taking a 
 lively interest in the instrument from the drawing only. 
 He proposes to study the instrument after a hearing, and 
 
130 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 thinks he can reduce the weight of it by more than half 
 by compensation and change of material, and counteract 
 the sudden changes of temperature, etc. ... I do love 
 you so much that I know you would be glad on my ac 
 count that such a reward should be mine after so many dis 
 appointments and failures. But if this also should prove 
 a disappointment, well, we must stand on the fulcrum and 
 try to move the world. In coming to Boston I 11 try to 
 
 induce Professor to come to the meeting surely, and 
 
 illustrate my theories with some instruments from his 
 laboratory. With my violin I shall explain the tone 
 phases, the construction of musical instruments in gen 
 eral, beginning with the history of the violin, the es 
 sence and harmony of musical expressions. I do feel so 
 grateful to you to have obtained for me the honor and 
 delight in laying before the society my individual con 
 victions in music. . . . 
 
 " Your ever devoted, OLE BULL." 
 
 In 1871 I find another record of a visit from 
 Ole Bull accompanied by his young wife. He was 
 like a fine strain of poetry. In rather more charm 
 ing English than usual, if possible, he described 
 their beautiful home in Norway and his violin, 
 "vo," he says, meaning who, "is seek." 
 
 This casual mention of Ole Bull, giving no hint 
 of his beautiful poetic presence, would indeed be 
 omitted as utterly unworthy if it were not that 
 Mr. Fields himself wrote a few words in remem 
 brance of his friend, which are to be printed in 
 " Ole Bull s Life/ now in preparation. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 131 
 
 I wish it were possible in few words to convey 
 the refinement and charm of Ole Bull s presence 
 to those who have not known him. The childlike- 
 ness of his nature was admirable, and endured to 
 the end. It was not necessary when he was to 
 give his friends the favor of a visit to suggest that 
 he should bring his violin. He never failed to re 
 member that he could find his fullest expression 
 through that medium, and when the proper mo 
 ment arrived was always ready to contribute his 
 large share to the pleasure of the time. There 
 was a generosity about bestowing himself in pri 
 vate for others which was delightful. He was 
 proud to give what he possessed. His friends can 
 not forget his manner of going and standing with 
 his violin in one corner of the library with his lit 
 tle audience at sufficient distance, when drawing 
 up his fine figure to its full height and throwing 
 back his head he would stand silent until he was 
 prompted to begin ; it was a picture not to fade 
 from the memory ; or when exciting himself over 
 his subject he would stop suddenly and explain in 
 a torrent of words and with dramatic gestures 
 what he wished to convey. 
 
 It was one of the valued privileges of Mr. 
 Fields s life to know George Putnam, the Uni 
 tarian preacher, and to listen to his discourses. 
 Frequently on Sunday, when the weather per- 
 
132 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 mitted, he would walk out of town to hear him. 
 I find in the diary : 
 
 " Sunday. Walked to Roxbury to hear Dr. Putnam. 
 The discourse was upon the love between brothers and 
 sisters, and of Jesus as our elder brother. Anything 
 more tender or more simple can hardly be imag 
 ined. 
 
 Again, 
 
 " Walked to Roxbury, and heard Dr. Putnam give 
 one of his clear, strong pleas. His style is simplicity 
 itself." 
 
 " Heard Dr. Putnam yesterday on the advent of 
 Christ, the state of living expectantly which should 
 possess the true followers. A moving discourse." . . . 
 
 " Such a sermon from Dr. Putnam ! On worldly and 
 unworldly gifts ; first, of the gifts our Lord has bestowed 
 upon us by His teaching, and second, of the gifts that all 
 the good and wise of the earth may give to men. It 
 was a most uplifting discourse. The preacher, indeed, 
 possesses the power given to the apostles of old to teach 
 and to preach. 
 
 " In speaking of the presence of our Lord at the feast, 
 Dr. Putnam said last Sunday, He rewarded the hospi 
 tality of his friends by his presence. 
 
 " Sunday. Perfect day ; walked to Roxbury. Dr. 
 Putnam preached one of his noble discourses touching, 
 heroic, yet so reticent ! . . . The text was from St. Paul, 
 4 Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a 
 cloud of witnesses. The encompassing cloud of wit 
 nesses urging us to new struggles and farther heights 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 133 
 
 had been seen by him in clear, spiritual vision. He 
 could tell us of them; of the heroic and the lovely; of 
 our own dear ones ; how they were standing and calling 
 to us, surrounding and inciting us. 
 
 " He rose to a height of eloquence of which he him 
 self was totally unconscious. He had been listening to 
 his beloved, who have gone before, and they had taught 
 him what he should speak. He recalled the noble 
 verse : 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 Footprints on the sands of time. 
 
 He said our witnesses not alone regard but report our 
 ways, and teach us distinctly the one lesson that we 
 should live uprightly, dutifully, kindly, humbly ; for our 
 days are few ; and what can any worldly good avail if 
 we forget to listen to the loving ones who beckon us to 
 come their way ? " 
 
 It was often a part of Monday s relaxation for 
 Dr. Putnam to go into the book-shop, and, when it 
 was possible, to find the publisher in his corner and 
 exchange a few words at least. One day, after 
 the removal of Fields, Osgood & Co. to Tremont 
 Street, he looked in, and, after a bit of personal 
 talk, said : " Well, I suppose you anticipate a good 
 many pleasant days to come in this place." " No," 
 said Mr. Fields, " I don t, doctor. I don t look 
 forward to anything." "That s right," was the 
 reply. "Sufficient unto the day is the good there 
 of." 
 
134 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Many a pleasant talk have these two enjoyed 
 among the books. Dr. Putnam was an appreciator 
 of a first-rate novel, and I especially recall his en 
 thusiasm over Mrs. Gaskell s beautiful tales of 
 "Mary Barton" and "North and South." 
 
 They both seemed to " take comfort " in each 
 other s friendship and society. 
 
 Of Mr. Fields s intimate friendship and corre 
 spondence with Bayard Taylor little or nothing can 
 be reproduced in these pages. They exchanged 
 many letters during the long period of their happy 
 relation to each other, a relation which was never 
 broken ; but in view of the record of Bayard Tay 
 lor s life, soon to be given to the public, and the 
 late publication of Mr. Fields s own selection from 
 Taylor s letters lately printed in the " Congrega- 
 tionalist," I will attempt to give nothing further 
 here. 
 
 Nevertheless, the remembrance of many a pleas 
 ant social occasion recurs, especially during the 
 season when his lectures upon German literature 
 were given at the Lowell Institute. He had then 
 finished his latest work, " Deukalion," and his 
 mind and heart were filled with it. 
 
 His memory was not only a repository of litera 
 ture, properly speaking, but of the freaks of liter 
 ature, and it was as astonishing as it was amusing 
 to hear the long passages he would repeat from 
 Chivers and other eccentric authors. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 135 
 
 His tender feelings for his friends, and his boy 
 ish ways with them, were peculiarly his own. His 
 visits to Boston were a festival to him, and to 
 them his coming was the signal for many a mid 
 night talk and much wholesome festivity. 
 
 The brief record which remains in the- diary of 
 the years from 1861 to 1876 will be henceforth 
 given almost without interruption. 
 
 " BOSTON, Sunday, December 8, 1861. At home all 
 day, except a walk at noon over Cambridge bridge. The 
 climate reminds us of Rome. It is almost too warm for 
 fires until now as evening approaches. The morning rays 
 came through a veil of soft gray mist which allowed the 
 wings of the birds and the sails of the vessels (the latter 
 like birds of larger growth) to gleam white as silver, 
 and the whole bay looked for a few hours like a faded 
 opal. At noon the sun poured out its warm, full rays, 
 making it hard to guess if this were home or Italy. Some 
 young and handsome boatmen darted under the bridge in 
 their wherries as we returned. They were bound for a 
 pull into the white waves of the. harbor. Before the walk 
 read aloud, One Word More with E. B. B., one of the 
 most extraordinary poems in the language. We are read 
 ing Wordsworth s Life and Letters. . . . 
 
 " Yesterday morning Artemus Ward breakfasted with 
 us. We had a merry time. J. was in grand humor, 
 representing people and incidents in the most incompar 
 able manner. Artemus was complimented upon his suc 
 cess, and his power of amusing others. He said little 
 but twinkled all over. Once, however, when asked how 
 
136 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 he was received by his very first audiences before they 
 understood what he had to give them, he said : I was 
 prepared for a good deal of gloom, but I had no idea 
 they would be so much depressed ! . . . 
 
 " December, 1863. Mr. Hawthorne passed the night. 
 He has already written the first chapter of a new ro 
 mance, but he was so uncertain of what he had done as to 
 find it impossible to continue until he asked Mr. Fields 
 to read it and heard him express his sincere admiration 
 for the work. This has given him better heart to go on 
 with it. He talked of the Atlantic Monthly, said he 
 thought it the most ably edited magazine in the world, 
 and was bound to be a success, with this exception, he 
 said, I fear its politics. Beware ! What will you do in 
 a year or two when the politics of the country change ? 
 4 1 will quietly wait for that time to come, Mr. Fields 
 Answered, then I can tell you. . . . Talked and laughed 
 about Boswell, to whom Hawthorne accords a very high 
 place, and Mr. Fields recalled Johnson s saying of a man 
 who had committed some misdemeanor, and was on the 
 verge of suicide in consequence, 4 Why doesn t the man 
 go somewhere where he is not known, instead of to the 
 devil, where he is known ? Speaking of the * Atlantic 
 Monthly, Mr. Fields said the magazine profited by hav 
 ing the best living proof-reader. He is so interested in 
 its success that I always say, No N , no Fields. 
 
 " January, 1864. J. T. F. passed yesterday in Con 
 cord. He went first to see Hawthorne, who was sitting 
 alone gazing into the fire ; his gray dressing-gown, which 
 became him like a Roman toga, wrapped about his figure. 
 He said he had done nothing for three weeks, but of 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 137 
 
 course his romance is maturing in his mind. and 
 
 had sent word they were coming to call, so Mrs. 
 
 Hawthorne had gone out to walk ( thrown out on picket- 
 duty, said), leaving word at home that Mr. Haw 
 thorne was ill, and could see no one." . . . 
 
 " Sunday, October 23, came news of Colonel Charles 
 R. Lowell s death." 
 
 " November, 1865. Governor Parsons, of Alabama, 
 lunched with us. He has sad stories to tell us of the suf 
 fering and destitution of the South, especially of his own 
 State. He has seen cities laid waste and burned to the 
 ground, with books and pictures, and every precious relic 
 a home can contain. In Sherman s 4 March, the town 
 of Selma, forty miles south of his residence, was burned 
 in that way, and the suffering of the inhabitants was 
 terrible to behold. We know nothing of the horrors of 
 war in New England, he says ; and when we look in his 
 face, and hear his pathetic tales, I am persuaded that 
 many of our people do escape a sense of this terrible 
 calamity. He is a sad man. He comes here for the 
 purpose of urging Massachusetts to forgiveness, and to 
 send help to the sufferers. . . . He went last night to 
 the Union Club, where Governor Andrew introduced 
 him, and pleaded his cause. Charles Sumner spoke 
 against it. ... Governor Parsons has a negro slave 
 whom he purchased for his body-servant thirty years 
 ago. When there were no more slaves he paid him reg 
 ular wages. Then other people came and offered him 
 much higher wages than he was able to pay, but the old 
 servant said : 4 No, Massa Parsons lubs me, and I lub 
 him, and we shan t separate now. 
 
138 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " November, 1865. There is talk of establishing 
 another business house in New York, large enough to 
 represent Ticknor and Fields. It is an enormous ship 
 already, and must be watched momently by the man at 
 the helm, or she will drive upon the rocks. 
 
 " BOSTON, July, 1866. Just returned from Berkshire. 
 Glad to be at home again, where we can see the sunset 
 over the bay, and feel the fresh morning breeze. Almost 
 every day something delightful occurs ; but the pleasant- 
 est of all occurrences is when the day rises and sets with 
 nothing to break the stillness of midsummer. . . . 
 
 " August. Left for the Isles of Shoals. On our way 
 we heard of the success of the Ocean cable. What glo 
 rious reward to Cyrus Field after eight years of delay 
 and disappointment. Peace in Europe, reported as 
 the first message. . . . The day was fair, the shores of 
 the Piscataqua gleaming with white houses, waving trees, 
 pleasure boats, and all the gay surroundings of human 
 life in harmony with nature. Reaching the islands we 
 followed the troop of people over a plank walk to an 
 over-crowded hotel, and bided our time. After dinner, 
 having seen our fellow-passengers safely reembarked for 
 Portsmouth, we started to explore the island, walking 
 over the bleached rocks, and threading our way through 
 bayberry. Dark clouds rolled up fold over fold from 
 the north, summer s loveliness reigned in the south, and 
 all around the rote of the never silent sea came up from 
 the cliffs which hedged us in. Everywhere, if grass were 
 found, we set our feet on graves ; if stones, they were 
 white-bearded like Tithonus. We peeped in clefts and 
 crannies where the sea reached up awful fingers and 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 139 
 
 shook them in the face of the intruder. There was no 
 wind, only a brooding sadness overspread the scene. 
 Something of the dread of the place came over us, a 
 knowledge of the dreariness of winter and the loneliness 
 of life when the busy crowd had been swept away by the 
 breath of autumn. By and by, returning to the hotel, 
 the cheerful look of the place was pleasant young girls 
 darting to and fro from the bath to their rooms, or walk 
 ing on the piazza with their elders, or playing croquet, 
 watched by gentlemen on the balcony. We walked to 
 the cottage and lingered in the garden brilliant with 
 marigolds, nasturtiums, coreopsis, and fragrant with 
 mignonette ; it was full of wild birds too, besides a par 
 rot and two canaries, in cages, hanging in the porch. 
 Sitting by the window was a large gray-haired woman 
 wrapped in a white shawl. She was like the full pale 
 summer moon, so calm, and fair, and sweet. There she 
 sat lovingly watched over by her daughter, a constantly 
 redeeming presence. 
 
 " Inside the little parlor was gay with pictures and 
 flowers. Among the latter a crowd of glowing poppies. 
 As we bent over them a pleasant voice sang the old 
 song Poppies ! Poppies ! Poppies like these I own are 
 rare ! 
 
 " There was a drift-wood fire that night and there 
 were ghost stories, and voices were heard far into the 
 night. 
 
 "Meantime, in the pauses, the sound of the sea came 
 from every side and we knew its awful vast stretched 
 between us and home. 
 
 " The morning was resplendent. We were soon in a 
 
140 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 boat bound for Star Island. The place was very still in 
 the sunshine of the day. The fishers were gone to sea, 
 the women were at their household duties. We passed 
 through their yards and over their walls seeing only a 
 woman occasionally at door or window, whom our dear 
 guide, C. T., would accost with fc Good-morning, Susan, 
 or, 4 Are you well, Sarah? as if they were members of 
 her family. There are only about fifty families left of 
 the old town of Gosport. It was comparatively a large 
 place in the days when Spain carried her commerce 
 hither for the dun fish, which was then beautifully cured 
 by these people. At present they have nearly lost the 
 art, for they have lost the art of taking pains. We 
 crossed Star Island, picking our way among the graves, 
 or stepping from fallen stone to stone, to the wild cliffs 
 and chasms on the opposite side. How wild and desolate 
 it was, even in the summer sunshine ! Then we rowed 
 to Smutty-Nose, where our guide passed two years of 
 her childhood before the building of the light-house. 
 The story was not new to us, but the utter desolation of 
 the place, in spite of the song-sparrow and the sunshine, 
 the pimpernel, cinquefoil, morning-glory, and all the love 
 liness of summer, could not be forgotten. We heard the 
 howling of the winter wind and saw the Spanish vessel 
 on the rocks. . . . Rowed round White Island, but the 
 sea was too high to land. . . . 
 
 " October, 1866. Mr. Fields received to-day the most 
 extraordinary letter of all the many strange ones it has 
 been his fortune to have addressed to him. It is from an 
 English woman well born and well educated. She is 
 now in this country, however, and called upon him last 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 141 
 
 week. This letter is so long that although clearly writ 
 ten it required upwards of half an hour to read it aloud. 
 She gave her personal history unblushingly, and if one 
 half be true she has had as wide a run in the best society 
 of Europe and puts as high a value upon it as any woman 
 ever did. She estimates her own talents very highly, too. 
 While reading our feelings oscillated between wonder 
 and pity. . . . 
 
 "He has also received an autograph book from a man 
 who left the volume himself with a polite request 4 for 
 Mr. Fields s autograph. The book was very handsome, 
 French, richly bound, and contained many good signa 
 tures and letters. In a few days the owner returned to 
 get his book, left his thanks for the autograph, and said 
 any time Mr. Fields wished his hair cut he was the man 
 and would come to his house at any moment to do it! ... 
 
 u Mr. Fields has found new papers, never collected, in 
 Fraser s magazine, by Thackeray. He is making a book 
 of them." 
 
 Mr. George William Curtis, with a kindness sure 
 as his literary touch, wrote after this publication : 
 " What a pleasant book you have made of Thack 
 eray s dropped stitches ! It is really a new work 
 by him. It is like finding a lost portfolio of a 
 great painter s sketches. They have all his man 
 ner. If the fruit is small it is none the less a 
 Seckel." 
 
 " Ah ! We saw Ristori last night, She was full of 
 dignity and pathos. J. T. F. says she was Queen Mary 
 and he will never be present at an execution again ! . . . 
 
142 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "January, 1867. A volume of Pope was sent to 
 Mr. Fields to-day formerly owned by President Lincoln. 
 The name, and a letter in the handwriting of our great 
 president, are inscribed within. 
 
 " Bayard Taylor has sent us a picture in oils, by him 
 self, of the Temple of Apollo Epicurius, also one of the 
 ruins of Mantinea for T. B. A. So we had a grand open 
 ing last evening. Seeing these recalled what Bayard 
 
 said of his little , now seven years old. She has a 
 
 fondness for Greek history and was found the other day 
 charging vigorously into the woodpile ; when her mother 
 asked what she was doing, she said she was an Athenian 
 pursuing the Lacedemonians. So much for being born 
 in Greece ! 
 
 " Professor Felton s lectures on Greece are now in type. 
 J. T. F. is delighted with them, and has already finished 
 the first volume, though they only came from the printer 
 last night ! . . . 
 
 " Very large meeting at the Union Club last night. 
 The question whether the House should be kept open Sun 
 days or no was proposed for discussion. Every room was 
 open and filled. Governor Andrew made an excellent 
 speech, full of his fine humanity, which is so sure to 
 carry the majority over to his side. He proposed that 
 the House should be open with restrictions, a few rooms, 
 and no liquor. 
 
 " The question of sending aid to Crete was also brought 
 up. ... 
 
 " Thursday. Willis was buried at St. Paul s Church. 
 A gracious circle of poets surrounded the body. 
 
 " February, Wednesday. Called on Miss Catherine 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 143 
 
 Sedgwick, who, although the shadow of many a year 
 hangs over her, sits by her fireside talking wittily and 
 wisely. Her presence and conversation are wonderfully 
 attractive. She has the power of expressing tenderest 
 sentiment, yet so relieved by a keen wit, that you are 
 cheered and never offended by the quick contrast." 
 
 " PLYMOUTH, N. H., June^ 1867. This place is now 
 always associated with Hawthorne. Yesterday, sitting 
 in the lustrous loveliness of summer, our thoughts were 
 filled with his memory, when the mail arrived, bringing 
 extracts from his diary. We read them together, with 
 keen enjoyment ; looking up to the hills, meanwhile, ra 
 diant in sun and shadow. Suddenly we heard the sound 
 of martial music : it was a public funeral ; the effect was 
 very solemn and inspiring. One of the responsible per 
 sons connected with the house said he assisted Mr. Haw 
 thorne to his room that night, the one adjoining that of 
 General Pierce, and that Hawthorne passed from sleep 
 in life to the sleep of death with so easy a transition that 
 his posture was unchanged, and the flight of his spirit 
 only discovered when his friend placed his hand upon 
 him lovingly, in one of the wakeful pauses of the night, 
 and found his body cold. The distress of General Pierce 
 was indescribable, the narrator said, and indeed, sir, if 
 one didn t know anything about his politics, it would be 
 said of him that he was one of the best of men. There 
 is nobody who comes to this house of more uniform and 
 unfailing gentlemanliness than he. 
 
 " CAMPTON, Monday. Rose at half-past four, break 
 fasted at half-past five. Mr. Fields went to Boston. 
 . . . The night shut down heavily." 
 
144 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Tuesday. Still warm and raining. About three 
 o clock in the morning is the time now to hear the birds, 
 They clamor wondrously then. Rain, rain, the livelong 
 day, with now and then a pause of perfect stillness, with 
 out bird or breath of wind, and then the rain again 
 patter, patter, through the leaves. Watched for my 
 traveler at night from half-past seven until nine o clock. 
 At length he arrived, wet and tired. The horse found 
 the roads heavy, and they came slowly. He met two 
 men in the cars who had been to see Booth in Hamlet. 
 4 1 tell you, said the youngest, you have to read that 
 play to see what he is talking about. You d better read 
 it the first chance you get. You 11 understand it a deal 
 better then. Well, rejoined the other, i I like to see 
 him in " Hamlet." I always see him in that play. Why, 
 I ve seen it THKEE times. I tried " Richard the Third " 
 once, but somehow it didn t seem natural, so I went back 
 to " Hamlet." ; They continued to recount stories of the 
 stage of more than doubtful authenticity. At last, one 
 asked the other if he had ever seen the elder Booth. 
 4 No, was the reply ; i but I ve heerd that he acted 
 "Richard Third" so true, that they would get up and 
 hiss, not him, you see, but the wicked man he made 
 b lieve to be. " 
 
 . . . " Drove over what is called the New Discovery 
 Road, though it is years since the gap was discovered be 
 tween the hills opening the way to Centre Harbor. We 
 are fifteen hundred feet above the sea, while passing a 
 portion of the road. The hills rise stern and bleak around. 
 Two lakes lie embowered in green at the foot of Mount 
 Prospect, and the whole effect is mountainous rather 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 145 
 
 than hilly. In our ascent we met several children, all 
 perfectly untamed, as if they never had seen a stranger 
 before. One witch-like little thing, a half-fledged Madge 
 Wildfire, came careering over the top of the hill on her 
 way from school, swinging her arms and kicking up her 
 legs. Suddenly she caught sight of us proceeding slowly 
 in our wagon, and, penetrated with fear, crept like a calf 
 to the side of the road among the bushes. There she 
 stood trembling, though somewhat reassured by our 
 voices, but the moment we were sufficiently advanced to 
 give her a chance, she went flying off down the road as 
 if distracted. Afterward we saw a little girl about ten 
 years old with two older boys. The valiant youths hid 
 themselves behind their sister, who disdained to appear 
 alarmed, though her eyes looked startled. The wildness 
 of the scenery could not give us such a sense of savage 
 solitude as these children did. . . . The day was so beau 
 tiful, that we lingered till the light faded and the stars 
 appeared." 
 
 " PLYMOUTH, June 21st. We sit where we can drink 
 in the beauty of the river and the hills, and J. has read 
 aloud to me nearly the whole day. From our window 
 we see the river winding through the wide interval until 
 it becomes lost among the hills. We have seen few 
 places in the world so beautiful. He astonished me in 
 our walk this morning by going up to an old farm-house 
 and declaring that was exactly what he wanted, and he 
 meant to have it and live here six months in the 
 year. . . ." 
 
 " BOSTON, July. Mr. Fields had a very busy day. 
 
 Receiving perpetually, everybody, from to the drunk- 
 
 10 
 
146 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 ard, who insisted upon following him home. Indeed, he 
 forgot his promise to dine out. I was obliged to go with 
 out him, trusting he would finally remember, which he 
 did, three quarters of an hour after the time." 
 
 " Our beloved neighbors came to inquire after his 
 hand, which is lame, an affection of the nerves which 
 prevents him from writing. . . . 
 
 "August. MancJiester-by-the-Sea. Walked to the Dana 
 Place ; found Mr. Dana, Senior, sitting on the piazza as 
 we approached T two or three fluttering dresses could be 
 seen on the beach below and a child at play. Mr. Dana 
 is anticipating his eightieth birthday. His white hair 
 and slender figure are so combined with perfect vitality 
 of expression as to prevent any thought of decadence in 
 connection with his great age. It was a beautiful day, 
 and the scene was one of loveliness and significance. 
 The memory of Allston, the painter, who married a sis 
 ter of Mr. Dana, is tenderly guarded in his household, 
 and chairs from his studio, standing on the piazza, in 
 vited us to rest. Just at sunset, with the moonlight in 
 the sky, we wandered through the woods. It was wild 
 and dim. Returning we came out upon the lawn ; the 
 house-door stood open, the sunset streamed across, and 
 young girls were moving about in gay dresses. 
 
 u Standing in the hall door the full view of the sea 
 and its sad perpetual music from the sands below struck 
 upon the eye and ear. Children were swinging in a 
 hammock under the low pines on the edge of the cliff. 
 Here we sat, while Mr. Dana told us how he and his 
 daughter discovered this beautiful domain, and through 
 what difficulties they had established their home in this 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. . 147 
 
 wonderful wilderness. But he chiefly loved to talk of 
 subjects such as poets choose : 
 
 "Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books, we know, 
 Are a substantial world both pure and good; 
 Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 
 Our pastime and our happiness will grow. 
 There do I find a never-failing store 
 Of personal themes ; . . . 
 Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I 
 Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought; 
 And thus from day to day my little boat 
 Rocks in its harbor, lodging peaceably." 
 
 I venture to print here two notes from Mr. 
 Dana, as giving some idea not only of his own 
 tastes but of his relations to Mr. Fields : 
 
 " DEAR MR. FIELDS, While your proposal gratifies 
 me it also troubles me, for I feel that I must decline it, 
 and that looks somewhat ungracious. That you should 
 have thought of one who for a long while has been al 
 most a stranger to literary circles, gives you a claim. 
 Above all, the fast friend of many years, who spoke so 
 many kind and bold words for me when I most needed 
 them what have I to say in not making him a trifling 
 return ? Nothing, but that I have been so long a mere 
 idle recipient of the good things of others, that I have 
 nothing of my own to give. I do not feel at the present 
 time as if I would do justice to B., or satisfy myself. It 
 is a special relief to my conscience that there are those 
 of your acquaintance who truly appreciate him, and 
 would do the thing thoroughly and well. You speak of 
 Thanatopsis, you remember k The Past. It just occurs 
 
148 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 to me that years back I said to B., 4 Could only one of 
 your pieces be saved, short as it is, still, I should select 
 4 The Past. 4 So would I, he answered. < Yet I have 
 never seen it alluded to in notices of me. It has been 
 spoken of since that time. 
 
 " Very sincerely yours, 
 
 "RICHARD H. DANA. 
 
 "43 CHESTNUT ST., Nov. 27, 1863." 
 
 44 MY DEAR SIR, Pardon my keeping Christopher 
 so long. Was he not a man ? Oh, large, brave heart, 
 yet tender as a child ! But no letter-writer ! What a 
 pity that the bulk of the work should have been so in 
 creased by letters which are little else than so much dead 
 weight, scarce half a dozen of them worth the paper. 
 Aside from these, there is a fresh air blowing upon us 
 from out the spirit of the man, which seems to breathe 
 over and through us something of his rejoicing health 
 and strength. With great regard, 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 "RICHARD H. DANA. 
 
 " 43 CHESTNUT ST., Nov. 24. 
 " MR. J. T. FIELDS, Charles St." 
 
 " August, 1867. Charles Dickens s agent arrived to 
 make arrangements for his last visit to this country. 
 The description of Mr. Fields given him by the Chief 
 was so accurate that he was recognized immediately. 
 
 44 September. Mr. Fields gave me an account of his 
 interview, to day, with Orestes Brownson, now a man of 
 seventy years. After studying theology he followed its 
 suggestions in many different directions, espousing each 
 form of doctrine in turn as the only true religion. At 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 149 
 
 length, when by the independent action of his mind he 
 believed he had foniid the rest he sought in Romanism, 
 the stigma of frivolity was cast upon him. . . . He has 
 been chosen by Admiral Dahlgren and his wife to edit 
 the life of their son, the heroic Ulric Dahlgren. They 
 had prepared the book, but found they were in need of 
 a literary adviser. After some conversation upon the 
 subject, Mr. Brownson said the suffering of the Dahlgrens 
 was not exceptional : he had himself lost one son in the 
 war, and another was maimed for life. He said his mother 
 had only lately died, at ninety years of age. In the year 
 1861, her health being already enfeebled, she called her 
 son to her bedside and said, c What is this I hear, Orestes ; 
 what is this trouble at the South ? They are trying to 
 destroy the Union, mother, and there must be a great 
 war. Well, my son, what are you going to do about 
 it ? What can one man do, mother? Do, why you 
 must go to the war, you and your sons ! 
 
 " Eight of her grandsons were lost in the war : six 
 died, two deserted. She said the suffering caused her 
 by the last two was greater than that of the death of 
 the others. She was born on the day of Washington s 
 thanksgiving after the war of the Revolution. She 
 thought she should live to see the day of Lincoln s 
 thanksgiving, and so she did. She died the following 
 week. 
 
 " Tuesday. MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA. Mr. Fields 
 had a busy day in town. Mrs. Hawthorne brought him 
 fourteen closely written volumes of her husband s jour 
 nal, so fine as to be difficult to read, though written 
 quite plainly and entirely without corrections. Such ac- 
 
150 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 curate notes of observation and such strange records of 
 interesting people and places, have been rarely before 
 made. There are also piles on piles of romances begun 
 but never finished, chapters here and there of exquis 
 ite beauty, but nothing completed. . . . 
 
 " Among other strange persons who called to-day is 
 the poor man who was cast away in the steamer London, 
 bound for Australia, and whose heart-rending description 
 we read in the 4 Cornhill Magazine. He is young, and 
 has a fine business in Australia ; but says he can never go 
 to sea again. He is anxious to have Mr. Fields print 
 that portion of the history omitted by the Cornhill, in 
 which he explains why the accident took place and where 
 the accusation should rest. Mr. Fields advised him to 
 wait, because the young man was pecuniarily involved, 
 until the case should come before the court, as it must do 
 shortly. . . . 
 
 44 BOSTON, September. Before breakfast he wrote let 
 ters from dictation on account of his lame hand. Among 
 
 them letters of introduction for Mr. to American 
 
 colleges. told us of Mrs. Carlyle s fondness for 
 
 flowers. After her death Carlyle showed him plants, as 
 they walked in the garden from Farringford and Evers- 
 ley. He said, as Miss Gush man had said before him, 
 she was cleverer than Carlyle. Why she never wrote 
 I cannot divine, said . 
 
 " Mr. Fields told me to-day an anecdote he loves to 
 recall of Willis (it may have appeared in print some 
 where), of his watching a little ragged girl one day in 
 London, who was peering through an area railing. A 
 window of a comfortable eating-house gave upon this 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 151 
 
 area, and a man sat at the window taking a good dinner. 
 The child watched his every movement, saw him take a 
 beefsteak and get all things in readiness to begin, then 
 he stopped and looked round. Now a pertaty, mur 
 mured the child. . . . 
 
 " Governor Andrew came in the evening. He said 
 the Rebel General Jeff. Thompson was coming to his 
 house and would we adjourn thither. Of course we said 
 4 Yes, and a strange evening we had. Thompson talked 
 without let or hindrance. A lank, bony man, with sin 
 ews like steel, eye like a hawk, mouth thin and flat as a 
 fish s, high cheek-bones, feet out of shape, from his hard 
 marches probably, his legs twisted one over the other as 
 he talked. Waal, I 11 jest tell ye how t was. I was 
 the man that bought the rope to hang John Brown. 
 
 " We ve been awfully whipped though, and our only 
 safety is in reconstruction. His speech photographed 
 the various scenes he had been through. He swore con 
 tinually, and ended by giving us an Indian dance. Jeff. 
 Thompson had been a guerilla chief, or as he himself 
 phrased it, had four thousand men under his command, 
 who reported to no man but himself. One of his aids 
 was a wild Indian, who brought him a prisoner one day 
 who refused to surrender his sword. Surrender, cried 
 Jeff, in a terrible rage, or my Indian shall scalp you. 
 The man still demurring, Jeff, ordered the Indian to set 
 upon him. He began with a kind of wild howl, dancing 
 around his victim, and flourishing his tomahawk. In 
 another moment the man would have lost his scalp had 
 not fear caused him to succumb. The whole picture was 
 given with terrible vividness. We came home shudder- 
 ing." 
 
152 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "November 1st. Governor Andrew lies dead. Since 
 the death of President Lincoln no man can be so great a 
 loss to the country. To us, as neighbors and friends, the 
 loss is doubled, for he failed in none of the hospitalities 
 of daily life. He was benevolent and accessible always, 
 and as charitable a man, in the largest sense of the word, 
 as ever walked the earth. When Ole Bull s son was 
 quite a child, he said to Mr. Fields one day in broken 
 language, stopping short as they walked across the Com 
 mon, fc Mr. Fields, you must thank God for your disposi 
 tion. Surely, we might say this also of Governor An 
 drew." 
 
 " November *2.d. Funeral of this great good man ! 
 The sun shone through a veil of autumnal mist, as we 
 walked across the Public Garden to the church, and the 
 trees shook their last gold leaves pensively in the blue 
 air. It was a lovely season, and tempered like the na 
 ture of the friend we had lost. Agassiz joined us, and 
 we proceeded together to the church. Nothing could 
 have been more fitting and inspiring than Mr. Clarke s 
 service and tribute." 
 
 " November 4th. Great meeting of merchants to con 
 solidate the fund as a memorial of Governor Andrew. 
 Mr. Fields put down one thousand dollars for Ticknor 
 and Fields. It was an eloquent and deeply enthusiastic 
 occasion." 
 
 "November 19A. Dickens reached Boston yesterday. 
 J. T. F. went down the harbor to meet him. He was in 
 grand health and spirits. The night was glorious, and 
 Dickens seemed impressed with its sublime clearness and 
 beauty. " 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 153 
 
 " November 27th. They have fallen into a daily habit 
 of walking together, and J. comes home filled with C. 
 D. s inexhaustible Mnd most interesting talk." 
 
 " November "29th. They dined alone together to-day, 
 and sat four hours, amusing each other with endless 
 characteristic representations. Mr. Fields gave his pic 
 ture of the chimney-sweep, and Dickens in his turn 
 gave the poet Rogers to the life, and Lady Blessington s 
 receptions, to which I thought it was the thing to 
 go when I was a young man, also an excellent descrip 
 tion of Mr. and Mrs. Lewes. The latter he finds most 
 interesting with her shy manner of saying brilliant 
 things. . . . He talked of the mistake it was to fancy 
 that childhood forgot anything ; it is age that forgets. 
 
 "He spoke of Mr. Fioude, saying, he is a brave 
 man, and with most cordial liking both for him and his 
 works. . . . He repeated the story of his having burned 
 all the letters of Sydney Smith when his daughter, Lady 
 Holland, applied for permission to print them, and with 
 these letters all his own private correspondence. For I 
 thought if I should meet Sydney Smith in the Shades, 
 and he should say, " what have you done with those let 
 ters " a significant shrug expressed the rest, though 
 
 he added immediately, Perhaps he would have said, 
 " You should have brought them with you where they 
 would crackle well." 
 
 " Monday night. Charles Dickens s first reading. The 
 audience seemed one vast ear and eye; the people sat 
 fixed and speechless. Every one seemed drawn to that 
 great sympathetic nature, and as if they longed in some 
 peculiar way to give him their confidence ! And how in 
 the anteroom afterward he and his friend embraced and 
 
154 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 laughed, and then embraced again from the very excite 
 ment of the occasion ! 
 
 " Tuesday. The reading was quite as wonderful but 
 quieter in its character. We went, as usual, at his re 
 quest, to speak with him after it was ended. He was in 
 good spirits but very tired. 4 You can t think, he said, 
 4 what resolution it requires to dress again after it is 
 over ! 
 
 " Monday, December 9. First reading in New York. 
 The Carol was far better given than in Boston, be 
 cause the applause was more ready and stimulated the 
 reader. Indeed the enthusiasm was rapturous. Dickens 
 sent to request us to come to his room. He was much 
 exhausted, but after taking food, his warmth and vigor 
 returned. 
 
 " Wednesday. At four o clock Dickens came to dine, 
 later we went together to the theatre, and afterward 
 back to the hotel, where we sat talking until one o clock. 
 Every moment was full of vivid interest. In speaking 
 of that great railway accident described in All the Year 
 Round, he mentioned the curious fact of his chronometer 
 watch, perfect up to that moment, becoming subject to 
 eccentricities, yet this was rather as an illustration of the 
 subtle effect the accident had upon him than remarkable 
 in itself. The play that night was really very dull, and 
 he sat talking, but with such care in managing voice and 
 gesture that only a keen observer would have discovered 
 he was inattentive to the stage. After our return he 
 laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks at the mem 
 ory of the laughter he had seen in the faces of his own 
 audience the night before, representing the different 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 155 
 
 phases of character and the different effect of laughter on 
 each. Speaking of Fechter he said: If he were a writer 
 how marvelous his powers of representation would be ! 
 I who for so many years have been studying the best 
 way of putting things have often felt utterly amazed and 
 distanced by him. At the ballet Dickens observed the 
 honest faces of the women, and became much interested 
 in one of them who seemed to have lost something, per 
 haps a trinket, and who wept as she danced. Poor child ! 
 Her tears only made her eyes shine the brighter to pit 
 and gallery ! . . . 
 
 " Last night of the first course of readings in New 
 York. Dickens was delighted with his audience : As 
 good as Paris, he said, when he invited us into his room 
 afterward. 
 
 " BOSTON, Christmas Eve. Dickens came to dine and 
 talked all the time as he will do when the moment comes 
 that he sees it is expected. He is by no means a man 
 who loves to talk. His dramatic touches are peculiarly 
 his own, but are of course more difficult to recall even 
 than his words. Describing a little incident which hap 
 pened while in New York, and seeing some doubt of its 
 verity on the faces of his friends, he said ruefully : I 
 assure you it is so ! And all I can say is, how astonishing 
 it is that I should be perpetually having things happen 
 to me with regard to people that nobody else in the 
 world can be found to believe. . . . Went to hear The 
 Carol. How beautiful it was ! The whole house rose 
 and cheered ! The people looked at him with gratitude 
 as to one who held a candle in a dark way. Afterward 
 he invited us to come to him, but he was so very tired 
 
156 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 we should have done better to stay away except that he 
 sent for us. 
 
 "Friday. Quietly at home together. It was really a 
 novelty. 
 
 u Saturday night, January 4. Mr. Dickens arrived 
 punctually. He was in good spirits in spite of a ca 
 tarrh, which only leaves him during the two hours at 
 night when he is reading in public. He was full of 
 amusing anecdotes. We were somewhat jealous because 
 New York heard Marygold first. Please God, he 
 said, I 11 do it as well for you. 
 
 " Sunday morning, bright and clear. His cold no 
 better, but he is wonderfully gay; pleased and amused 
 also with his new surroundings. ... I hardly know any 
 thing more diverting than when he begs not 4 to be set 
 going on one of his readings by a quotation or other 
 wise, and odd enough it is to hear him go on having been 
 so touched off. He has been a great student of Shake 
 speare, which is continually discovered in his conversation. 
 His love of the theatre is something which never pales, 
 he says, and the people who go upon the stage, how 
 ever poor their pay, or hard their lot, love it, he thinks, 
 too well ever to adopt another vocation of their free 
 will. . . . 
 
 " February 21. We accompany him to Providence 
 to-night to hear Marygold. 
 
 "Saturday. Have heard Marygold. The audience 
 was not responsive, but we were penetrated by it. Subt 
 lest of all the readings, it requires more of the listener 
 than any other. From beginning to end it is worthy 
 of close study. Dickens was gentle, kind, affectionate. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 157 
 
 We played a game of cards together, which was a pure 
 effort of memory to try to wear away something of the 
 excitement of the reading. It was not of much use. 
 
 " BOSTON, Monday. Dickens came to dinner. We 
 sat four hours. He read a short extract from an English 
 newspaper, the deposition of a child three years old 
 against Mother Jaggers, a secreter and killer of babies. 
 The child called itself the baby-ganger, whose duty 
 it was to sit up in the middle of the bed with seven 
 babies and give them the bottle when they cried. De 
 ponent saw Mother Jaggers one day take a drop of 
 gin, when by some means 4 the ganger falling into the 
 fire, and no one being there who could extricate it, it has 
 been disabled for life. He intends to look up this matter 
 as soon as he returns to England. . . . Last night during 
 the reading a telegram arrived bringing news of the 
 impeachment of President Johnson. . . . The two 
 friends walked about seven miles at noon, which is their 
 average. . . . 
 
 u Wednesday. Dickens came to pass the evening. He 
 was full of life and frolic, and kept winning the memory 
 game with cards which he called Lady Nincumwitch 
 in such a preternatural manner that at last we suspected 
 him of some plan to aid remembrance which the rest of 
 us had not the wit to discover. He explained after a 
 while that he invented each time a little story by means 
 of which the cards were strung together in his mind, but 
 as the story seemed to us as difficult as the cards we ac 
 knowledged ourselves well beaten. 
 
 " March 6. Dickens dined with us. He made all man 
 ner of fun of his friend for trying to 4 show him some 
 
158 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 new fruit-houses on their return from Cambridge, where 
 he had already been shown so much that he began to 
 think he should feel a bitter hatred to the man who 
 should propose the next thing to be seen. . . . 
 
 " March 31. Dined with Dickens at the Parker House. 
 Found him in the best of good spirits because his travel 
 ing is over, and he is within eleven readings of home. 
 His catarrh still clings to him, yet he is better and will 
 feel quite well if he can sleep, but with all his gifts he 
 has no talent for sleeping. . . . Heard the Christmas 
 Carol yesterday for the last time in Boston. 
 
 "April 7. Dickens was very ill yesterday. Unre 
 mitting exertion has preyed upon his strength ; he does 
 not recover his vitality after reading. We beseech him 
 not to continue. Copperfield was never more tragic than 
 last night, but it was no longer vif. I should hardly 
 have known it for the same reading and reader. . . . 
 All agree in finding the readings very exhausting. It 
 is not only the excitement and consequent loss of sleep, 
 but the exercise of close prolonged attention combined 
 with anxiety for the reader himself. 
 
 " Friday, April 10. Left home for New York with 
 Dickens. . . . 
 
 " April 11. Mr. Dickens looks into my room to say 
 that as C., who was to dine with him, most fortunately 
 has the gout ! and can t come, we will all go, if I please, 
 to the circus to-night. . . . He looks in again shortly with 
 
 a c piece of dreadful news ; was to arrive shortly 
 
 for a visit, one of us alone could save him ! 
 
 " The friends walked many miles together to-day. It 
 was wet and uncomfortable at the last. They had been 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 159 
 
 reading Governor Andrew s speech upon the Prohibi 
 tion Act and found it very moving. I could not put it 
 down till I had finished it. That man must always hold 
 a high position in your country, said Dickens. 
 
 " Wednesday, April 15. The anniversary of Abraham 
 Lincoln s death, now three years ago. Monday night was 
 Charles Dickens s first reading of his last course. The 
 night was very stormy ; the audience large but unrespon 
 sive. We returned directly to the hotel ; in a moment 
 heard a tap at our room door. It was dear C. D. who 
 begged us to come over for a bit of supper with him. 
 He was wretchedly tired ; but after a few moments he 
 seemed to recover and became the most exciting and 
 amusing of hosts until after midnight. 
 
 " Tuesday. Audience large but less demonstrative 
 than yesterday. The reader came home very, very tired. 
 
 "Wednesday. After dinner we went to the French 
 theatre, walking both ways. The lights in the park and 
 in Broadway, and the soft spring-like air, were delightful. 
 The play was wretched, but Dickens s presence and con 
 versation were far more agreeable than any play could 
 have been to us. 
 
 " Tuesday. Last night came the final reading. The 
 exertion is too great, and to-day he is utterly pros 
 trated. He went through with it bravely in spite of the 
 pain in his foot. His desk was covered with flowers. 
 After all was over when Mr. Fields went to speak with 
 him, he shut in his hand as he took it a velvet box con 
 taining his favorite studs, then worn by him for the last 
 time. . . . 
 
 " Wednesday, April 22. My husband went to the 
 
160 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 steamer with Dickens to say farewell. He returns to 
 his own home, and the splendor of England s summer. 
 He leaves us the memory of our joy, and the knowl 
 edge that we can see him no more as we have done. 
 Never again the old familiar intercourse, the care for 
 him, nor can he ever feel again perhaps quite the same 
 singleness of regard for us. 
 
 "May 2. Our home life has lost nothing; indeed 
 it has gained. Do we not see him here too, added 
 to all other tender associations ! How delightfully the 
 rain shuts us in. J. read me at breakfast a grand new 
 poem by Lowell, it is called 4 June. Last evening he 
 took down Irving s works to try to find a description of 
 a summer thunder-storm which Dickens said was one of 
 the closest pictures he knew and the most vivid. 
 
 " Failing to find that he read me the story of the 
 Stout Gentleman, the scene of which was laid on as 
 wet a day as I ever experienced! Reading this re 
 called to his mind an incident told him by Leslie the 
 painter, years ago, which, if it be not already in print, 
 deserves a place. He said, Leslie was walking one af 
 ternoon with Washington Irving in England, when as 
 they crossed a little churchyard they saw a most extra 
 ordinary stout gentleman just in front of them, who pre 
 sented such dorsal amplitudes and comical aspects that 
 Irving was convulsed with laughter. Whereupon Leslie 
 made a sketch of the same stout gentleman on the spot, 
 and from this sketch, which served to keep his memory 
 green, Irving afterwards worked up the little paper called 
 by that name. . . . 
 
 " E has just returned from New York. He 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 161 
 
 looked in upon his publisher a moment saying, 4 How 
 is the guardian and maintainer of us all ? 
 
 " Sunday. To-day the quiet of home once more. 
 J. is busy among his books. . . . Some one asked him 
 yesterday for an antidote against sea-sickness, saying 
 he had heard that brown paper worn on the chest was 
 considered good. Yes, was the reply, a lady in whom 
 I have no confidence assured me that was the fact. You 
 had better try it ! 
 
 In September, 1867, was published " The Guar 
 dian Angel/ by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with the 
 following dedication : 
 
 " To James T. Fields, a token of kind regard, from 
 one of many writers, who have found him a wise, faith 
 ful, and generous friend." 
 
 This tribute was one of the pleasant incidents 
 which marked the closing months of the year. 
 
 In the autumn of the same year, also, John 
 G. Whittier s poem, entitled, " The Tent on the 
 Beach/ was published. Mr. Fields is introduced 
 into this poem among a group of friends, as one 
 of the actors upon a scene " made of such stuff " 
 as dreams, and memories, and thoughts of sum 
 mer days long past. It is a genial and character 
 istic picture, and one many a reader will be inter 
 ested to recall. 
 
 A publisher s experience is not altogether easy 
 nor agreeable. Having to deal with the most sen- 
 11 
 
162 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 jsitive portion of the human race, authors, and 
 persons of artistic temperament, unwonted to bus 
 iness and often untrained in character, misunder 
 standings arise, and worst of all, unfaith. 
 
 " Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all." 
 
 Such tokens of confidence and sympathy, there 
 fore, are a positive encouragement and assistance, 
 inspiring courage for days to come. 
 
 "PLYMOUTH, N. H., June, 1868. One of the love 
 liest villages in New England. There is a little black 
 boy here full of impish ness who was in high excite 
 ment yesterday at the arrival of a traveling band. 
 He was set in motion immediately, showing a real 
 talent for dancing just as soon as the harp and violin 
 began. The barber joined with his flute, having in 
 vited the company into his room. Country people soon 
 collect at the sound of music, and the place was quickly 
 filled. The boy, who was as heavy as a feather, danced 
 away with one eye on the keeper of the house (fearing his 
 disapproval of such gayety), and one on Mr. Fields to see 
 if he appreciated the performance, with lapses of perfect 
 obliviousness, when the love of the dance filled his whole 
 little being, and he became forgetful of everything ex 
 cept the pleasure of rhythmic motion. By and by an 
 old farmer of eighty years joined the group. He stood 
 and watched attentively for a short time. Suddenly he 
 said, I can t stand this, and stripping off his coat joined 
 the dance doing the double shuffle with the vigor 
 inspired by his memory of the flying blood of twenty 
 years. . . . 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 163 
 
 " July, 1868. Drove to Newcastle, the island at the 
 mouth of Portsmouth harbor, where there is a fort, old 
 now and disused, also a new one begun and left unfin 
 ished. A sea-mist and a gray sky prevented us from 
 enjoying the colors of the ocean and the shore, so beau 
 tiful here on a clear summer afternoon, but the cool 
 damp air was very grateful. 4 J. had not visited this 
 place since a child. It seemed to him then the Ultima 
 Thule, the distant fountain head of holiday delights. 
 The same three bridges remained to be crossed to-day 
 which he passed over then ; the little islets on either side 
 were unchanged, and the looks of the people. He knew 
 the name of the old toll-keeper and inquired for him, but 
 the young girl who ran out to take the money only re 
 membered the name of such a person as having been 
 toll-keeper there many years ago. 
 
 " There are few places in America so primitive as 
 Newcastle is now, the small neat cottages with sea-chest 
 and pictures within, reminding one incessantly of Dick- 
 ens s immortal Yarmouth. One old fat man was smok 
 ing his pipe in the decayed fort as we crossed the yard, 
 but the sentry-box was empty, and the round tower 
 or lookout was capped with green, recalling the famous 
 old buildings of the same shape on the Appian Way 
 without bringing disdain upon its own head. Visitors 
 were evidently an unaccustomed sight. Even the min 
 ister, who was bidding good-day at a cottage-door as 
 we came into view, ended his visit rather hurriedly as I 
 alighted by the road-side, that he might plod leisurely 
 onward, his books under his arm, and gain opportunity 
 For an occasional furtive glance in our direction. As I 
 
164 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 have said, Mr. Fields had not seen the place since his 
 childhood, and there was a pleasing connection in his 
 mind between boyhood s holiday and the quaint town 
 delightful to see. The houses were hardly changed at 
 all. If our horse had not proved himself more compe 
 tent than ourselves to untie the clumsy fastening with 
 which we bound him, we could easily have lost an hour 
 around the old light-house. 
 
 " Returning to Portsmouth the length of our journey 
 was beguiled by his quaint fancies as to what the boys 
 4 Shindy Cotton, or 4 Gundy Gott, would think of this 
 new school-house, or that widened street. Passing an 
 old bridge he remembered to have been fishing there one 
 day when the ( boy s company (there was always a boys 
 company in Portsmouth) drew up by the side of the 
 bridge, and saluted him and his companions. It appears 
 he had been the captain of the company himself previ 
 ously, but graduated from that honor as he grew beyond 
 a certain age. He christened it The Woodbury Whites. 
 Also he pointed out an old-fashioned house where three 
 young ladies, the beauties of the town, then lived. As 
 we drove through one of the pleasantest streets he would 
 tell me without looking what the names were on the 
 doors. Some of the large houses looked very comfort 
 able and lovely with their grand trees and gardens slop 
 ing to the water side. 
 
 " As we drove home with the sea-mist in our faces, 
 the road growing moist and cool as night approached, 
 the place seemed as redolent of associations as it was of 
 country odors. Passed the night at the Rockingham 
 House, formerly the governor s mansion, and as yet very 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 165 
 
 little changed. The rooms are still haunted by the 
 stately figures which so few years ago walked up and 
 down the halls. 
 
 " Went to Kittery Fore-Side, and to see the residence 
 of Sir William Pepperell. It is much disfigured, though 
 still retaining the old hall and a cupboard of real beauty. 
 An old woman opened the door; I ve been a nappin, 
 she said, and I d no idee the door was locked. When 
 we involuntarily expressed pleasure at the fine old hall, 
 she replied : Well ! I don t think you d like it if yer 
 lived here ; it s a dusty old place, and stands just as it 
 did when the old gentleman was alive. It was not dif 
 ficult to fancy vessels landing at the foot of the pleasant 
 green slope, or to see gentlemen in small clothes, and 
 ladies in hoops moving through the stately entrance. . . . 
 On our way to the Pepperell mansion we passed an 
 other house of apparently equal antiquity. Nothing had 
 been done for many years to preserve the place from 
 decay, and even in the cheerful light of that exquisite 
 afternoon it would be hard to find anything more dolor 
 ous than its aspect and suggestion. The windows were, 
 many of them, broken, the roof of the barn had fallen 
 in, one of the other out buildings had only one wooden 
 wall still standing, which creaked in the breeze as it 
 swayed towards its fall ; the luxuriant shrubbery, with 
 the freshness of the season upon it, was the only thing 
 that chimed with the living. As we came upon this 
 spectral habitation J. recalled the strange history of the 
 family to whom the place belonged. It looked utterly 
 deserted now ; even the fence and the gate were in 
 ruins, and a panel had fallen from the front door. We 
 
166 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 pushed the gate, but the hinges were rusted and would 
 not allow us to go in. Finding an aperture in the broken 
 fence, we clambered through. As we went toward the 
 house a window opened, and a woman as gray as the 
 moss on the surrounding trees looked out and asked 
 what we wanted. She was bleared and wandering, and 
 wretched, but her voice was neither rough nor untaught. 
 The sight of such lonely misery was terrible. It was 
 like holding parley with a ghost. . . . 
 
 " How blue the water was, how beautiful the sails, 
 how brilliantly the light-houses shone in the afternoon 
 sun, these things can never be told ! Nor the solitude 
 of that life ! 
 
 " October 29, 1868. The firm of Ticknor and Fields 
 no longer exists. Fields, Osgood & Co. is the new 
 name; it sounds unfamiliar to the ear of the public, who 
 for many years have seen the above imprint. 
 
 44 1 find that Mr. Fields has edited several books of 
 late for which he has seen a place. In 1861, Favorite 
 Authors, containing a portrait of Hawthorne ; in 1864, 
 Household Friends, with a portrait of Tennyson ; in 
 1866, 4 Good Company, with an engraving of Whittier. 
 Also, he has printed privately a small volume of poems 
 called, A Few Verses for a Few Friends, inscribed to 
 E. P. W. In response to this little book he received the 
 following poem from John G. Whittier : 
 
 TO J. T. F. 
 
 ON A BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED." 
 
 WELL thought 1 who would not rather hear 
 The songs to Love and Friendship sung 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 167 
 
 Than those which move the stranger s tongue, 
 And feed his unselected ear? 
 
 Our social joys are more than fame; 
 Life withers in the public look. 
 Why mount the pillory of a book, 
 Or barter comfort for a name? 
 
 We are but men ; no gods are we, 
 To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, 
 Each separate, on his painful peak, 
 Thin-cloaked in self-complacency! 
 
 Let such as love the eagle s scream 
 Divide with him his home of ice; 
 For me shall gentler notes suffice, 
 The valley-song of bird and stream; 
 
 The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, 
 The flail-beat chiming far away, 
 The cattle-low, at shut of day, 
 The voice of God in leaf and breeze! 
 
 Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, 
 
 And help me to the vales below 
 
 (In truth, I have not far to go), 
 
 Where sweet with flowers the fields extend. 
 
 The diary continues : 
 
 "November, 1868. Mr. Fields met Charles Sumner at 
 dinner, and advanced the subject of copyright, saying he 
 hoped that question would still be foremost in his mind 
 as he prepared to take his place in the new government. 
 4 But do you know, said Snmner, in his most serious 
 way, { what a pecuniary loss it will be to your house to 
 
168 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 have this measure carried ? c Yes, was the reply, ( but 
 fiat justitia, mat House of Fields, Osgood & Co. Of 
 course, a hearty laugh was the immediate response. . . . 
 
 A gentleman called, who gave Mr. Fields a pleasant 
 anecdote of Halleck. He and his wife chanced to be 
 coming to Boston in the same car with Halleck the year 
 "before his death. He intended to stop at Stamford, 
 which was then his home, but being in a conversational 
 mood, to their surprise he did not move when they ar 
 rived at that station. Are you not to stop at Stamford 
 to-day ? the lady asked. He looked up in amazement, 
 saying, as he took his friend s hand, 4 The conversation 
 of your wife has so interested and absorbed me that I 
 have been, what never occurred before in the course of 
 my long life, unconscious of the journey. The good 
 lady had scarcely opened her lips ; but what genius for 
 listening! . . . 
 
 " Dr. Brewer came to talk about birds. Always an 
 interesting subject to Mr. Fields. First, he read a paper 
 he had written for the Atlantic Monthly, and between 
 and after the reading gave us little glimpses of his ex 
 perience. Once he was in the woods of Nova Scotia 
 studying the Hermit Thrush. He had just begun to 
 suspect there were two varieties, and was eager in his 
 pursuit of the study. He came upon a nest of the rarest 
 variety in the thick woods, and finding the old birds 
 gone hastily took the nest and its contents, consisting of 
 several eggs, away into the light of an open space not 
 far off. Just as the eggs were blown, and the nest ar 
 ranged for transportation, the old birds returned. Their 
 cry of lamentation was so touching that 4 1 would have 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 169 
 
 put the eggs all back in a minute if I could, he contin 
 ued. The sound was quite unlike the birds* ordinary 
 cry. 
 
 " He spoke of the mocking-bird, and referred to Long 
 fellow s beautiful lines upon him in Evangeline. He 
 once owned a mocking-bird, one accounted of superior 
 value not because of his song, but from his tender fa 
 miliarities. He lived chiefly out of the cage, which 
 made him a cause of household anxiety, and in spite of 
 all care finally drowned himself at the wash-stand in his 
 master s room. In fly season he would perch on the fin 
 ger and be carried round the walls, darting at every fly 
 as he went and devouring them with astonishing celerity. 
 One day Dr. B. s mother having made a fine batch of 
 pies for Thanksgiving, mince, apple, and squash, 
 and spread them out in 4 the spare room to cool, the bird 
 selected one made of the minced meat, pulled the crust 
 off, and began to enjoy himself. Being discovered at this 
 crisis, the old lady put all the pies on a large tray and 
 was about to shut them up, when, seeing her intention, 
 and her hands being fully occupied in holding the sides 
 of the tray, the bird flew down and pulled her cap off. 
 
 " Speaking of the robin, he told us his daughter 
 watched a pair on the piazza for twenty days, feeding 
 their young with the larvae of insects every half hour 
 until they were strong enough to fly. In this way the 
 garden was preserved from innumerable enemies. His 
 paper was an indirect plea for the introduction of the 
 English house sparrow, of which so much has been said 
 lately. 
 
 "January, 1860. William Lloyd Garrison came in. 
 
170 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 He had been sitting with Charles Sprague ft comparing 
 notes." Mr. Sprague told Mr. Garrison he could never 
 forget three sights he had seen from the windows of the 
 old Globe Bank in Wilson s Lane, where he was em 
 ployed for many years. One was seeing a man with a 
 bald head (meaning Garrison) maltreated by an angry 
 mob and borne along the street ; the second, the capture 
 of Anthony Burns ; the third, the marching of the first 
 colored regiment, under Colonel Shaw, on their way 
 Southward. Jn return, Garrison was able to tell him of 
 the delight he had in setting up in type a certain Shake 
 speare Ode." 
 
 A letter from Mr. Garrison, written in 1866, 
 may not be out of place here : 
 
 " ROXBURY, March 26, 1866. 
 
 " DEAE, ME. FIELDS, I fear it may have seemed to 
 you either a singular forgetfulness, or something of in 
 difference, on my part, that you have not received any 
 definite answer from me in regard to your proposition, 
 made some time ago, that I would write a history of the 
 Anti-Slavery movement for publication by your firm. 
 Be assured, however, that while that proposition was 
 very gratifying to me, and while I have had it constantly 
 in mind ever since it was made, I have deemed it worthy 
 of the gravest consideration before committing myself 
 pro or con. But I will not delay any longer. Let me 
 state, with brevity and frankness, some of the difficulties 
 in my way. 
 
 " In the first place, I have been so closely connected 
 with the movement, from its inception to its completion, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 171 
 
 not with any design or expectation of my own, ab 
 initio, for I never thought of rising to public conspicuity, 
 but only of inducing such as had already won distinction 
 to lead in the great undertaking that to virtually ig 
 nore that connection, by the most incidental reference to 
 myself, might seem to savor of affectation ; while on the 
 other hand, it would be a delicate task to decide to what 
 extent I might refer to my trials and labors without 
 seeming egotism. Personally, I feel no interest in the 
 matter, whether made visible or invisible in the pages of 
 the contemplated history ; for as I espoused the cause of 
 the crushed and fettered millions at the South without 
 dreaming of notoriety or fame, so, now that their eman 
 cipation is achieved, I have no wish to take any other 
 than the humblest position of all who have labored to 
 the same glorious end, and feel willing to be wholly 
 dropped out of sight. 
 
 u My next difficulty (and it really looks very formida 
 ble) is the great condensing power, equal to anything 
 found in hydraulics or hydrostatics, that will be requi 
 site to embody, in a popular shape, the various phases 
 and ramifications of the mightiest and most protracted 
 struggle in behalf of the rights of human nature that the 
 world has ever seen. 
 
 " How shall the ocean be put into a gallon measure ? 
 And if only a gallon is furnished, what idea of the 
 ocean is given ? To say nothing of preliminary chap 
 ters respecting the rise and progress of slavery and the 
 slave-trade, particularly as relating to our colonial his 
 tory and to the pro-slavery concessions made in the 
 formation of the Constitution of the United States, 
 
172 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 there have been thirty-six years (from 1829 to 1865) 
 of discussion and conflict, shaking Church and State to 
 their foundations, and culminating in the dismember 
 ment of the republic pro tempore, but happily ending in 
 a restored Union, the Anti-Slavery amendment of the 
 Constitution, and the total abolition of slavery. An 
 almost incredible number of books, pamphlets, tracts, 
 periodicals, speeches, essays, reviews, narratives, reports, 
 etc., etc., all directly bearing upon the subject, have been 
 published during that long period, the careful examina 
 tion of which would prove a laborious task indeed. A 
 faithful and reliable history, therefore, would require I 
 know not how voluminous a work; but I feel sure that 
 the materials furnished by each decade would amply suf 
 fice for a duodecimo volume of four hundred pages. 
 What size or shape would make the work the most sala 
 ble, and therefore best suit the market, you are far bet 
 ter able to judge than I am. 
 
 "Another serious difficulty is to know how to keep 
 the pot boiling while devoting so much time to the 
 preparation of such a work, with no adequate pecuniary 
 resources of my own, and with no way of augmenting 
 them, except by engaging in something that will secure 
 me immediate and regular remuneration. For if I once 
 began, I should wish to be unremitting in my labors to 
 complete the history in the shortest time practicable. 
 
 " In a day or two, I will see you, and learn what you 
 may be able to suggest or propose concerning these diffi 
 culties. 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 " WM. LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 w JAMES T. PIELJDS, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 173 
 
 " March 15. Mr. Fields had an unusually turbulent 
 and exciting day. A constant series of interviews with 
 every variety of person. One of his most absorbing 
 calls was from a young man who has lately abandoned 
 the Shakers. For three years he has been trying to get 
 away and has only just now succeeded. He is a man of 
 marked intellect. At the age of sixteen (he is now a 
 little over twenty) he was placed at the head of their 
 school in Canterbury as chief instructor. 
 
 " He awakes at night, he says, in paroxysms of horror 
 at the memory of the terrible life and terrible deeds he 
 has seen performed among this people. He came to 
 them when he was two years old, his father being a re 
 ligious fanatic, and wishing his wife and two children to 
 go with him. They did so, but are now all free. He 
 left the Shakers with ten dollars in his pocket to face the 
 world. His friends are all among them and he is per 
 fectly ignorant of the ways of the world. In two or 
 three cases he has known of young girls becoming un 
 happy and leaving the Shakers only to fall into wretch 
 edness and misery. He says he has been slain intellectu 
 ally and morally. When he remembers the confessional 
 (for they have it also as in the Catholic churches), and 
 the foolish things he has been led to recount as sins to 
 the elders, he can hardly contain his indignation." 
 
 " LONDON, Tuesday, May 11, 1869. Dickens has 
 been to see us four times to-day, beside a long walk with 
 Mr. Fields along the new Thames embankment. . . . 
 
 " Wednesday. Dined with Dickens. Arranged to go 
 to the little hospital at Stepney. A small star in the 
 east. 
 
174 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Friday, he came at half-past ten A. M. to go to the 
 hospital, bringing with him some small alleviations for 
 colds, with recipes. Started promptly, and by aid of 
 omnibus, cars, and a short walk, arrived before noon at 
 our destination. Dickens was perfectly at home in this 
 part of London. He was full of interest also in the 
 young physician and his wife at the hospital, who looked 
 upon him as one of their best friends. It was evidently 
 always their gala day when he arrived. He could not 
 say enough to express his admiration for the simple, 
 reverent earnestness of their lives. How they bear it, 
 he said, I cannot imagine. I wish you could have 
 seen, he continued, the little child I wrote of, who 
 died afterward, so exquisite in beauty and so patient, its 
 rounded cheek so pale. Certainly there is nothing more 
 touching than the suffering of a child, nothing more 
 overwhelming. The doctor carried us, before our return, 
 into one of the poor-houses in the neighborhood. A 
 mother, father, and seven children in one room ! And 
 yet, he said, this was not an extreme case. . . . 
 
 " ISLE OF WIGHT, June. Walked to Mrs. Cameron s 
 quiet cottage near the sea. She was expecting us, having 
 
 expressed a wish to photograph M and J. She drew 
 
 the latter into a darkened room, rearranging his dress to 
 suit her artistic ends, and began her work. It was not the 
 labor of a moment, but the result was most satisfactory. 
 She said, characteristically, of the persons whom she in 
 vited to sit, that she only took the young, the fair, and 
 the famous. Her eye was quick as an eagle s to detect 
 the qualities she wished to convey into her pictures ; and 
 her vision was as individual as it was keen. Her appre- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 175 
 
 elation of her friends, her enthusiasm for them, was un 
 bounded. Writing to Mr. Fields after we left, she says : 
 4 Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson have spoken with pleasure of 
 your visit, and I can entirely understand the eternal de 
 light it is to you to have dwelt with them in their dear 
 home. . . . Only in this way can one fully estimate 
 either his or her most beautiful and endearing qualities. 
 His immortal powers, of course, are conveyed in his 
 books, but very few come to a perfect and real apprecia 
 tion of him who have not seen him in the intimacy of 
 private life. . . . You will see how perfect and valuable 
 these impressions are (of photographs which she pre 
 sented with this note), and I delight in making a gift 
 of them to those who I know to be so worthy of the 
 gift as you are. . . . 
 
 " GAD S HILL PLACE, June. Mr. Fields has himself 
 recorded, in 4 Yesterdays with Authors, whatever he con 
 sidered interesting to the reader connected with this 
 visit. 
 
 " AMBLESIDE. Mr. Fields enjoyed a few hours with 
 Harriet Martineau, who had just received a letter, full of 
 good cheer about India, from Florence Nightingale. She 
 was eager to talk of her 4 Autobiography, trying to ar 
 range everything in view of her death, although she was 
 constantly seeing friends pass before her into the Unseen. 
 She was full of interest in public affairs, and talked un 
 ceasingly. 
 
 " Miss Martineau s letters, as the world knows, are 
 replete with valuable suggestion and characterized by 
 clear, individual expression. In view, however, of the 
 careful selection already made by herself and her 
 
176 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 friends, it is thought wise to include nothing further 
 here. 
 
 "After leaving Miss Martineau, we drove over Kirk- 
 stone Pass, and walking a short distance from the hotel, 
 which is said to be built at the highest elevation of any 
 house in England, looked down into the Vale of Patter- 
 dale. A more lonely spot could not be imagined than it 
 looked that summer afternoon, from the height of Kirk- 
 stone. 
 
 " At Furness Abbey we found a dwarf of the smallest 
 possible dimensions, hardly taller than the tall grass 
 among the stones. In spite of the solitude in which we 
 found him, he seemed to possess an equal love for ruins 
 and conversation. His hair and cap appeared to be of 
 exactly the same fibre and color, looking as if black grass 
 had grown up tall through a barred helmet. When he 
 pushed back the cap in his excitement to show us how 
 he did it, that is, how he went in among the lions and 
 bears, and pretended to be eaten, it was a sight worth 
 going far to behold. He wanted a dummy to play the 
 part of a bear, and looked wistfully at J., but suddenly 
 gave him up, in his own mind, as inappropriate. 
 
 " At Lowwood, where the perfect stillness allowed 
 every sound to be heard across the water, Mr. Fields 
 amused me by relating one of his escapades. He was 
 standing on the edge of the lake in a curve of the road, 
 with a portfolio of photographs under his arm, which he 
 was bringing to show me, when an old gentleman with 
 his two nieces approached. They had not the least idea 
 they could be heard. I lay ye half a crown, said the 
 old gentleman, c that he s not an artist. I 11 take you 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 177 
 
 up, uncle, said the prettiest of the girls. What makes 
 you think so, rejoined the uncle. c Because of the stoop 
 in his shoulders, said the girl, and when I come up with 
 him I 11 ask him. I 11 lay ye ninepence ye wont do 
 that, said he. But I will, said she, 4 if you say I may. 
 True enough, when the party approached, the blushing 
 young girl stepped up to him and said, Excuse me, sir, 
 my uncle and I have made a little bet as to your pro 
 fession, if you don t mind telling us. I shall be glad if 
 you decide in my favor. Are you an artist ? ; I shall 
 be most happy to decide in your favor, he replied, and 
 with a low bow, in perfect sobriety, departed, leaving 
 the shrewd old man, who evidently hated to part with his 
 sixpences, counting them out in the road to the satisfac 
 tion of his niece. 
 
 " He heard a bell tolling in the tower of the little 
 church near by, and seeing two old men sitting on a 
 gravestone, said to one of them, What is this bell tolling 
 for ? 4 Please, sir, t is one of our hold friends, sir, who 
 be just gone to his long ome, sir, and we wos just awaitin 
 ere, sir, till his body do be brought along. This form 
 of speech is common here. 
 
 " The old gardener at Dunster said, speaking of Mine- 
 head church, which we could barely see on the distant 
 hills, and the Luttrell possessions : 4 They do hown, sir, 
 about as far as you can see, sir, from Minehead church, 
 sir, as far as we? Again of the ivy : He s a fine 
 plant, sir, he s a werry old plant, sir. 
 
 " July 4. Stratford-on-Avon, with those loyal friends 
 to America and Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Flower. . . . 
 Thence to Malvern. Climbed the Malvern Hills on don- 
 12 
 
178 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 keys. Found an old woman on one of the summits sell 
 ing gingerbread and beer. It was blowing hard with a 
 thick fog. Mr. Fields inquired of her respecting the 
 weather : Well, sir, she said, I ve ad the plumbago 
 now for two days, sir, wich is as good as a halinanac, sir, 
 honly not so conwenient. 
 
 " Came to Clevedon, sacred to the memory of Arthur 
 Hallam. High, overlooking the river Severn. We lin 
 gered there ; the place possesses a deep interest for all 
 lovers of Tennyeon and the Hallams. Came to Devon 
 shire. Found an old-fashioned garden behind the inn at 
 Tiverton quite at our service. . . . We begin to find 
 quaint names Innocent Witherstone, Ezekiel Hear, 
 Elizabeth Bobby, Selina Skipwith good for a novel. 
 
 " Dunster. Wonderful old place. Again we could 
 fancy traces of Tennyson s observation and description. 
 Hotel, formerly an abbey, with ancient garden behind. 
 Terrace overlooking the sea. At the castle an old gar 
 dener, proud of the family and his position, which he has 
 held for sixty years. A sleeping palace beautiful in 
 decay. Came into the village at dusk ; saw remains of 
 all kinds of birds and animals, inimical to the farmers 
 good, nailed up outside the door of an old stone barn ; a 
 singer in the streets, dancing as he sang, and shouting to 
 the children, get off the carpet, get off the forum ; the 
 old church doors open, the choir preparing for Sunday 
 service ; fresh girlish voices. 
 
 " Sunday, at Lynton. A little garden outside our win 
 dow bounded by a hedge, thence a steep descent to the 
 sea, with pines, chestnuts, and beeches covering the slope 
 to the shingly shore below; the sound of the water is 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 179 
 
 heard perpetually. In the distance the beach curves as 
 at Raise, giving a perfect view of the strand and cliffs 
 sloping in enormous waves of red and green declivity to 
 the opal sea. Drove from Lynton over bits of moor, be 
 tween high hedges, with the purple heather coming out 
 in fringes along the way ; rounding headlands with the 
 sea constantly in view. On to Ilfracombe, where the 
 chief delight was to lie on rocks and fancy ourselves a,t 
 home. . . . 
 
 " SWITZERLAND, August. Talking of the Grimsel in 
 bad weather, Mr. Fields said : i He hated to be dragged 
 up where the Devil carried the best man that ever lived. 
 We did not go over the Grimsel ! . . . 
 
 " BOSTON, U. S. A., November, 1869. We light the 
 first fire on our library hearth, and somehow feel a little 
 solemnity about it, as if it were for a high festival. Our 
 boxes have all arrived at length from England. The 
 original portrait of Pope, painted by Richardson, master 
 of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and purchased by Mr. Fields 
 while in London from the gallery of the Marquis of Has 
 tings, is hung up." 
 
 In the autumn of this year James Russell Lowell 
 printed his poem, " The Cathedral/ with the fol 
 lowing dedication : 
 
 "TO MR. JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 "MY DEAR FIELDS, Dr. Johnson s sturdy self-re 
 spect led him to invent the Bookseller as a substitute for 
 the Patron. My relations with you have enabled me 
 to discover how pleasantly the Friend may replace the 
 Bookseller. Let me record my sense of many thoughtful 
 
180 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 services by associating your name with a poem which 
 owes its appearance in this shape to your partiality. 
 
 " Cordially yours, 
 
 " J. R. LOWELL. 
 
 " CAMBRIDGE, November 29, 1869." 
 
 In the winter of 1870 Mr. Fields s health began 
 to give way. The voyages, the excitement of 
 travel, and his return to business responsibilities, 
 proved too much even for his excellent constitu 
 tion. His sleep was broken and his spirits suf 
 fered. He who had been the life of every feast 
 was often silent and fatigued. His strength seemed 
 to fade away from him, and after any little ex 
 ertion or excitement he would fall asleep from 
 utter exhaustion. That winter was like a valley of 
 shadows which led us in June to Dickens s grave. 
 
 The summer was a very warm one, and Mr. 
 Fields continued to go to town from Manchester- 
 by-the-Sea daily, with few exceptions. There was 
 cause for anxiety about his health. He seemed 
 tired, as Mrs. Hawthorne once said of herself, 
 " far into the future." Nevertheless those days 
 by the shore were restoring in their influence, 
 and the autumn found him better and slow to 
 leave. 
 
 u Who knows if we shall ever see that glorious sight 
 again together ! The waves were very high, a gorgeous 
 sunset sent its late yellow shafts out over the gray sea, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 181 
 
 the foam broke on the distant rocks like a sudden burst 
 of soft white blooms, it was all vast, glorious, indescrib 
 able. We sat on the sandhills, overlooking the beach 
 and the wide scene for an hour. It never appeared to 
 us more lovely. Coming back we scrambled over Thun 
 derbolt Hill, and saw the sunset among the red sumach 
 and ripening apples. 
 
 " TUESDAY, November 1, 1870. We begin this month 
 with different feelings from any I could have anticipated. 
 . . . The weight of this great business house is no longer 
 to rest where it has done. It is a cloud behind us. Mr. 
 Fields is like a different man already. . . . 
 
 " January, 1871. A visit from William Hunt. One 
 of the most dramatic creatures who ever lived. He told 
 a story of a student from the South who came to Har 
 vard University with a colored servant. Returning to 
 his rooms one night (or day) at four o clock in the 
 morning, he found a company of negroes leaning back in 
 his chairs, smoking his cigars and drinking his sherry. 
 With a grace Hunt could not sufficiently admire, the 
 voung man walked through the rooms as if he did not 
 see its occupants, whereat they all crumbled away, no 
 body knew where, only his own man remained, who, as 
 quick as thought, gathered the bottles under his coat, and 
 when his master did look round was furiously dusting 
 the room with a feather duster. Hunt s mimicry of the 
 whole scene was inimitable. 
 
 " His delight, too, over the Cameron photographs ! 
 4 Go way, he said, getting into a corner with one of 
 them, as if it were a piece of cake, and he four years 
 ^ld. I don t want anybody to see it till I Ve done with 
 
182 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 it. I held a second one for his inspection. No, no, 
 
 he said, he may have that, (pointing to T ), and 
 
 I 11 keep this ! It was so absurdly like a child, and yet 
 done with such real feeling that it was very comic. 
 
 " He loves to tell stories of animals, especially one of 
 going to a place in Paris, where the man had only a 
 monkey and an elephant to exhibit. He was determined, 
 therefore, to make the most of the show. He arrayed 
 the elephant, (who just fitted in to the apartment with 
 no room at all left over,) with a napkin about him, as if 
 he were dining; and the monkey, dressed as a gargon de 
 cafe*, came dancing in with the plates one after another 
 He would enter with long strides, flinging down the tin 
 plate before the elephant with perfect nonchalance, so 
 long as it contained salads and the like; but when it 
 came to the nuts and raisins, his dance was altogether 
 vertical, he being occupied with gobbling up the contents 
 on the way. Finally, on arriving at the elephant, he 
 would fling the empty plate before him with a grand air. 
 In Hunt s hands this became a little drama, in which he 
 played all the parts with infinite amusement. 
 
 "He caught himself, as he said, the other night, daring 
 to look at a little charcoal drawing of his own, hanging 
 on the wall behind him in our room. 4 That heather, he 
 said, with the starry blooms ! the paper is left, there 
 is no white laid on ; there never could be any white 
 put on to shine like that ! I wonder who the fellar was 
 who did it ! It was done with a great piece of charcoal 
 which just left the spots clear. Ha ! I d like to see the 
 man who could do that again ! I could n t ! By George ! 
 I tell you what, look at that little bit (drawing his finger 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 183 
 
 round and round the heather-top), the fellar must have 
 known he had done a good thing by the time that was 
 finished. . . . 
 
 Last night Hunt came. He played he was a mani 
 kin, figure of Napoleon at St. Helena, also Mrs. Smith; 
 nothing could be more laughable. He sang, too, with 
 much feeling, always protesting he had forgotten both 
 words and tune. 
 
 " Tried to read aloud, which he said he never could do. 
 He so bewitched the meaning that we were overwhelmed 
 with laughter. As for E , Mr. Fields said he laughed 
 until his eyes left their wonted sockets, and went to 
 laugh far back in his brain. 
 
 " Putting down the book Hunt launched into a sea of 
 talk upon his own life as a painter ; of his lonely posi 
 tion here without any one to look up to in his art ; his 
 idea being misunderstood ; of his determination not to 
 paint cloth and cheeks, but the glory of age and the 
 light of truth. He became almost too excited to find 
 words ; but when he did grasp a phrase it was with a 
 power that sent his meaning, barbed with feeling, home. 
 4 If the books you wrote were left dusty and untouched 
 upon the shelves, don t you think you d try to write so 
 that people should want them ? I am sure you would. 
 
 " BOSTON, May 12, 1871. Third meeting of officers of 
 the Army of the Potomac. [Bret Harte was expected 
 to read the poem. On the previous evening he wrote 
 to say he could not come in person, but would send his 
 verses. It was an important occasion. Generals Sheri 
 dan, Meade, Hooker, and many others, were present, who 
 had won the right to be forever loved and remembered 
 
184 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 by the people. A committee waited upon Mr. Fields to 
 ask him to read the verses. Bret Harte was then at the 
 height of his popularity ; public curiosity was alive to 
 see him, and a feeling of disappointment must greet any 
 one who should stand in his place ; beside, the verses did 
 not arrive. It was an unwelcome duty at the best, but 
 accepting it as the least he could do for the men who had 
 fought as these had done, Mr. Fields wrote a few verses 
 himself which might introduce the others in case they 
 arrived, or preface some apology, telegraphed to Harte, 
 and one hour before the ceremonies opened at the Globe 
 Theatre, received his manuscript from New York. In 
 that short time it was studied, read and re-read, and pre 
 pared for public presentation.] 
 
 " CATSKILL, June. Our boy-driver had never read 
 Irving s story, but had often heard of Rip Van Winkle. 
 4 Who wrote the story, do you know? asked Mr. Fields. 
 4 Washington, did n t he ? was the reply. He said his 
 father came from those parts, and had told him the 
 story over and over until he was curious to come and see 
 the place. It was all flat at the West, where he passed 
 his boyhood, 4 and the fust time I saw this, I tell you ! 
 I never thought there could be such a place. Well ! I 
 just come to see it, and I Ve stayed here ever since, nigh 
 on three year. The place where Rip had his long sleep, 
 and where a small wayside inn now stands, overlooks a 
 wonderful valley through a natural gorge. The sunset 
 light made everything radiant as we ascended. Coming 
 to the summit with hands full of laurel blooms, we went 
 out upon the magnificent plateau, and hardly left it again 
 until we were obliged to come away altogether. In the 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 185 
 
 moonlight we heard the tree-toads calling, and every 
 thing else that lives and stirs in the woods in the deep 
 ening hours. The sky was living sapphire where the 
 sun had left it long before, the stars and planets were 
 appearing in the east, the trees stood as if cut upon the 
 steeps of heaven, and the whole scene was solemn with 
 night and loveliness. . . . 
 
 " Some one was speaking of the dishonest manage 
 ment of the Erie Railroad. Mr. Fields said, * The Bible 
 says : Buy the Truth and sell it not ; the Erie men say, 
 Buy the Truth and sell it out for a profit. 
 
 "November 6, 1871. Mr. Fields 4 lectured in Boston. 
 
 " December. Continues to lecture ; making additions 
 and changes continually in his essays. . . . Went to hear 
 Horace Greeley c On Wit. It was a singular agglomera 
 tion of matter. Old Miller jokes, combined with quo 
 tations from the dramatists. Strange enough in manner 
 also. His sole gesture being to paddle the fingers of one 
 hand as if he were thrumming a piano. He was dab 
 bling his finger-tips in water he had spilled from the 
 tumbler upon the table in order to turn the leaves more 
 easily. It was a bad night, and the audience was small, 
 but Greeley was content with his one friendly listener. 
 * Good, ain t it ? he said, after it was over. 
 
 "January, 1872. Mr. Fields is continually lecturing 
 and overflowing with singular 4 experiences. He is writ 
 ing a paper upon ( Tennyson (this was the first sketch 
 of the future lecture), to read before a small private 
 company next week. 
 
 "January 25. Lectured at L . Crowded house ; 
 
 pretty town ; the moon was up, but it was very cold ; 
 
186 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 walked out on the snow between moon-set and sunrise ; 
 returned to breakfast at home in Boston. Described the 
 
 good man who kept the hotel in L . Now, said he, 
 
 after the lecter to-night, I shall give ye, oysters, 
 hot. Returning, there was some delay about the oys 
 ters. Presently the landlord appeared, bringing them 
 himself. Military ball here last night, cook as mad 
 as thunder, but here are yer oysters! putting them 
 down triumphantly. When they were fairly on the table 
 he turned to Mr. Fields : * I was in to-night. Yes, 
 said Mr. Fields, I saw you. Did ! (with faint in 
 tonation of surprise). 4 Well, Mr. Foster and I was 
 a-talkin of it comin out, and sayin we thought twas 
 abaout as good a lecter as we d ever hed here. 
 
 Mr. Fields was subject at this time to severe 
 colds, which attacked the lungs, and occasionally 
 prevented him from fulfilling his engagements ; to 
 be stopped coming out of a lecture room to hear 
 " a good story," which somebody had been saving 
 till that unfortunate moment, or to be detained 
 on a windy corner, were sure to bring him more 
 or less discomfort. 
 
 " May. Revolving plans for a course of free lectures 
 for women upon English literature, to be given during 
 the autumn ; something to bring the audience of women 
 together who are longing for a better education ; to be 
 able to look it over and understand the need." 
 
 As a result of Mr. Fields s labors in behalf of a 
 larger opportunity for women desiring an educa- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 187 
 
 tion, the following article from his hand soon ap 
 peared in the newspapers of the day, shortly fol 
 lowed by the advertisement appended. These 
 serve to show how generously his friends re 
 sponded to his appeal for their assistance in his 
 plans : 
 
 " GOOD NEWS FOB WOMEN. During the months of 
 October, November, and December of this year, on Sat 
 urday afternoons, at three o clock, in the large hall of 
 the Technological Institute, there will be given a free 
 course of twelve lectures to women on subjects connected 
 with English literature. These lectures are not to be 
 reported in the papers, or printed in book-form. The 
 following eloquent lecturers are already engaged for each 
 Saturday in the above months, beginning October 5 : 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Phillips Brooks, Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, Edwin P. Whipple, Wendell Phillips, George 
 S. Hillard, James Freeman Clarke, William R. Alger, 
 John Weiss, George William Curtis. 
 
 " It is the design, we presume, of this course of free 
 lectures to introduce a scheme of instruction for women 
 which shall give to them the advantages so long afforded 
 to students in universities. It is the beginning of a plan 
 which will be hailed with delight wherever the full and 
 proper education of women has been discussed. This 
 course will no doubt be followed by others in the sciences, 
 etc., and Boston will have the credit of starting a plan 
 which is sure to end in university education for women 
 in various parts of the country. 
 
 " We understand there are to be no tickets of admis- 
 
188 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 sion issued, but that all women (and only women are to 
 be admitted to the hall, as there will be no room for 
 others) who wish to avail themselves of such a course in 
 English literature will go early enough to take their 
 places. The hall will seat between eight and nine hun 
 dred only, and is to be opened at two o clock and closed 
 promptly at three, to avoid any interruption after the 
 lecture of the day has commenced. School teachers es 
 pecially are to be benefited by this course, and if the 
 hall were double its size it would not be large enough 
 to accommodate all the women who will wish to be 
 present. 
 
 " The idea of this provision for the instruction of 
 women is a noble one, and is another evidence that the 
 world moves." 
 
 Later the following advertisement appec^red : 
 
 " A free course of twelve lectures to women on sub 
 jects connected with English literature, will be given in 
 the large hall of the Technological Institute, during the 
 months of October, November, and December, 1872. 
 
 " To commence on Saturday afternoon, October 5, at 
 3 o clock, and to be continued every Saturday afternoon 
 following, at the same hour, until the series is ended in 
 December. 
 " The lecturers for October are Mrs. E. D. Cheney, 
 
 Edwin P. Whipple, John Weiss, Oliver Wendell 
 
 Holmes. 
 The lecturers for November are George S. Hillard, 
 
 Phillips Brooks, Wendell Phillips, Robert Collyer, 
 
 William E. Alger. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 189 
 
 "The lecturers for December are Ralph Waldo Emer 
 son, James Freeman Clarke, George William Curtis. 
 " The hall will be opened at 2^ o clock each Saturday, 
 and closed precisely at 3. Seats are provided for nine 
 hundred ladies, who will be admitted without tickets." 
 
 Perhaps there can be found no more suitable 
 point in this " story of a life/ than the one we 
 have now reached, to incorporate a beautiful trib 
 ute to Mr. Fields received from Mrs. Mary A. 
 Livermore, and written during a rapid tour in 
 Europe in the summer of 1881. This journey, 
 prescribed to Mrs. Livermore by her physician 
 after a season of unusual fatigue, was to be a 
 period of rest ; therefore surprise and gratitude 
 were both aroused by the reception of this letter 
 from her in the early summer. Mrs. Livermore 
 writes : 
 
 "LONDON, ENGLAND, June 15, 1881. 
 
 " I shall never forget the first time I met Mr. Fields. 
 It was during the war, and when I was living in Chicago. 
 The great need of funds to carry on the work of the 
 Sanitary Commission had driven the women of the north 
 west to the last resort a grand fair. It was the first 
 of the series of great fairs which yielded immense sums 
 of money to the Sanitary Commission, and, unlike those 
 which followed it, it was projected and carried on almost 
 entirely by women. All available women were harnessed 
 into the various departments of the fair ; and the com 
 mittee having in charge the publication of the daily fair 
 paper, desiring that its brief life of three weeks should 
 
190 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 be a brilliant one, I was despatched to Boston for assist 
 ance. 
 
 " I was instructed to secure, if possible, the services of 
 a lady, then a bright particular star in the literary 
 world. I only knew that Mr. Fields was the lady s pub 
 lisher, and so, without letters of introduction, and unac 
 companied, I sought him at his office, and introduced 
 myself and my errand. Fully aware that my errand 
 might seem quixotic or infinitesimal to the great pub 
 lisher, I was prepared for a cool reception. 
 
 " I shall always remember the great courtesy and 
 kindness with which Mr. Fields received me. I was at 
 ease directly. He listened with interest to my story, 
 kindled with enthusiasm as I told him of the prepara 
 tions for the fair, all eminently western, of the patriotic 
 audacity of the women of the northwest, who proposed 
 to raise $100,000 for their sick and wounded boys in 
 blue, and immediately put himself at our service, and 
 sought to make my errand successful. 
 
 " I failed of accomplishing what I sought, but it was 
 not through any indifference or lack of effort on the part 
 of Mr. Fields. Seemingly intent on aiding us, he dis 
 cussed with me the details of the paper, was fertile in 
 suggestions and hints by which we profited, and prom 
 ised to solicit contributions from eminent people with 
 whom he had relations, a promise that he kept. 
 
 " As I rose to leave, he made inquiries concerning my 
 experiences in hospitals, on transports, and among our 
 sick and wounded soldiers. His face glowed, his eye 
 moistened, as I spoke of the marvelous heroism, the in 
 describable patience, and the sublime resignation of men, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 191 
 
 young, with families that needed them, to whom life was 
 full of promise, and yet bravely suffering, and calmly 
 dying that the nation might live. 
 
 " This, said he, is the side of the war that the peo 
 ple can never learn from the reports of officers, or the 
 letters of war correspondents. When the war is over 
 you must give us a book of your experiences, must show 
 us the heavenly side of the war, and I will help you get 
 before the world with it. 
 
 " My interest in Mr. Fields dates from that day. I 
 never afterwards heard his name spoken, or saw it men 
 tioned in the papers, without recalling his courtesy and 
 kindness, and thinking of him as a man to whom a woman 
 might go for advice and assistance. 
 
 " Years after, when I hud returned to New England 
 to reside, I remember how all who believed in the enfran 
 chisement of women were thrilled with his speech, made, 
 I believe, in Portsmouth, N. H. In strong and grand 
 words he expressed his sympathy with the struggling 
 reform, not as hopeful in its promise as now, pronouncing 
 it founded on eternal justice, and predicting its ultimate 
 success at no very remote day. Glad and grateful, I 
 hastened to write him a note of thanks, and to tell him 
 of the good cheer his words had given us. His reply 
 was even stronger and more earnest than his public ad 
 dress; and the brief note soon found its way into one of 
 the autograph albums, arranged and sold in aid of a 
 public charity. 
 
 " Once more Mr. Fields increased woman s indebted 
 ness to him by organizing and successfully carrying out 
 a free course of twelve lectures for women on English 
 
192 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 literature. So excellent were they, and so highly prized, 
 that hardly was the large hall sufficient for the accom- 
 modation of those who sought to attend them. We had 
 all come to recognize in Mr. Fields a friend of woman, 
 who desired for her equal educational and legal advan 
 tages with man. 
 
 "If he arranged for women a course of literary lec 
 tures, his programme included women lecturers as well 
 as men. If, at his charming summer retreat by the sea, 
 he provided a series of Sunday discourses for his towns 
 people, he invited women to the pulpit, which he tempo 
 rarily controlled, and gave them the same hearty welcome 
 he accorded to clergymen. 
 
 " Was a woman in doubt concerning the worth of her 
 untried lecture or undelivered essay? he placed his time, 
 talent, and experience at her service, criticising so kindly 
 as to win her gratitude, even when the criticism was 
 severe. Ay, and when sometimes an unasked loan of 
 money was needed, because of the poverty of the would- 
 be debutante, it was voluntarily tendered ; and I have 
 heard Mr. Fields declare that rarely were such debts un 
 paid. 
 
 " In conservative and cultivated circles, where his in 
 terest in woman s advancement was not known, in the 
 far West, where his advocacy of woman suffrage had 
 never been advertised, he was as generous in his recog 
 nition, and as just in his demands for woman, as in the 
 society where this had come to be expected of him. 
 
 " He never passed me on the street so hurriedly that 
 he had not time for a word of cheer or encouragement, 
 or an inquiry into the progress of a reform, in which he 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 193 
 
 believed as strongly as myself. It is not yet possible for 
 me to realize that all this is over, that these kindnesses 
 are ended, that his work is finished. For he was so full 
 of life and heartiness, that it is impossible to think of 
 him as having passed into the land of silence. 
 
 " During my brief stay in England I am continually 
 reminded of Mr. Fields. For he brought us into such 
 acquaintanceship with the English 4 Authors of Yester 
 day, that, as I come upon reminders of Dickens, Thack 
 eray, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and other masters of 
 literature, sometimes in galleries of pictures, sometimes 
 in abbeys, cathedrals, and churchyards, their historian 
 and interpreter immediately rises to my memory, who 
 has now, like them, solved the eternal secret, and divined 
 the great mystery of death. 
 
 " I cannot think of him as dead, nor will I. For as 
 he passed through the low gateway that opens outward, 
 and never inward, who can doubt that he entered c an 
 other chamber of the King s, larger than this, and love 
 lier ? Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " MARY A. LIVERMORE." 
 
 Again I return to the everyday incidents of the 
 diary : 
 
 " A young gentleman at dinner yesterday gave me the 
 following anecdote of Dickens. He went one day to 
 hear him read, and was invited afterward by a friend to 
 be presented to Dickens. C. D. (this was most charac 
 teristic) unnecessarily asked him what he, the young 
 listener, thought of his reading ! Since you ask me, 
 he replied, 4 1 think the only criticism I could make upon 
 13 
 
194 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 anything which has given me so much pleasure would be 
 to say, quite frankly, that I think it somewhat too dra 
 matic ! ! Whereat Mr, Dickens bowed, thanked him for 
 his opinion, and the scene terminated. Years after, this 
 gentleman was himself reading from Tennyson s poems 
 to an audience at the Isle of Wight. After it was over, 
 Mr. Dickens came to speak to him from among the au 
 dience. Mr. expressed himself greatly honored, 
 
 and said he was glad to have been unconscious of his 
 distinguished auditor. But what, sir, do you say of 
 my reading ? Since you ask me, said Dickens, bow 
 ing, with a laugh running all over his face. I must 
 tell you that I do not find it quite dramatic enough ! 
 
 " MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA. August, 1872. The 
 fog-bell tolls all day and all night. It is very silent here, 
 yet nature is melodious, the airs are soft, the odors ex 
 quisite. 
 
 " Last night Mr. Fields read aloud a manuscript poem 
 called c The Children of Lebanon, with great pride and 
 feeling, as a surprise to our little circle. 
 
 " The fog-bell continues tolling. Are we not to have 
 some rain, he said, to an old farmer here. I guess we 
 be, was the reply. I see them ere thunder-pillars 
 leanin up agin the Northwest ! The sea still groans. 
 Mr. Fields fell into talk yesterday about his boyhood. 
 The best of Scott s novels were not in his boy s library I 
 Whatever there was he learned to know thoroughly. 
 4 Thaddeus of Warsaw, of course, was a prime favorite. 
 There was a poem called King Alfred, which obtained 
 a horrible reality in his eyes. He heard his two old 
 uncles talking it over one day, when he was a child of 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 195 
 
 six or eight years old. How they bent the old man, 
 he heard them say. 
 
 " CHICAGO, October, 1872. Most hospitably received 
 and entertained. Beautiful autumnal weather ; leaves 
 aglow in the park (chiefly oaks) ; the great lake Michi 
 gan quiet and blue. Went early to see the burnt dis 
 trict. Long rows of new stone fronts rise loftily where 
 one year ago all was dust and ashes ; but the trees stand 
 ing with naked arms stretching to the sky, give pa 
 thetic evidence of what has been. The fine stone and 
 iron walls, too, cracked and ruined, show where grand 
 residences, surrounded by gardens, once stood. Every 
 body thinks everybody else much changed/ The peo 
 ple begin to meet socially now, almost for the first time 
 
 since the public calamity. tells me she has never 
 
 been to see the ruins of her home, although living in 
 close proximity. It is hard to find people. Our first 
 desire was to discover Robert Collyer ; but although 
 Unity Church was rising from its ashes, there was no 
 clue by which we could immediately find its pastor. 
 
 "Lecture in the evening. Masters of the Situation. 
 Large audience, and very enthusiastic. . . . Went to 
 Davenport to lecture. Rode nine hours in the cars, and 
 spoke that same evening ; took the train again after the 
 lecture and returned to Chicago before the world was 
 fairly astir. Noble audience at Davenport; first glimpse 
 of Mississippi River. . . . Surprised to find many 
 Greeley men hereabout. The farmers believe in Gree- 
 ley ; they like his sympathy with them, and his endeav 
 ors for settling the new country. 
 
 " BOSTON, November. Mr. Fields is at work on his 
 
196 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Tennyson lecture, which he gives again to-morrow 
 night. . . . 
 
 " November 9. The most fearful fire New England has 
 ever known is raging in Boston. 
 
 " November 21. Mr. Fields gave The Masters of the 
 Situation, before the Young Men s Union. The subject 
 seems doubled in significance since our disaster, hundreds 
 of young men and women being thrown out of employ 
 ment for the winter. Everybody s time is more or less 
 devoted to trying to bridge over this ugly chasm. . . . 
 Our home never looked so beautiful, nor seemed so refresh 
 ing ! . . . I look with great satisfaction at the long row of 
 good books Mr. Fields brought into the American world 
 while he was still a member of the publishing house. . . . 
 Our great treat this week has been reading the second 
 volume of Forster s Life of Dickens, which was for 
 warded in sheets. We hardly breathed till we had read 
 every word. . . . Such unending power of work, such 
 universal care for others, such intense absorption in 
 whatever was before him, has never been portrayed be 
 fore. . . . The fun and pathos of the book brings his 
 dear presence back to us again with intense vividness. 
 Mr. Fields wrote at once to Forster. . . . 
 
 "Hunt s studio having burned, utterly burned to 
 nothing, he has bravely taken a new one, and is at 
 work, though his whole youth, he says, seems to have 
 gone up in the flames. 
 
 " April, 1873. Mr. Fields at home writing away upon 
 his Charles Lamb lecture with great assiduity. He is 
 enjoying his work, but writes only too steadily. I must 
 contrive some kind of diversion. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 197 
 
 " HANOVER, N. H., June. Most hospitable reception. 
 Pleasant old-fashioned house under green elm trees. The 
 lecture was given in the church where Webster, Choate, 
 and others have addressed the College for many years. 
 Every kind of festivity proper to the occasion ; even a 
 serenade ! 
 
 "MANCHESTER, Sunday, August. Walked to church. 
 Mr. Fields found himself lame ; returning stopped at the 
 doctor s, who pronounced serious trouble at the knee, and 
 gave iodine wash. 
 
 "Monday. Mr. Fields went to town, saw a surgeon, and 
 came back bringing splint, etc., etc., also two guests. . . . 
 
 " September. Knee is no better. Neighbors and 
 friends all kind and attentive. The hours do not seem 
 to be long to the patient. He is cheerful. Reading 
 Channing s Life of Thoreau with great satisfaction. 
 
 " CHARLES STREET, October. Mr. Fields still lame, 
 but has had a comfortable week. Charles Sumner dined 
 with us. He seemed less well than of late. He said 
 it was frequently his habit to spend fourteen consecu 
 tive hours at his desk or in reading. The active exercise 
 of composition was, of course, agreeable to him in cer 
 tain moods, but the passive exercise of reading was a 
 never-ending delight. He spoke of Lord Brougham, 
 Mrs. Norton and her two beautiful sisters. . . . There 
 was much wit and humor that day at table. The ladies 
 lingered long after coffee and cigars were brought, that 
 they might not lose the conversation. Heard a good 
 story of a deaf man lately married, who was asked at 
 the Club about his bride : Is she pretty ? No, re 
 plied the deaf gentleman. 4 No, she is not, but she will 
 be when her father dies ! 
 
198 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " November. Mr. Fields s course of lectures at the 
 Lowell Institute began while he was still wearing a 
 splint. Amusing anecdotes connected with his lectures 
 are continually recurring. He met a man a day or two 
 ago who said he liked his lectures, for there did n t 
 seem to be any of that shycanery in em so many people 
 now-a-days put in. Another said, 4 his wife was amazed 
 to see how interested she got in hearin about these folks 
 she d never known nothin about before; but she d like 
 to ask who that North was anyhow ! (This was said 
 after the lecture on Christopher North, John Wilson. ) 
 
 " His own relation of an evening in a certain town of 
 Massachusetts, where a long train of people came up to 
 be introduced in succession with a ready-made speech, 
 was very dramatic and comic. Last in the line came a 
 grandmother holding her grandchild by the hand. Hav 
 ing made the regulation speech herself, the child also ad 
 dressed him with the same words and in a piping voice, 
 which proved almost too much for the gravity of the 
 lecturer. A certain definition of eloquence by one of his 
 hearers was also given that same night. That s what 
 I call ellerquence, he said ; 4 1 tell my wife I allus know 
 what seems to me ellerquence by kind o shivers which 
 runs up and down my back. Well ! In one of your 
 pieces I felt them shivers all over ; that s what I call 
 real ellerquence. 
 
 August 31, 1874. Ground broken for our sea-side 
 house. The stone-cutters turned in with a will. 
 
 " BOSTON, September. Very hot. Glad to think that 
 Thunder Bolt Hill is ours. 
 : " PLYMOUTH, N. H. Mr. Fields continues at work on 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 199 
 
 his Wordsworth lecture. He has just read, first with 
 amusement, and then wonderingly, that characteristic pas 
 sage where Wordsworth says of his own poetry : no one 
 who has come at length to an admiration of his (Words 
 worth s) poems has ever been known to survive their 
 satisfaction." 
 
 " Monday Evening, September 14. A soft haze has 
 overspread the hills to-day, indicating heat, but the cool 
 breezes blow so delightfully about this place that we have 
 not felt it. Took a long drive to Squam Lake and Hol- 
 derness over a steep hill. It was very like some of the 
 passes, perhaps Kirkstone, in the English lake country, 
 and no less beautiful ; but the solitude here is more vast 
 and unbroken. We passed a square brick house with a 
 roof of shingles, belted around by a forest, several miles 
 from any settlement, and a mile at least, I should say, 
 from a neighbor. The side-door was wide open, and I 
 caught a glimpse of a woman reading there as we drove 
 by. We found the blue gentian and wild apples by the 
 roadside. 
 
 " Mr. Fields has gone this evening to give his lecture 
 on Tennyson to the Normal School, the only school of 
 this character in the State. It has struggled hard for 
 existence, and is barely on a firm foundation now. He 
 likes the principal of the school, and finds him interested 
 in his work. 
 
 " Walked across the broad meadows in the sunset, 
 and paused under the drooping elms to watch the long 
 shadows and yellow light play over the grass, and finally 
 left the whole in dusky shade, with a glory shining on 
 the hills around. 
 
200 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " HANOVER, Thursday Evening, September 17. In the 
 house of our kind friend, Professor S. We came from 
 Plymouth to Hanover through the Pemigewasset Valley, 
 and went thence to the Connecticut. The mist which 
 has lain over the hills for the last few days, prognosti 
 cating the much needed rain, was thick enough to con 
 ceal some of the high peaks, but the soft gray light made 
 the landscape only more beautiful with its gay maple 
 boughs and brilliant green. 
 
 " We soon came to the little town of Haverhill, beau 
 tifully situated in the valley of the Connecticut. The 
 hills rise all around it. Nature in New England can 
 hardly be seen to better advantage. Young girls were 
 strolling, and perhaps studying, on the hill -sides, 
 flowers are cultivated ; there is a seminary ; altogether 
 the people seemed in a fair way to use and understand 
 their resources. There had been a three weeks drought, 
 and the roads were ankle deep with dust, but the clouds 
 were gathering, and a tender gray sky overspread the 
 beautiful scene as we drove across the river and through 
 the village of Newbury to the hotel. We found a neat 
 and comfortable harbor. A room high up, but the view 
 across the meadows to the neighboring hills was en- 
 trancingly beautiful. We stationed ourselves at separate 
 windows, and could not take our eyes from the scene. 
 Presently we sallied out for a walk to a hill called 
 Montebello, which overhangs the lovely vale. The day 
 was calm, with an occasional sunbeam straying through 
 clouds and walking across the soft green carpet, perhaps 
 two hundred feet below. The sheep and cows wandered 
 slowly and luxuriously over the cool vast feeding ground, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 201 
 
 and large elms and maples cast shadows hardly less 
 beautiful than the trees themselves. The birds were 
 chattering around us, and their voices alone broke the 
 silence. The calmness of eternity seemed to reign there. 
 I felt sorry for those of our countrymen who, in igno 
 rance of these blissful retreats, fly to Europe as if all 
 beauty had been left behind by the stern Pilgrims. 
 There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the 
 valley of the Connecticut and the Vermont hill-country. 
 It is yet to be appreciated fully. 
 
 We drove away the next day, although a soft misty 
 atmosphere let down a little rain from time to time. 
 Went on to Fairlee and Orford, the river always in 
 sight, and the scenery rich and various. Rain came 
 fast by the time we reached the hotel at Orford, and it 
 was dark early. A queer hotel, full of drovers and coun 
 trymen with no clean hands, who sat at the same table 
 with us, and devoured endless varieties of excellent food 
 as if it were all their right. The poor, pale little land 
 lady, with a crying baby on her arm, told me, in ex 
 change for my remark that I should like another jug of 
 water in our bedroom, that she buried her eldest child, 
 a beautiful boy, in the spring. She seemed to have 
 left her heart chiefly in the child s grave, and the house 
 went on as best it might. When I thought of that little 
 woman attempting to provide pies and cakes, and the va 
 rious niceties with which the table was covered, for those 
 exasperating drovers, who ate as if they were enlarged 
 locusts sent to create a famine, I grew quite indignant. 
 We walked about the beautiful village in the dusk, but 
 the rain began to fall heavily, and we were driven in- 
 
202 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 doors and thence to bed, for lack of good lights and a 
 place to sit. 
 
 " Drove to Fairlee in the rain, and ordered crab-apple 
 trees of a good old man, who has made this whole region 
 of the country beautiful from his orchard, sending the 
 trees up and down the river wherever people are wise 
 enough to want them. Saw another country interior. 
 A gray-haired woman, the mother of several children, all 
 dead save one, the youngest, who was playing about. 
 She was at work making the everlasting pies. She said 
 4 the country was beautiful about there for those as had 
 time to look at it. For her part, there was so much work 
 to do in their house she never had time to go out much ! 
 She was rapidly moving between her huge cooking-stove 
 and the ironing-table as she talked. Called to decide 
 on the apple trees, and returning to the sitting-room a 
 young girl was ironing at the table. From her rather 
 trim costume, cut in city fashion, I ventured to ask if 
 she lived there. 4 Oh no ! she said, * her home was in 
 Chicago. She had come to make her relatives a short 
 visit, but as there was only one laundress in the village, 
 and she was busy, she concluded to do up her own dress. 
 All of which was very commendable, but she did not 
 seem to find pleasure in her novel experience. I said, 
 4 How you must delight in this beautiful place after Chi 
 cago. Well, she said, lowering her voice so that her 
 kind hostess should not hear, 4 this is all very well for 
 a few days, but it s terribly lonely. 
 
 44 We were glad to get away from the atmosphere of 
 those women. In a paradise of natural beauty, with kind 
 neighbors and some interesting people, too, within the 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 203 
 
 radius of a mile, they allowed themselves to be utterly 
 ignorant of the glory of nature as well as the human com 
 panionship they might have had. Drove a mile farther, 
 into a solitude indeed, upon the hills, to the cottage of 
 
 . We had no time to get out, neither could we 
 
 do so, because the grass grew all round the door and was 
 very wet. We sent in word who was there, and Mrs. 
 
 , slipping on overshoes and taking shawl and 
 
 umbrella, ran out to speak to us. Here was a difference ! 
 4 1 never go out of that little brown hut, she said, from 
 the time of the first snow-fall until spring returns, and 
 sometimes when I get discouraged with the dull routine 
 of things I go into my own room where I keep all the 
 books you have sent me, and I take down Emerson or 
 Carlyle, or some other friend, and I have all the society 
 I need, and go back by and by refreshed to my work/ 
 Tears sprang to our eyes as she talked. It was good to 
 see her, and we shall not meet again as strangers." 
 
 " October 9. The busy season of the year is again 
 opening. Mr. Fields has lectured three times this week 
 in different places. At one town a little girl of nine 
 years came up to him after the lecture, put her arms 
 around his neck and kissed him ! The child clung to 
 him until he left, although she had never seen him be 
 fore. He brought home superb flowers. 
 
 " In the train he met a man, a total stranger, who in 
 troduced himself, and then proceeded, little by little, to 
 give him the full story of his life. A strange and mov 
 ing history it was, and the way in which he clung to his 
 hearer was something extraordinary. He was a student, 
 and a man of digested learning also, who had already 
 
204 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 made his mark in literature, but the sorrows of that 
 line were unfolded with the directness of childhood." 
 
 " NEW YORK, February 7, 1875. Dickens s birthday. 
 A cold, raw, clouded day, contrasting with the wonderful 
 floods of yellow sunshine which we have enjoyed ever 
 since we left Boston. 
 
 " Came to Saratoga, where Mr. Fields spoke the same 
 evening. On the way in the yellow of the cold sunset 
 the monument to young Ellsworth was pointed out to 
 us on the summit of a hill. The marble eagle on the top 
 shone in the bright air. 
 
 " Pleasant reception and warm fire at Saratoga. The 
 night very cold, clear and starry, the ground covered 
 with snow. A 4 lovely audience assembled to greet the 
 lecturer, who came home warmed by the exertion of 
 speaking. We had a comfortable little supper, chiefly 
 on baked potatoes, by the side of our bedroom fire, and 
 went most comfortably to sleep, in spite of the inquiring 
 glance one must always cast at a strange bed in a hotel 
 of mediocre achievements with respect to cooking. The 
 next morning took a brisk ramble on the crisp snow. 
 The change was delightful. We had left Boston almost 
 impassable the snow of the streets had been churned 
 into a kind of gray meal, which clogged both wheel car 
 riages and runners, and the sidewalks were like rivulets 
 with slippery bottoms. Here everything was so clean ! 
 Cold, certainly, but fresh, and bright, and healthy. 
 
 " That day to Poughkeepsie, where Mr. Fields lectured 
 again. Here on the banks of the Hudson, though still 
 cold, there was little snow to be seen. He came home 
 rather tired dfcom Jiis lecture. They had given him no 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 205 
 
 lamp for the desk, only foot-lights ! ! and general lofty 
 illumination. The result was, he cut his lecture very 
 short. Again, supper in our room, but the man had 
 kept him talking some time below stairs, and he was a 
 little more tired. However, we rose soon after six the 
 next morning, and went to Vassar College, where at nine 
 o clock he made an address to the students. There were 
 three hundred and seventy-five young girls in the build 
 ing, and nearly that number must have attended the 
 morning lecture. It was an audience of the best kind. 
 
 o 
 
 He was as much pleased as they were. Afterward, we 
 went over the building and the observatory, whither we 
 went for the purpose of seeing Professor Maria Mitchell, 
 whom the students love dearly. A bust of Mrs. Somer- 
 ville was in her room, presented her by Frances Power 
 Cobbe. We saw the telescope and instruments, also 
 an arrangement or adjustment of lines for measurement 
 which may be ranked among the discoveries. It is 
 Miss Mitchell s own. Instrument and room answer their 
 purpose admirably, but twenty thousand dollars are re 
 quired to perpetuate the work here begun. One pair of 
 hands may hold it for a time, but without a foundation 
 there is danger of loss in the future. ... At night 
 we reached New York. Mr. Fields was completely ex 
 hausted. 
 
 " June, 1875. First overtures from the Southern 
 States to a real reconciliation. To-day three Southern 
 regiments have arrived in Boston to help Massachusetts 
 keep the centennial celebration of the battle of Bunker s 
 Hill. One comes from Maryland, one from Baltimore, 
 and one company from Charleston, South Carolina. The 
 
206 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 latter contains only forty-eight men, but it is the fact of 
 their coming at all rather than the numbers which is im 
 pressive. Bayard Taylor came from New York to report 
 the event for the 4 Tribune. After dinner went to hear 
 Dr. Holmes and Dr. Ellis, at the opening of the exhi 
 bition of relics. There was hardly a dry eye when 
 Holmes finished reading. 
 
 " William Hunt at tea. Took out a letter from Du- 
 veneck thanking him for the word of artistic recognition 
 he so greatly needed. Ah ! he s got the right spirit/ 
 said Hunt, he loves art better than his native city. He 
 loves the place where he was born and bred ; we all do 
 so, and we can t help hankering after it ; but he loves 
 art more, and he will go wherever he can find the most 
 room for that. But how impossible it is to drum art 
 into people if they can t see it. ... They talk about 
 Millet s not taking pains ! Why, he worked several 
 weeks in my studio in Paris one winter, and was three 
 weeks constantly upon one hand. The truth is, painters 
 shouldn t talk. They should have their mouths sewed 
 up tight, and DO the thing, not talk about it. . . . 
 
 " July 5, 1875. Writing in our own cottage at Man 
 chester. 
 
 " This year an idea which was never absent from his 
 mind, of teaching young people how and what to read, 
 began to take shape in his thought. I find the printed 
 title-page of a book before me, which was then projected. 
 It was to be called, 4 Talks with Young Scholars by an 
 Old Scholar. And the motto runs 
 
 " What at your book so hard ? . . . 
 
 I 11 talk with this good fellow. SHAKESPEARE; 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 207 
 
 " Several pages of the c First Talk, were also printed ; 
 but it is probable that the continual use he was able to 
 make of all his material in his never-ending lectures 
 caused him to postpone any such publication. 1 Lectur 
 ing (out of Boston) usually signified something more 
 than the simple delivery of the evening discourse ; there 
 was always a high school or seminary in waiting, asking 
 for a few words on the following morning, or the previ 
 ous afternoon. His tact with young people, and his 
 power of interesting them in his subjects, was one of 
 his peculiar gifts ; perhaps I ought to add also one of 
 his peculiar enjoyments, therefore he yielded the more 
 readily to the continual solicitation of teachers for his 
 assistance. 
 
 1 The following sketch of topics for various chapters, with sug 
 gestions for titles, were found among his papers : 
 
 (HALF-HOUR) TALKS 
 WITH YOUNG SCHOLARS, 
 
 BY 
 
 AN OLD SCHOLAR. 
 
 TOPICS. 135 
 
 Habits of Study. Self- Control. g <; 
 
 Public Speaking. Composition. ?> <? 
 
 Reverence. Patriotism. 
 
 Punctuality. Enthusiasm. 
 
 Heading. |. s. 
 
 Conversation. *? ^ 
 
 Exercise. S. S, 
 
 ??* ?f 
 
 Handwriting. 
 
 Cold Water. ^ 
 
 Courtesy. g: ^ 
 
 Good Temper. 
 
 Debt. & S 
 
208 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "]n the autumn of this year Mr. Fields again left 
 home for Chicago, and a western lecturing tour. Again, 
 we enjoyed a hospitable reception, and saw much that 
 was interesting under our friend Robert Collyer s guid 
 ance. Among other friendships begun, not ended, there 
 was one with William Clarke who, in what might seem 
 unsympathetic surroundings, had preserved his youthful 
 love and enthusiasm untarnished. His treasures were 
 not among seen and temporal things. 
 
 " Came to Beloit, Wisconsin. A pleasant town full of 
 comfortable homes ; but the youth who had taken the 
 responsibility of sending for the lecturer in a moment of 
 enthusiasm, neither understood the business he had un 
 dertaken, nor had counted the cost. It was too early in 
 the season at best, and the town was a small one. There 
 was no audience. The poor young man had no money 
 to meet expenses, and was distressed beyond measure. 
 Mr. Fields saw through the situation from the first mo 
 ment, and fully appreciated the ludicrous side of it. Af 
 ter all was over, he withdrew the frightened youth into 
 a private room, saw that expenses were paid, and sent 
 the poor fellow off rejoicing, and promising never to do 
 so any more. 
 
 " Left Beloit before dawn, rising at four A. M. for the 
 purpose, and going breakfastless to the station in the 
 dark. 
 
 " MILWAUKEE, Sunday. First Sunday afternoon 
 lecture ever given in this city. It was a great success ; 
 at the Academy of Music. Beautiful city, but cold as 
 Christmas. 
 
 " RACINE. Lectured. Hotel overlooking the waters of 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 209 
 
 Lake Michigan in the moonlight. Starting early the next 
 day, we hardly arrived at Evanston (for the evening 
 lecture) in time to dress. Up early again next day, and 
 on through Chicago to Rockford. Walked through the 
 town in the afternoon. We crossed Fox River, made 
 famous by Abraham Lincoln s story. Mr. Fields is a 
 little more tired and homesick than usual, but this is the 
 first really home-sick place we have seen. 
 
 " Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, one of the clear 
 est, cleanest, and most beautiful of western cities. The 
 College has four hundred students, an equal number of 
 women and men. The State House is like a small Greek 
 temple, surrounded with trees. We were most hospit 
 ably entertained in the beautiful home of Ole Bull. Left 
 Madison at midnight for Chicago, where we found our 
 selves at half-past seven in the morning, and no carriages 
 at the station. Gathering our wraps we walked across 
 the still half-sleeping city to the hotel. The morning 
 air and exercise revived us, but in a few hours we were 
 in the cars again, hot and airless, and on arrival at a 
 place called Sterling found a broiling fire in our 
 stived-up bedroom. The lecture was on 4 Cheerful 
 ness ! 
 
 " The hall was crowded, though it is a place of only 
 five thousand inhabitants. People pressed about him 
 eagerly ; one woman came eighteen miles to talk of her 
 brother, Ralph Keeler, whom Mr. Fields had known, and 
 to hear the lecture. As he walked out in the morning, 
 a rough man driving a country wagon came up to him, 
 jumped from his seat, pulled off his buckskin glove, and 
 asked to be allowed to pay his humble tribute of grati- 
 14 
 
210 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 tude for the lecture, which he said had done him a world 
 of good. Long after you have forgotten this place we 
 shall remember you, one of his listeners said. 
 
 " OMAHA, NEBRASKA, October 17. Pretty tired after 
 a long night and half day from Sterling to this place. 
 The whole distance was like some noble garden, exquisite 
 in sunset, moonlight, and morning. Here a fierce wind 
 is blowing. It is dusty, and we begin to see the life 
 Bret Harte describes in the faces, manners, and bearing 
 of the people. We see fine horses and stalwart men. 
 Everybody is kind and attentive to us. Opera House 
 crowded. Men came in from the prairie in high boots 
 to hear the lecture, leaving their horses outside. 
 
 " October 19. Arose at four o clock, jumped into an 
 omnibus which rattled rudely along over the soft earthy 
 avenues, and into occasional holes, especially near the 
 street crossings, which are of plank, sometimes rising a 
 foot above the level of the road. The vehicle was full, 
 two women with young babies, not to speak of children 
 of all ages taken from their beds, a company of the 
 unwashed. We had time, however, for everything ex 
 cept breakfast ! There was no express train. All day 
 long we rattled on in cars heated by iron stoves, without 
 dinner (they stopped somewhere and called it by that 
 name, but we could not find courage to go in), until 
 half-past six o clock, when we reached Iowa city, where 
 c Cheerfulness was again given to a fine audience. 
 
 " October 20. Went to prayers at the University of 
 Iowa, which stands in a park opposite the hotel. Saw 
 six hundred boys and girls together. A fine sight. 
 Later in the day we walked across the bridge which 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 211 
 
 spans the Iowa River. The day was exquisite, warm as 
 summer, with a soft haze. We sat on the hillside enjoy 
 ing it, greatly amused in watching a family trying to 
 get a drove of pigs to market. . . . 
 
 " BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS. Arriving at half-past ten 
 at night, we found a reunion of the Thirty-third Illinois 
 Regiment with other soldiers, officers, and their wives, 
 amounting to three hundred persons, had taken posses 
 sion of the hotel. It was a most interesting sight, how 
 ever, as such reunions must always be. When they dis 
 covered Mr. Fields was in the hall, they would not rest 
 until he had responded for Massachusetts. His speech, 
 though short, was to the point, and the applause was 
 simply terrific. There was no liquor on the tables, and 
 the presence of women gave a cheerful aspect, which 
 kept the memorial day from becoming too painful. One 
 man who had lost a leg tottered as he rose to speak, 
 whereat another one-legged comrade rose up and sup 
 ported him. 
 
 " Were driven to see the State Normal School and 
 Orphans Home. Both noble establishments, of which 
 Iowa may well be proud. Our guide wore a toothpick in 
 his mouth, which he revolved restlessly with his tongue 
 until you were perplexed as to the possibility of that 
 member s evading any longer the sharp point inside. He 
 wished to show us the museum, 4 the first in America, 
 sir ! also parks, kitchens, laundries, cupolas, and every 
 imaginable corner. I took the lecturer s part steadfastly, 
 declaring that, with a lecture before him that evening, 
 he could go up and down no more stairs. Except for 
 
212 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 this excuse I know not what would have become of 
 us." 1 . . . 
 
 " Arrived at . The place was full of kindliness, 
 
 stove-heat, and enthusiasm for Mr. Fields! . . . School- 
 house, all house and very little school ; teachers salaries 
 worse than very little. . . . 
 
 " Reached Boston October 31st. November 3d Mr. 
 
 1 We cut the inclosed out of one of the local newspapers : 
 
 OATS AN 7 D BARLEY. 
 
 Fifty thousand bushels wanted at our oat-meal mill in Coral ville, 
 for which we will pay the highest market price. 
 
 TURNER & Co. 
 
 THE IOWA CORN CROP. 
 
 Iowa is a growing State scarce thirty years old. Among other 
 products she will this year add to the sum total, 140,000,000 bushels 
 of corn. Now let us see what this means when put in a comprehen 
 sive form. It will require an army of 150,000 grangers twenty days 
 to pluck and crib the ears. If shipped it would require 4,666 ships 
 of 1,000 tons each to carry the crop. If transported upon cars, it 
 will require 470,000 cars, and would make a train 2,750 miles in 
 length, or space nearly across the continent. If loaded upon wag 
 ons, with carrying capacity of thirty bushels each, the train would 
 form a line 27,000 miles long, or 2,000 miles more than the circuit 
 of the globe. If emptied down upon the city of New York, it would 
 overwhelm that city as were Herculaneum and Pompeii. If made 
 into whiskey, it would float the United States navy, or make every 
 man, woman, and child upon the face of the earth drunk. It means 
 t at horses, fat beef, fat hogs, fat poultry, and fat pocket-books. It 
 means that it will open bank vaults and start the wheels of com 
 merce. Here in young Iowa are mines richer than California, or 
 Ophir, or Peru. Fifty thousand square miles of surface diggin s 
 and all " play dirt." Then why not come to Iowa? Council Bluffs 
 Nonpareil. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 213 
 
 Fields left again for Williams College, where he lectured 
 three successive nights. . . . 
 
 " BOSTON, February. Went to see Sothern in David 
 Garrick. A beautiful piece of dramatic art. He said 
 afterward at supper, in speaking of the vagaries of the 
 mind, that he was always tempted when he came to the 
 love-making of that play to astonish the audience by 
 turning a somersault or two before them on the stage. 
 He reminded us of Dickens again, as he always does. 
 The flashing glance, the clear-cut speech, the love of 
 effects, the keen, almost unobservable study of his com 
 panions, the very sound of his laugh, but of course the 
 measureless tenderness, the unselfish regard of which 
 Dickens was capable, and which made him the master 
 he was, can only be known once. 
 
 " Sothern amused us immensely telling us of his 
 hatreds, 4 musical boxes and photographs. They are 
 his red rags. He illustrated his own love of practical 
 jokes : 
 
 " He had invited a friend, who was going up to Lon 
 don to some entertainment, to sleep in his chambers, he 
 himself having planned, just at that time, to be away. 
 He changed his plans, however, for some good reason, 
 and forgetting all about his invitation, went to his cham 
 bers to sleep on that particular night when his friend 
 was to take possession. He had gone quietly in at a 
 late hour, as was his wont, and had just thrown off his 
 coat and collar, when he heard a snoring in the inner 
 room. For a moment he was startled, but soon the 
 ludicrousness of the whole thing burst upon him. Put 
 ting on his coat once more, he took a huge music-box, 
 
214 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 which some misguided friend had given him, wound it 
 up, and put it under the bed. It was one of the kind 
 that has hammers and bells and every sort of noisy ac 
 companiment. Soon the thing went off. His dramatic 
 representation of the horror of the inhabitant of the bed, 
 and his own enjoyment of the joke from behind the door, 
 was very diverting. . . . 
 
 "Passed the evening in Hunt s studio. When we 
 arrived he said they were just fixin for the company ! 
 He was moving about in his liveliest and most restless 
 way. Every now and then he would hear a noise from 
 a small nephew behind a screen. 4 He s arrangin the 
 cake, said Hunt. Presently, when the cake was ar 
 ranged ! it was brought in a huge tin dish and placed on 
 the top of a high stool near his easel during the evening. 
 Then he began to show his work the portrait of 
 Agassiz, one of a lady, and many drawings in pastel and 
 charcoal. Also a fine woman s figure holding a man 
 dolin, with beautiful green drapery and yellow hair. 
 Some one said, 4 t is like Paul Veronese, but softer, 
 said Hunt, t is softer now, is n t it, in a kind of boyish 
 and appealing way. We had delightful music. When 
 it was time to go Hunt said, hugging himself and dan 
 cing about, i if you will go, I m glad I have n t shown 
 you everything. I ve lots more 1 1 
 
 " WELLESLEY, June, 1876. The sun was streaming 
 across the lawn and the great trees flinging down their 
 shadows as we approached the college, a very fine build 
 ing filled with three hundred young women. Six girls 
 rowed us across the lake. It was a lovely sight, espe 
 cially as we approached the garden shore. Returning, 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 215 
 
 Mr. Fields gave his lecture on De Quincey, and after 
 ward enjoyed the evening with his host and hostess in 
 the fine library of the college." 
 
 This is the first record of a series of visits to 
 Wellesley, which ended only with Mr. Fields s 
 death. His associations with the place and its 
 founders were something more than agreeable, 
 they were those of friendship. These ties strength 
 ened with the years, and as he always loved his 
 friends in a way to help them, so his interest in 
 Wellesley was deeply appreciated by its pro 
 jectors. 
 
 " October 27, 1876. Lectured in Springfield en route 
 to Buffalo and Niagara. The scene at the Falls was 
 never more impressive. Walked about the place the 
 livelong day except an hour for dinner. 
 
 " OBEELIN. Lecture most successful. The young 
 men hung about his steps till the last moment. Rose at 
 half-past five, and left before the sun appeared. The air 
 was delicious, the horses strong, and we watched the per 
 fect beauty of the dawn as we drove over the solitary 
 road, heavy with black soft soil. How endless and for 
 lorn some of these roads looked, branching out, no one 
 knows whither, and reaching over utter solitudes. We 
 were driven by a young student, who replied civilly to 
 our questions about growing things, birds, even milk-cans, 
 and all kinds of matters, such as beset the wandering 
 eyes of the traveler. The milk-cans were indeed pro 
 digious in that district. They were explained when we 
 
216 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 understood that we had entered the town of Wellington, 
 one of the largest cheese depots in the world. Some 
 quick eye, seeing the name on our trunk as we drove 
 through the town, a deputation waited on Mr. Fields at 
 the station to pray him to stay over one day and lecture. 
 
 " It was very warm as we rode on across the vast State 
 of Ohio, with its gathered corn, its springing winter 
 wheat, its vast cultivated plains and rather slow rivers. 
 Mr. Fields was deeply interested in the sight, especially 
 as we drew near to Dayton, where is the Soldiers Home, 
 dear to us because of the fine library that belonged to 
 one of our young Massachusetts soldiers who fell at Ball s 
 Bluff. It was presented to this Home by his mother. 
 
 " CINCINNATI, November 3. Dark November weather. 
 
 - November 4. Lecture last night on Wordsworth 
 drew a crowded house. Everybody is more than kind. 
 This morning a fog deep as that of London covers every 
 thing. 
 
 "Lectures continued daily all very successful. 
 
 " CHICAGO, November 9, 1876. Intensely anxious as 
 to the result of the election. Eager crowds at every 
 station on the way to snatch the newspapers. 
 
 " The next evening Mr. Fields lectured at a place called 
 Princeton, traveling all night after speaking, and return 
 ing to Chicago at seven o clock, A. M. . . . Left Chicago 
 for a week of lectures throughout Wisconsin. . . . Re 
 turning Friday, lectured Friday evening at Beloit, and 
 again traveling all night, reached Chicago at day-break. 
 He is not well ; after resting we walked down town, and 
 dined alone together, which seemed to do him good. 
 
 " Sunday. McCorruick s vast hall crowded to hear 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 217 
 
 the Plea for Cheerfulness. Everybody enthusiastic 
 and aglow. 
 
 " BUFFALO. Walking out in the afternoon to see the 
 lecture-room for the evening, Mr. Fields stumbled over 
 the steps in a dark entry, and sprained his ankle. With 
 the aid of cold wet compresses and a physician s care, 
 he gave his lecture, sitting, but otherwise as if nothing 
 were the matter. Thanksgiving day dined at East Buf 
 falo railway station. Much amused by a party, appar 
 ently the Fezziwig family, also dining. It was a wonder 
 fully clean little place with the best of home-cooked 
 dinners. We were waited upon by a young woman in 
 the cleanest of clean gowns. She said, in answer to our 
 inquiries about the jolly party, Oh, it s the family, and 
 they ain t all here neither ! So the family was mak 
 ing merry in its own restaurant ! and who should have 
 a better right. 
 
 " NEW YORK, December, 1876. Mr. Fields lectures in 
 New York, Swarthmore, and West Chester, alternately, 
 every week." 
 
 With this month the diary ends. It never was 
 resumed. Engagements and occupations absorbed 
 the time and strength of both, and personal inter 
 ests gave way to other claims. I cannot, however, 
 allow Mr. Fields s lectures, which will never be 
 printed, to pass into oblivion, without striving to 
 rescue some memory of their peculiar qualities and 
 influence. For this purpose, in order that no mis 
 take may be made by substituting private opinion 
 
218 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 for genuine public recognition, I turn to the trib 
 utes paid him through the newspapers and peri 
 odicals. In one of the Philadelphia newspapers I 
 find:- 
 
 " We do not attempt to criticise Mr. Fields. No one 
 can, without loving him, listen to his soft, gentle voice, 
 in the quiet, conversational tone with which he puts his 
 audiences in warm personal relations with him." 
 
 A writer in Worcester, Mass., where he always 
 found a delightful audience, says : - 
 
 "The lecturer spoke of the good done the world by 
 pleasant people, meaning by pleasant people those who 
 are to the manor born, seeing everything and everybody 
 at the best and under a certain illumination, not those 
 who are pleasant now and then or at times when they 
 are pleased. Somewhere in a new England cemetery, on 
 a gravestone, said the speaker, is to be found, with the 
 name and age, the line, 4 She was so pleasant. Think, 
 said he, what a delightful character she must have been 
 to have an epitaph like that. It makes one think that a 
 choir of nightingales is perched upon her grave and sing 
 ing melodious chants to her memory. 
 
 Also, from Worcester, came the following pri 
 vate note, one among many from other quarters of 
 the same nature ; the source of which remains un 
 discovered : 
 
 "WORCESTER, MASS., January 11, 1879. 
 
 "MR. JAMES T. FIELDS: I must ever count among 
 my chief blessings the privilege of hearing the course of 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 219 
 
 lectures upon English literature YOU are now giving in 
 our city. It cannot be a matter of indifference to you 
 that you have greatly blessed and helped one in sore 
 need. 
 
 " I thank yon from my heart for showing me that a 
 great noble learned man can vet be modest and simple, 
 as our Saviours type of his own pure kingdom, a little 
 child. Whereas I was once, to a great extent, blind, I 
 believe I have now both eyes open, and please God I will 
 never shut them again. 
 
 " May you have many, many happy useful years, 
 
 "A GRATEFUL HEARER." 
 
 Again in a paper from Pawtucket, Massachu 
 setts, I find : 
 
 " The lecture, from beginning to end, was an absorb 
 ing literary treat. He spoke of the importance of novels 
 and the influence they exerted upon the mind and so 
 ciety, commended the good and warmly denounced the 
 bad ; in the latter case amply illustrating the debasing 
 effect the pernicious trash, from the dime novel to the so- 
 called periodicals for boys and girls, which take up the 
 larger portion of our newsdealers counters, has had and 
 is liable to have upon the readers of the abominable 
 stuff ; and his words upon this portion of his subject 
 ought to be printed in circular form and spread broadcast 
 over the entire country." 
 
 And from Exeter, New Hampshire : 
 
 Mr. Fields has done more than any other American 
 to familiarize us with the men of letters of the old world 
 
220 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 and their works ; and the nation owes him a debt of 
 gratitude which will become greater as the ranks of our 
 scholars increase. His opportunities have been pecul 
 iarly advantageous, his memory is prodigious, and he 
 has gathered in a store of fact and narrative that renders 
 him the most charming lecturer of the day. . . . He is 
 able to surround his subjects with an interest, a fresh 
 ness, and a wealth of reminiscence of which no other 
 lecturer is capable." 
 
 From the New York " Tribune " : 
 
 " The effect of such a course of lectures on the great 
 public cannot easily be estimated. At every discourse 
 there must be at least a small number to whose minds a 
 new world is suddenly opened. The mind which has 
 been favored with the advantages of education in its 
 more practical sense, may find a never-ending interest 
 and pleasure in the labors of science, the studies of po 
 litical economy, the pages of history, the puzzling prob 
 lems of higher mathematics, or the wondrous progress of 
 mechanical invention ; yet unless the lights of modern 
 English literature have beamed upon their libraries they 
 must pass through earth-life in a shadow." 
 
 Finally a writer in the " New York Post/ hav 
 ing heard one of his lectures in Boston, re 
 marks : 
 
 44 Mr. Fields was clearly of the mind that Bostonians 
 had the opportunities for too much education, and it was 
 a timely suggestion, that if the public libraries could not 
 be weeded of some of their sensational trash, well quali- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 221 
 
 fied indicators should be appointed who should gauge the 
 requirements of applicants, and tell them what books 
 they ought to read." 
 
 This paragraph revives the memory of an idea 
 which was a growth from his experience, and 
 which he always believed to be perfectly feasible. 
 Public libraries, he considered, could effect but a 
 small part of the good for which they were in 
 tended until persons of judgment and sympathy 
 could be found and appointed as indicators to 
 assist readers in the selection of proper books. 
 
 The kind of affectionate personal interest which 
 grew up in the minds of his hearers toward him 
 was exceptionally noticeable. During the lecture 
 season his house was seldom without flowers, offer 
 ings from his grateful listeners. He did not often 
 return empty handed from his evening reading. 
 This was but one expression of the influence he 
 exerted. 
 
 In vain, during these pages, have I hoped to 
 recall in words something of the vitalizing, en 
 couraging, sympathizing, and above all simple and 
 human presence which Mr. Fields was to all who 
 knew him. I fear it may not be ! But there is, 
 at least, one striking characteristic of him not yet 
 expressed, he could bring the most adverse na 
 tures together, and, if war were not previously de 
 clared between them, they would separate liking 
 
222 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 each other better than they had ever believed pos 
 sible. He was born to harmonize, and the amount 
 of such business he was called upon to do was very 
 unusual. 
 
 Meanwhile he was continuously occupied at his 
 desk, as the subjoined list of twenty-seven lec 
 tures, which he had ready at this period, will 
 show. 1 
 
 He found it difficult to shake off his old occu 
 pation altogether. " Once a publisher always a 
 publisher," he would say. Sometimes, however, 
 the applications were too much even for his pa 
 tience, and I find the following paragraph, cut 
 from one of the daily papers : 
 
 " Mr. J. T. Fields is compelled again to request pub 
 licly that no more manuscripts may be sent to him for 
 examination, as he has not been connected with any 
 magazine or publishing-house for several years, and can 
 not undertake to find publishers for either prose or po- 
 
 1 Importance of the Study and Reading of English Literature. 
 Lilerary and Artistic Life in London, Thirty Years ago. Fiction, 
 Old and New, and its Eminent Authors. A Plea for Cheerfulness. 
 Masters of the Situation. John Milton (two lectures). Alexander 
 Pope. Oliver Goldsmith. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Robert Burns. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Browning. Walter Scott. Lord Byron. William 
 Cowper. William Wordsworth. Charles Lamb. Alfred Tennyson. 
 Thomas Campbell. Sydney Smith. "Christopher North" (John 
 Wilson). Thomas Hood. Keats and Shelley. Thomas De Quincey 
 (the " English Opium Eater "). William Cullen Bryant. Nathanie. 
 Hawthorne. Henry W. Longfellow. Rufus Choate. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 223 
 
 etry. He regrets that he has no leisure to read or give 
 opinions on imprinted matter, as he would gladly do if 
 differently situated, and respectfully begs to refer all 
 applicants to Messrs. J. R. Osgood and Company, or to 
 Mr. Ho wells, the editor of * The Atlantic Monthly. 
 During the last two months forty bulky manuscripts 
 have been sent to Mr. Fields, from various parts of the 
 country, with no provision inclosed for return postage or 
 express charges." 
 
 In April, 1875, Mr. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy 
 in his cell. It was altogether out of his usual plan 
 to do anything of the kind, believing it to be a 
 mistake to gaze upon misery or wrong which you 
 can do nothing to alleviate. In this case, how 
 ever, it will be seen he had a definite end in view. 
 He had long held the opinion, that if the influence 
 of good literature was beneficent, tbe opposite was 
 also true, the effect of bad literature must be 
 deteriorating. In an unpublished paper upon this 
 subject he says : 
 
 " I have for a long time been of the opinion that the 
 increase of crime is largely owing to the reading of im 
 moral and exciting cheap books. . . . Traveling about 
 the country I see young people everywhere absorbed in 
 reading, to say the least, a doubtful class of literature. 
 On the railroads I see school-boys secluding themselves 
 from observation busily occupied in reading 4 Dime Nov 
 els, as they are called. If I go into the engine or bag 
 gage apartment, I always find one or two workmen off 
 
224 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 duty, earnestly devouring the Police Gazette, or other 
 illustrated journals devoted to crime. On steamboats, 
 the corners of settees, and boxes on the freight deck, are 
 frequently occupied with readers all intent on the gar 
 bage thrown out to them by infamous scribblers who 
 pander to all the worst passions of human or inhuman 
 nature. ... I found the advertisements of low theatres 
 in all our cities holding out cheap inducements to crowd 
 the pit and gallery when Helen Western played Jack 
 Sheppard, and made robbery heroic to that extent, that 
 the high sheriff of Suffolk told me, when this woman 
 played that character at the Howard, young thieves mul 
 tiplied perceptibly in Boston during her engagement. 
 The popular play that crowds the Howard Athenaeum 
 this very week every night with boys from ten to nine 
 teen, is called, Escaped from Sing-Sing, and is based, 
 I am told, on the easy immunity from the punishment of 
 crime. . . . Having been so long interested in hunting 
 out, if possible, proofs that demoralizing cheap literature 
 was working bad results, I resolved to visit the Pomeroy 
 boy in his cell, and question him as to the books he had 
 been reading from childhood. ... I began my conver 
 sation by frankly telling him why I wished for an inter 
 view. 
 
 " I see, sir, that you come from no morbid curiosity, 
 was his prompt reply. I then asked him if he was fond 
 of reading. He said, Very, I read everything I can 
 get. When did you first begin to be, fond of read 
 ing? I asked him. 4 1 guess about nine years of age. 
 What kind of books did you first begin to read ? 
 4 Oh, blood and thunder stories ! 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 225 
 
 " Were the books small ones ? 
 
 " * Yes, most Beadle s dime novels. 
 
 " How many of Beadle s dime novels do you think you 
 read from nine years old upward ? 
 
 " 4 Well, I can t remember exactly, but I should think 
 sixty. 
 
 " Do you remember the titles of most of them ? 
 
 " No, sir, but " Buffalo Bill " was one of the best. 
 
 " What were the books about ? 
 
 " Killing and scalping injuns and so forth, and running 
 away with women ; a good many of the scenes were out 
 on the plains." 
 
 " Were there any pictures in the books ? 
 
 " Yes, sir, plenty of them, blood and thunder pictures, 
 tomahawking, and scalping. 
 
 " * Did your parents know you were reading those 
 books all through those years ? 
 
 " No, I kept it away from them. 
 
 " Do you think you read more of those books than 
 any of the boys who lived near you ? 
 
 " Yes, sir, a great many more, I had a kind of passion 
 for em. 
 
 " Do you think these books were an injury to you, 
 and excited you to commit the acts you have done ? 
 
 " Yes, sir, I have thought it all over, and it seems to 
 me now they did. I can t say certainly, of course, and 
 perhaps if I should think it over again, I should say it 
 was something else. 
 
 " 4 What else? 
 
 " 4 Well, sir, I really can t say. 
 
 15 
 
226 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " 1 Would you earnestly advise the other boys not to 
 read these books you have read ? 
 " Indeed, sir, I should. " 
 
 This visit left a deep and painful impression. 
 Pomeroy confessed a sense of irresponsibility, not 
 knowing what " I might do half an hour from now, 
 though I feel so quiet, sitting and talking with 
 you," which increased the mystery and the diffi 
 culty of the case ; but I think it will be felt that 
 Mr. Fields s visit was not without fruit, in the 
 discovery that he had a mania for literary poison 
 above any of his fellows, had secretly indulged 
 his taste, and had lived to hope that other boys 
 might be saved from a like indulgence. 
 
 In the spring of 1874, Mr. Fields lectured again 
 at Dartmouth College. Afterwards he wrote from 
 his favorite Plymouth : 
 
 . . . " Had a crammed church-full last evening at the 
 Hanoverian Court ; shook hands with untold students 
 
 before retiring. s all charming and most attentive. 
 
 Rose at five this A. M. Took cars to Wells River. Glo 
 rious ride through forty miles of apple blossoms, and a 
 background of mountains. . . . Drove to Willeys. Porch, 
 excellent and popular. [One we had ourselves sug 
 gested and, in an amateur fashion, designed.] An ex 
 quisite vista opened in front of the house according to 
 your direction. They can t make anything creep up the 
 porch. Will you send some Virginia creeper." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 227 
 
 In the autumn of the same year he gave courses 
 of lectures during the month of November in 
 Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. 
 
 He was cordially greeted everywhere, but such 
 incessant labor was altogether incompatible with 
 social enjoyments, and in one of his letters he 
 writes : 
 
 44 Painfully harassed with invitations of 
 pie to dine, sup, sleep, lunch, drive, 
 in their houses." (l) M V E.RS IT Y! 
 
 While in Philadelphia he says 
 
 44 Went yesterday to the Great Normal 
 to 4 say something, contrary to my wishes. They seemed 
 to expect it, so I got up, and they were happy although 
 I was not. My audience last night at the Academy 
 (Lamb), was simply delightful. Never saw such atten 
 tive and so many wet faces over poor Charles and Mary 
 at the closing passages. ... I am all right, with the ex 
 ception of great heat and plenty of mosquitoes. They 
 are lovely people here in this house, from the baby to the 
 father and mother. . . . 
 
 44 What a season it is ! Here the warmth is oppres 
 sive. . . . You make me hear the sparrows chirping out 
 side our windows. ... I never read such notices of the 
 lectures as appear in these newspapers. They could say 
 no more if Dickens or Thackeray were lecturing. It is 
 really too preposterous an outbreak of praise even for a 
 man to send his wife ! No, I won t. 
 
 44 1 cannot bear to think of you as alone. Pray send 
 
228 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 for and go to all the concerts you can, and to Toole 
 
 also. God bless you, and bring us safe together in a few 
 weeks. . . . Think of my journeys to and fro ! On the 
 9th in Westchester ; next day over the road to Baltimore ; 
 next day back to Philadelphia ; to-day at twelve Balti 
 more again ; next day to Washington ; next day back to 
 Philadelphia; the day after to Washington again; then 
 back to Philadelphia; next day to Germantown; next 
 day on the road back to Washington ; next day back to 
 Philadelphia ; then back to Washington, and thank God ! 
 that is all ! 
 
 " PHILADELPHIA, Monday. I rose very early yester 
 day (Sunday), and went from eight to ten to hear Moody 
 and Sankey, who spoke and sang to 10,000 people. Very 
 impressive from its true earnestness. . . . 
 
 " This lecturing is fatiguing work, and my throat gets 
 so full of dust on the railroads that I feel sometimes 
 at my journey s end like a scraped carrot. But it will 
 be over soon now, thank God, and I shall set my face 
 sternly against lecture halls for awhile. They want me 
 at Baltimore to begin at once at the Mercantile Library 
 Rooms, four lectures as a course, but I can t and I won t. 
 . . . We are to have your health proposed at dinner in 
 a royal bumper. [It was our wedding day.] ... I 
 could not resist making an offer in Baltimore for that 
 Stuart (original) head. ... If it arrives pray tell me 
 if it is not beautiful ? . . . My legs ache so this morn 
 ing that I could not run away even from s moth 
 er!" 
 
 " The Fifth Avenue Hotel mistook me, as usual, for 
 somebody else, and gave me a beautiful room on the first 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 229 
 
 floor, although my fellow travelers were sent up four 
 flights ! How will all this end, when they find out 
 that I Jim not Cyrus, or Dudley, or John ! . . . I found 
 
 at the hotel and lonely last night, so I took him to 
 
 see Raymond in Mark Twain s new play, which is simply 
 delicious. We bought fifty cent tickets for the gallery, 
 but Raymond sent up and had us brought down into the 
 stage-box. His success is tremendous in this piece. The 
 house was crowded, and he has already played the piece 
 fifty nights. It is to run one hundred more, probably. 
 I don t know when I have laughed more than over Ray 
 mond s fun in the play. I fairly disturbed the audience 
 twice. ... I don t expect much of an audience myself 
 to-night. The election has dissipated all interest in any 
 thing else, I apprehend. The Massachusetts news of 
 yesterday is black ! black ! 
 
 u Thursday morning. Good audience. All pleased ; 
 some enthusiastic. To-day I must rest, as I feel somewhat 
 leg-weary. I will not go out to dine six times a day, or 
 to supper after lecture. ... It is just five o clock A. M., 
 and -although I did not go to bed until one this morning, 
 four hours ago, I am up and at work. The truth is, I 
 could not sleep. My audience at the Academy last night 
 was a most exciting one, and slumber was banished from 
 my eyelids. My subject was Literary and Artistic Life 
 in London, and I had touched it up in the afternoon with 
 new things, and I suppose it was more than usually ex 
 citing. Harry Brown said afterwards it was the great 
 hit of the course, and my hearers behaved as if it were. 
 ... I have answered and declined seven invitations for 
 dinner on Friday of this week." 
 
230 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Henry Armitt Brown, whose opinion is quoted 
 in the previous letter, died in the flower of man 
 hood. Apart from all private grief, his loss to the 
 city of Philadelphia has left a gap which will long 
 remain unfilled. He possessed distinguished abil 
 ity as well as attractiveness, and his local reputa 
 tion as an orator was fast breaking local bounds, 
 when he WP.S snatched away from this world s am 
 bition and labors. I find several affectionate let 
 ters of his to Mr. Fields, from which a few extracts 
 may be in place here, showing readiness and grace 
 with the pen, as well as glimpses of those higher 
 qualities which justly distinguished him : 
 
 "113 SOUTH TWENTY-FIRST, PHILADELPHIA, June 16, 1875. 
 "JAMES T. FIELDS, ESQ., 
 
 " My dear Friend : Had you been able to have seen 
 my delight when I opened the package from Boston, 
 yesterday afternoon, you would have felt, I am sure, that 
 the reward of a good action is peace. Selah ! I was 
 sitting in my den, a bundle of most wretched law 
 papers lying in front of me, threatening the utter de 
 struction of my happiness for the remainder of the day, 
 and feeling, as I am apt to do under such circum 
 stances, miserably dull. There is, to one of my tempera 
 ment, 110 doll quite so full of sawdust of the driest kind 
 as the purely legal doll. To me, then, sitting alone and 
 waiting for courage enough to attack my juiceless bundle, 
 entered a maid-servant, armed with a suspicious looking 
 package. By express, quoth she, and laid it by my 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 231 
 
 side and vanished. The purple ink and the peculiar 
 twist of certain letters struck me at once : I heaved a 
 sigh up from the deepest depths and murmured to 
 myself but half aloud, Fields ! Breaking the string, 
 and opening the wrapper, I soon extricated the venerable 
 book, and beheld with reverential delight the book-plate 
 of the great D. W. I guessed the rest, and needed not 
 the words you had written on the fly-leaf to understand 
 the whole. I am a thousand times your debtor. Not for 
 its own sake merely nor for old Walker s, venerable 
 soul, nor yet for mighty Daniel s, now alas so long 
 ago gone to judgment, shall that sturdy old volume be 
 dear to me, but for yours, O my friend, and the associa 
 tions which shall make it ever a sweet remembrancer 
 of you. Thine ever, 
 
 " HENRY ARMITT BROWN." 
 
 "PHILADELPHIA, May 4, 1876. 
 
 "MY DEAR FRIEND: As pants the hart for streams 
 and things, I wait thy coming. The humble cot is 
 ready, the tea-urn sings beside the crackling log, and the 
 latch-string hangs far out, inviting your longed-for touch. 
 The town is full, the streets crammed with gaping 
 strangers, the cars go to and fro heavily laden, there is 
 a buzz and bustle everywhere, and, yonder in the Park, 
 the great Leviathan stands up overwhelmingly big and 
 awful. The huge portals are still shut, but the din of 
 hammers comes resounding from within, and the mur 
 mur of many voices in as many tongues. Philadelphia 
 is dressing for the fete> and there is a sense of expecta- 
 
232 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 tion in the very air we breathe. Come and stand with 
 us on the threshold. 
 
 " Always sincerely, 
 
 " HENHY ARMITT BROWN." 
 
 " Certain fishers of men are in an ecstasy of happi 
 ness. None of your occasional catches for them to-day ! 
 Imagine some of our leading citizens, with drag nets 
 out, and the waters fairly swarming with distinguished 
 strangers ! Prophets and kings may have yearned to 
 see such things, but died ignobly without the chance." 
 
 "June 5, 1876. 
 
 "MY DEAR FRIEND: Praise from Sir Hubert, you 
 know, and recommendations from you, are valuable in 
 deed. I don t know exactly how to get up the subject 
 you suggest. I might prepare a lecture on the social 
 business of a hundred years ago, and ditto on the polit 
 ical. Could the subject be expanded into three or four, 
 think you ? and, if so, can you give me any suggestion ? 
 A hint always helps me amazingly, and I should rejoice 
 to have one or many from you apropos of these discourses. 
 Thanks for the thoughts of me, again." 
 
 A few days later Mr. Fields writes again from 
 Philadelphia : 
 
 " On arriving here yesterday, P. M., dead beat with 
 fatigue from Washington, I found your letters. . . . My 
 Washington audience is a delight. I go again on Fri 
 day. . . . To-day I find myself with a tormenting cold. 
 . . . This cursed traveling, a hundred miles a day on an 
 average, is not the best thing for throat and lungs." . . . 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 233 
 
 It was the old story ; traveling and speaking 
 proving too much for human endurance. The 
 excitement of audiences, the pleasure of respond 
 ing to the social kindnesses extended on every 
 hand, the ceaseless efforts of mind and body, can 
 not be borne without serious results. 
 
 From Baltimore, at the same period, he wrote : 
 
 " Had a fine audience here last night, and the old 
 Plea 8 made them roar. It never took better anywhere. 
 At West Chester the night before I gave them Long 
 fellow, and the success beggars my descriptive powers. 
 One man made me go home with him to have a glass of 
 champagne, for he said he was an old fellow, and might 
 never hear me again. Mr. H., at whose house I slept, 
 had a large dinner party the P. M. I arrived, and we had 
 a jolly time with the clergymen and the doctors and law 
 yers, a bad preparation for the lecture at eight o clock ; 
 but the party was all made up for me days ago without 
 my knowledge. Your dear letter of Friday met me on 
 the way, through Philadelphia to Baltimore yesterday, 
 by the kindness of H. F., who is incontestably the finest 
 host I ever knew. I will tell you all about it on my 
 return. Here comes the omnibus." 
 
 Again from Baltimore : 
 
 " Only a word to say, All right, and that Baltimore 
 is the prince of cities to lecture ii. . . . It seems that 
 the Catholic people here are my staunch friends. To 
 night I am tired, and have got my books and a soft coal 
 fire, and here I shall sit until twelve or one o clock to 
 
234 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 get the kind faces out of my brain. . . . The heat in 
 the cars to-day roasted me, and when a woman opened 
 a window on my back I resolved to give up lecturing." 
 
 "WASHINGTON, SATURDAY, November 21, 1874. 
 " Great and glorious time last night at Lincoln Hall. 
 I never saw an audience more bent on hearing. They 
 waited for me as I came out and seized my hand, and 
 wrung it as if I had saved a nation. I was glad to get 
 into the carriage." 
 
 In January, 1874, he wrote from New York : 
 
 " Last night I went to the Intercollegiate dinner, as 
 most earnestly requested by the chancellor and faculty 
 of the New York University. I never saw a more inter 
 esting occasion. The young prize student sat on the 
 right of the chancellor, and I was placed on the left. . . . 
 
 " During the chancellor s toast, proposing the health 
 of the prize student, in most fitting words, it was de 
 lightful to read the feeling and modesty in the young 
 man s face. When he rose to reply, it was done so ad 
 mirably I declare I never was more touched. What he 
 said was perfect ; the point being, that if he had suc 
 ceeded it was all owing to his instructors who had pre 
 sided over the college during his four years study. It 
 was most lovely to see how real and unaffected the little 
 fellow was. It was a study of grace and earnestness. 
 His father sat near me, and never was parent more de 
 lighted. The whole scene was touching to the last de 
 gree. ... I was the only man beside Whitelaw Reid 
 who was present from the committees." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 235 
 
 This dinner was a result of the first year s work 
 of the Intercollegiate Literary Association, in the 
 establishment of which Mr. Fields had taken a 
 lively interest. Much against his will, in face of 
 his other engagements, he was chosen one of the 
 judges, and during the previous months had been 
 obliged to examine and pronounce upon a large 
 number of essays in company with his co-workers, 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Kichard Grant 
 White. The judges of oratory that same year 
 were, William Cullen Bryant, Whitelaw Reid, and 
 George William Curtis. 
 
 In January, 1875, he again went as far west as 
 Buffalo, returning to Philadelphia and the vicin 
 ity, always meeting the same untiring kindness 
 and hospitality. 
 
 From Buffalo he wrote : 
 
 " I have just come back from St. James Hall (where 
 Dickens read), and am to send off a few words before I 
 go to roost on my strange perch. And first, it seemed 
 as if old Cheerfulness never did hit the mark so straight 
 before. It took like vaccination. They wanted me to 
 promise to come again before I left the hall, but darn 
 em, it s too far away from you and home. We don t 
 know what cold weather is in Boston. Yesterday, when 
 we got to Batavia, the glass stood at ten below ! The 
 pipes in the cars had to be thawed out by red hot irons 
 constantly run into them. I thought we should never 
 get here, and I wished Buffalo had been further, and I 
 
236 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 never had heard of it. I started from Boston at half- 
 past eight A. M., and arrived here at four on Tuesday 
 morning, nineteen long hours. How I hated my voca 
 tion ! But a good fire was burning in my room here, 
 and I warmed my feet and went to bed, to be up early 
 this morning and off to the Falls, tired as I was all over 
 when I opened my eyes. But I thought I would go, and 
 am glad I did. Fine as the sight was, in its way, I am 
 glad you did not come, for the weather was awful. The 
 wind was terrible. It blew on the Suspension Bridge 
 to such an extent that I thought the sleigh would go 
 over. The horses seemed bewildered by it, and stood 
 motionless several times. What I saw was a sight not 
 to be forgotten, but it is not Niagara as I like to remem 
 ber it. It is too awful, and I much prefer the glory of 
 summer flung over it. Winter is to me ghastly and out 
 of place over such a spectacle, and I hurried away from 
 it unreluctant and gladly. 
 
 " To-morrow I start from this cold country, clad in 
 storm, for Pittsburgh and smoke. I shall be at least 
 twelve hours on the road, and perhaps twenty, as the 
 trains are all obstructed by ice, they say. Everybody is 
 furred and freezing in this region. The wind from the 
 lake cuts like a scythe. My eyes all day feel like peeled 
 substitutes, and I long to exchange them for the old ones 
 in Boston. 
 
 " Two young men rode forty miles to hear the lecture 
 to-night, and came up on the platform to ask me to 
 speak in their town next week. One of them had a face 
 of exquisite beauty, and quite touched me by his enthu 
 siasm. I should like to meet him again, but I cannot 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 237 
 
 go to his place among the Alleghanies. This life of travel 
 in cold and solitude is dreadful. It is only for what it 
 brings and is necessary, that I would do it any longer. 
 The experience on this trip was most dreadful, and I am 
 thankful, much as I miss your dear companionship, that 
 you were not suffering with me the dreary way. To 
 cross the icy platforms from one train to another, and the 
 changes are constant, would have exposed you to chills 
 you never felt before. The air was full of needles, and 
 they filled my lungs till I could feel the blood trickling 
 after them. It was infernal. A man told me to-day 
 that Boston air in winter was hot compared to the Buf 
 falo atmosphere. 
 
 " And now, God bless you, my love, and keep you safe 
 from all harm. Don t be without some one near you, 
 to whom you can speak in the night if you wish to. I 
 shall try hard to get back for a day between Canons- 
 burgh and Rondout, but cannot say now, for I don t 
 know the routes. I hope to find a letter at Pittsburgh 
 to-morrow." 
 
 From Pittsburgh : 
 
 " Here I am in this city of smoke, and feeling like a 
 lump of soft and smutty coke. I am thankful you did 
 not start with me. The journey across here from Buf 
 falo was beyond cursing, and I rejoice you were not here 
 to suffer the discomfort all the way. There were no 
 drawing-room cars, and the heat and cold were awful 
 even for old salts like myself. Twice I became dizzy 
 with the suffocating horrors of the stove, and once half 
 
238 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 chilled to death by a transfer. I got here at midnight, 
 and found a room heated to ninety awaiting me, and so 
 I scuttled off into a cold one, after warming my feet and 
 hands. . . . You can have no notion of the dirt of this 
 city. It beats all the English atmospheres I have ever 
 seen. London is bright compared to it. To-night I 
 speak here ; to-morrow in Canonsburg, and next day I 
 start for Philadelphia and New York. Whether I can 
 go on home or no before I go to Rondout, I cannot now 
 say, as I don t know the times and seasons yet. But I 
 thank Providence you did not attempt this journey. 
 You never could have endured the fatigue and no com 
 forts. Nothing to eat between Buffalo and here but the 
 steak of wild-cats and tigers. I never saw such meat 
 offered to man before. The expense of railroad travel 
 is simply monstrous, and the hotel bills are prepos 
 terous." 
 
 Again he writes from a small town on the Hud 
 son River : 
 
 " I can t help laughing at myself for being here ! Of 
 all the god-forsaken places yet, this beats the world. I 
 have just been out into the streets to look at my prob 
 able audience, and I wish I had anything bad enough to 
 offer them this evening. The men all look like pirates 
 on low wages, who, having killed off decent people, have 
 the town to themselves, and are now out of employment. 
 Hardly a decent woman is to be seen, and the children 
 are awful in their ugliness. The views, per contra, are 
 glorious. I mounted a hill just now and looked up and 
 down the river of ice which sparkled with wonderful 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 239 
 
 beauty. I had to cross from in an ice sledge 
 
 drawn by two horses and filled with market people. 
 Coming out of the hot cars after a three hours ride, and 
 getting into the open sledge, was simply suicide to my 
 throat, which, with swelling of the glands, punishes me 
 for being such a fool as to go round the country in this 
 wise." 
 
 Again, after amusing descriptions of people and 
 things, he writes from Philadelphia and Balti 
 more : 
 
 "So much time in the cars destroys me, and I feel 
 giddy half the day. I feel as tired and dull as if my 
 
 name were , and I lived in B Street. But I 
 
 must tell you of a young man who called to-night and 
 kept me hating him for an hour. He said he belonged 
 to one of the oldest families and wanted my advice as to 
 his education. He wanted to attach himself to me, he 
 said, and be with me constantly. He wished to be car 
 ried up as high as the mind of man could go, to the 
 extent of human knowledge. He brought a pocket 
 full of poems he had translated from the German, and 
 he troubled and detained me to that extent I could have 
 roasted him and then declined to eat him. A letter has 
 just been handed in from another young man who wishes 
 an interview to-morrow. Another from a youth who 
 wishes to give a young lady friend some books to im 
 prove her mind, and I am to select them ! Also notes 
 inviting me to dinners, and cards from people with 
 strange names ! The lectures are slipping off the string 
 and soon all will be over. . . . 
 
240 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 "I have just written to Redpatli to cancel all engage 
 ments in the West from the 10th of February to the 
 5th of March. I cannot stand it. Traveling takes all 
 vitality out of me, and I do not speak so well and vigor 
 ously as audiences demand in my case. I can t come up 
 to expectation after a railroad headache of two or three 
 hundred miles daily. . . . This constant call to read 
 manuscripts must be crushed out. Yesterday a man sent 
 up his card, and from the name I imagined he might be 
 some lecture committee, so I said, 4 Let him come up. 
 I sat writing letters, a batch of which comes every day, 
 when entered, smiling, a tall, well-dressed chap, who asks 
 4 if he can engage me for half an hour. For what pur 
 pose ? To read me a poem he had written and get my 
 opinion of it ! ! I sent him off, telling him I was hard- 
 of-hearing-poems-read. . . . 
 
 " Last night, here in Philadelphia, the rain poured 
 and the streets were washed as with a flood, but my 
 audience was a beautiful one, both in numbers and qual 
 ity. The night before, in Baltimore, the largest audi 
 ence ever assembled in the Peabody Hall to hear a lec 
 ture crowded the building. Being Thanksgiving night I 
 supposed very few would come, but the aisles were full 
 and overflowing." 
 
 Again he writes from a college town : 
 
 " I can t say when I shall return. I find the Faculty 
 wish me to give another lecture, and if I don t do it I 
 am afraid the course will be incomplete. Last night the 
 President gave a levee in the lecturer s honor, a most 
 pleasant company. But the plague of the whole thing 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 241 
 
 is that everybody wishes you to do everything : to drive, 
 to dine, to sup, to visit halls, to become a member of 
 societies, to hear classes recite, and hop about generally. 
 This, as you know, I HATE ! I have just returned from 
 a drive behind two fast trotters, an act for which I de 
 serve to be roasted. I had not the wit to decline the 
 invitation, and so I went and nearly froze in my boots. 
 It began to snow on the mountain we were to cross, and 
 for eight miles I had sleet in my eyes, my nose, my 
 mouth, my neck, and everywhere else. How I inwardly 
 cursed my fate, albeit the gentleman who drove me was 
 most kind and interesting." 
 
 To conclude the extracts from his letters I will 
 print here a few of later date, and thus close the 
 subject of the lectures out of Boston : 
 
 " WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., Thursday, 1879. 
 
 " All goes well ; grand reception ; great enthusiasm ; 
 and crowded chapel. This country is glorious ; I never 
 saw anywhere such superb hills, although they are now 
 covered with snow. The valley is quite as fine as West 
 moreland vale. The moon came up to-night over Gray- 
 lock grandly." 
 
 "BAGG S HOTEL, UTICA, five degrees below zero, ) 
 " Tuesday morning, January 21, 1879. 
 
 " DEAREST A. : Fine audience ; great enthusiasm ; 
 papers all jubilant ; can t reach Potsdam this time I 
 think. Mrs. P. of the Seminary is a very exceptional 
 lady ; has a grand building full of pupils, and does things 
 expensively. She only cares to have her pupils in the 
 lecture room. Autograph books flowing in abundantly. 
 16 
 
242 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Invitations ditto. To-night, after the lecture, must at 
 tend, they say, the fashionable club of Utica, at some 
 body s house. Carriages here do not close with doors, 
 but only with leather curtains. Would not have come 
 if I had known this, darn em. But such rivers of kind 
 ness ! Such delightful expressive folk ! 
 
 u To-night at the Seminary again ; to-morrow night at 
 the Opera House here, on Cheerfulness ; next night in 
 Brooklyn ; then back here for Clinton, and then toward 
 home on Saturday. 
 
 " P. S. This hotel is comfortable, but full of mediae 
 val smells. Sometimes I seem to detect older whiffs, as 
 if Pharaoh and his host had been dipped up out of the 
 Red Sea, and put in pickle, all over these premises. 
 Opening a drawer just now I nosed a mummy, or some 
 thing to that effect." 
 
 " UTICA, NEW YORK, 25th. 
 
 " Clinton insists upon hearing me on Saturday eve 
 ning. So I cannot be home until Sunday P. M., about 
 three. 
 
 " Perfectly well, and discontented. 
 
 " Ever yours. " 
 
 In the year 1860 Mr. Fields received a cordial 
 letter from Charles Cowden Clarke, in reply to a 
 wish expressed by him that Mr. Clarke would 
 write out his Kecollections of John Keats for the 
 " Atlantic Monthly." This letter was the begin 
 ning of a delightful correspondence with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Clarke, which has never ceased. 
 
 In 1861 Mr. Clarke wrote : 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 243 
 
 " As Mr. Montague Tigg would say, 4 There must be 
 a screw of enormous magnitude loose somewhere, or I 
 should surely, ere this, have heard something substantial 
 and satisfactory of the four-and-twenty numbers of the 
 4 Atlantic Monthly. It is my opinion that you all, on 
 the other side of the great water, are in such a ferment 
 with your never-ending, still beginning politics ; and 
 with your secession and non-secession ; your union and 
 separation ; and with your foolish tariff (the free trade 
 of France and Belgium, and soon with the kingdom of 
 Italy, will make your selfish legislators wise perhaps 
 in time), all these circumstances have loosened this 
 4 enormous screw of my monthly Atlantic parcel ; and 
 my belief is that THE one of your 4 helps, whose busi 
 ness it is to pack and send out London packages, has 
 been attending some Republican meeting, and that the 
 twenty-four numbers are now in the packing-room of 
 Messrs. Ticknor & Fields ! 
 
 44 I hope you have received long ere this the manu 
 script of i The Cornice in Rain. . . . 
 
 44 My brother has purchased an estate at Genoa, and 
 I dare say my next letter will date from there. My 
 address will be Villa Novello, in Corignano, Genoa. 
 When we are settled and at peace (for we are now in 
 the turmoil of moving), we will try to think of some 
 things we remember in dearly beloved Charles Lamb. 
 
 44 With our kind regards, 
 
 44 Yours, my dear Mr. Fields, 
 
 "Very faithfully, 
 
 44 C. COWDEN CLARKE." 
 
244 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 This was the first intimation we received of the 
 new life of Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke in 
 Genoa, at the beautiful Villa Novello, whence let 
 ters full of English literature and Italian landscape 
 scenery, during more than twenty years have been 
 gratefully received. 
 
 Early in 1877 came the sad news of Mr. Clarke s 
 death. In May of that year Mrs. Clarke gener 
 ously wrote : 
 
 " I despatch by book-post to-day a memorial that I 
 knowing your genial nature and your appreciation of 
 that of my beloved husband feel sure you will like to 
 have. It is the original copy of my Charles s first lecture 
 on Shakespeare s characters ; one which he most fre 
 quently delivered of all the series. . . . 
 
 u Your tender hearts will take joy to know that mine 
 had the comfort of seeing vouchsafed a peaceful close to 
 an exceptionally peaceful, happy life ; it was soft and gen 
 tle, a painless and gradual ceasing to breathe, while the 
 spring afternoon sunshine streamed in upon us both. 
 Thank God, my health never broke down while he was 
 ill, so that I was able to be with him hourly, night and 
 day, to the very last moment. Patient, contented, placid 
 was he throughout, and true to his beautiful, trustful 
 nature. His own most characteristic lines, the Hie 
 jacet, from the i Carmina Minima, have been inscribed 
 on one side of the gravestone, and on the other his chosen 
 crest and motto, with simply his beloved name and the 
 date of his birth and of his quitting earth. Violets and 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 245 
 
 daisies grew amid the turf near about the spot, that 
 March morning when I first looked upon it ; birds and 
 bees come there ; the green hills slope up around on 
 every side, and all seems to embody the very cheerful 
 quiet he himself desired for his resting-place. So many 
 years of joy, so many granted mercies, ought to tran 
 quillize me, and fill me only with gratitude ; but you, 
 dear friends, will understand the anguish that is mine, 
 even when I am most grateful." 
 
 With the date of 1859 I find the first of a series 
 of letters also, from Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, which 
 lasted to the end of her life. They are full of 
 wisdom, wit, and character. She has apparently 
 a very slight acquaintance with Mr. Fields at the 
 first writing, because she says, after requesting 
 him to do her some slight favor in forwarding a 
 book to London : 
 
 " I venture to take this liberty with you in preference 
 to any of my relatives or personal friends ; first, because 
 I wish to do the thing privately without exciting any 
 conversation about it ; and secondly, because your coun 
 tenance gives me the impression that it is a pleasure to 
 you to oblige others. Trusting to this assurance, I be 
 lieve you will excuse the freedom I take. 
 " And I am very respectfully yours, 
 
 "L. MARIA CHILD." 
 
 In 1863 she writes : 
 
 " I have a project very much at heart, in which I 
 greatly desire your cooperation. In the course of my 
 
246 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 reading, for several years, I have been collecting articles 
 to form a Christmas gift-book for the old. I have a col 
 lection of gems from various sources, English, American, 
 French, German, Grecian, Roman, etc., poetry, stories, 
 essays, extracts from remarkable sermons, etc. When I 
 say gems, I do not, in every instance, mean it in a lit 
 erary point of view, for some of the articles I have se 
 lected are extremely simple in their character, but they 
 are all gems in the way of producing a cheerful, elevating 
 influence on the minds of the old. They are all calcu 
 lated to make them feel chipper, as the old phrase is. 
 I have also written eight or ten articles, which have the 
 same character. While tending upon my aged father, I 
 greatly felt the want of books serious enough to suit 
 him, and yet cheerful. The great fault with all that is 
 written or preached to the old is that it is too solemn. 
 It is 4 carrying coals to Newcastle, for the old are too 
 prone to take a solemn view of things. 
 
 " I have endeavored to carry out the idea first sug 
 gested to me by my father s wants, and it is a cherished 
 wish with me to make this benefaction to the old before 
 I die. A great deal depends on the manner of publish 
 ing, and above all publishers in the country you would 
 be my choice." 
 
 Again in the same year Mrs. Child says : 
 
 " I agree with you, that it would not be well to get 
 out the book in a hurry, but I cannot deny that I am 
 grievously disappointed. This year has been peculiarly 
 full of sadness and disappointments. The sudden break 
 ing down of my brother s vigorous health, ending speed- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 247 
 
 ily in death ; my painful sympathy with the parents of 
 Colonel Shaw, the earliest, the latest, the most reliable, 
 the best friends of my life ; the destruction of half our 
 house by fire, with the consequent desolation, toil, and 
 confusion, continuing up to the present moment, has 
 made the year a very dreary one to me ; and the only 
 ray of happiness I had was the prospect of sending my 
 book round to old acquaintances and friends, with the 
 feeling that it may cheer and console their pathway to 
 the sunset. 
 
 * But what cannot be cured must be endured, and I 
 have become an experimental and practical philosopher 
 in that way. 
 
 " I would suggest the propriety of having more than 
 one copy in existence. The manuscript is in the prin 
 ter s hands, and if it should be consumed by fire, it 
 would be a tedious and difficult process for me to restore 
 it. In view of the uncertainty of human life, I would 
 also suggest the propriety of having some contract signed. 
 The book is so nearly printed, would it not be best to 
 finish setting it up, and let it all stand in type ? Then 
 the manuscript might be preserved in another place. 
 
 " When I come to Boston, I will try to see you for a 
 few minutes. We have so many workmen here, with 
 piles of bricks and boards, and no pair of hands but 
 my own to provide for them, that I cannot at present 
 appoint a time, with any certainty of keeping my prom 
 ise. Yours very cordially, 
 
 "L. MAEIA CHILD." 
 
 The next year she writes : 
 
 " I used to begin with Dear sir, now Dear Mr. Fields 
 
248 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 has slipped from my pen ; perhaps the next thing will 
 be Dear Friend. The length of our acquaintance hardly 
 warrants it, but it would be only the spontaneous ex 
 pression of my feelings ; so, if it should so happen, you 
 will not perhaps consider me obtrusive. . . . 
 
 " There is good taste in the suggestion about the title- 
 page. My favorite red letters would need a florid, me 
 dieval vignette. They would pale Darley s vignette too 
 much. They would be like a trumpet accompaniment 
 to John Anderson, my Jo. I am sorry to give them 
 up, but I see that it is fitting. 
 
 " I take infinite satisfaction in looking at my photo 
 graph of Thorwaldsen s Winter. Thank you a thousand 
 times for it. I have very little opportunity to see works 
 of art, and my passion for them no amount of years or 
 discouragements can chill. 
 
 " With kindest remembrance to Mrs. Fields, I am 
 most cordially yours, L. MARIA CHILD." 
 
 In one of her notes she says : 
 
 " My sympathies tend as inevitably toward the masses 
 as Willis s do toward the * upper ten. I have not the 
 slightest talent for respectability. ... I send a copy 
 of ; The New Flowers for Children, which you can trans 
 fer to some little friend, when you have read it. I send 
 it, because I want you to read The Royal Rose-Bud, 
 founded on exceedingly slight hints in history. All who 
 write con amore, as I must do if I write at all, are ex 
 tremely pleased, I suppose, with everything they write 
 at the moment of writing. At least that is the case with 
 me. But very few pieces continue to be favorites. I 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 249 
 
 grow indifferent to most things I have written, and have 
 a decided distaste for some, but ; The Royal Rose-Bud 
 is a permanent favorite with me, therefore I want you to 
 read it. Cordially yours, 
 
 "L. MARIA CHILD." 
 
 In 1866 she continues : 
 
 " I should have more heart for work, if that tipsy 
 tailor were not so misguiding the ship of State. To 
 have for captain, in a storm, a man not fit for a cabin 
 boy! 
 
 " I feel very anxious and despondent about the pros 
 pects of my poor proteges, the freed men. There was 
 such a capital chance to place the Republic on a safe and 
 honorable foundation, and we have lost it, by the narrow 
 prejudices and blind self-will of that poor white! 
 
 " Well, we need more suffering for our sins, and if it 
 were not that the poor blacks have the most of the suf 
 fering, I could bow my head in patient resignation. 
 " I am very cordially your friend, 
 
 "L. MARIA CHILD." 
 
 In 1867 she says : 
 
 " After you have read my manuscript I should like to 
 have you write a few lines, to inform me whether you 
 think the old woman s imagination needs * the prayers 
 of the congregation, being in a very weak and low con 
 dition. " 
 
 " WAYLAND, February 27, 1873. 
 
 "DEAR MR. FIELDS: What bird of the air sung to 
 you that I alighted on this planet the llth of February ? 
 If any one whom I like knows it, I am particularly grati- 
 
250 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 fied to have them remember it. But I never imagined 
 that you knew the date of my advent. To be remem 
 bered by one s friends at Christmas and New Years time 
 is pleasant enough, but everybody is remembered then ; 
 but to send tokens of remembrance on a birthday ^ that is 
 something delightfully complimentary and exclusive. It 
 is, in fact, my pet weakness. I have never, you know, 
 outgrown my first childhood, and it will probably re 
 main till I enter upon my second. I exult and crow over 
 a birthday present from any friend, or congenial ac 
 quaintance, as a two-year-old does over a new pair of red 
 shoes." 
 
 This series of extracts from Mrs. Child s letters 
 may fitly close with a tiny note written after Mr. 
 Fields ceased to be a publisher of books : 
 
 "DEAR MR. FIELDS: Thanks for your note, giving 
 fresh indication of your kind interest in my little book. 
 I feel the more grateful to you, because I have no hus 
 band or son, brother or nephew, to care for my success, 
 and I have lived so much apart from the world, that no 
 circle or sect is in communion with me. This is a state 
 of things uncomfortably lonely, though highly favorable 
 to independence of thought. 
 
 " I have written with a conscientious wish to help on 
 the progress of the world, but whether any considerable 
 number of people want such help, remains to be proved. 
 It is a mere lottery. If the publishers do not lose by it, 
 I shall be satisfied. 
 
 " Gratefully and cordially yours, 
 
 "L. MARIA CHILD." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 251 
 
 In narrating the occupations and sequence of 
 the years I have omitted any list of Mr. Fields s 
 published books. I have mentioned that in the 
 autumn of 1870 he was relieved from the cares of 
 business, and it was in the following autumn that 
 his first book, " Yesterdays with Authors," made its 
 appearance. The cordial welcome this first ven 
 ture received was a great pleasure ; indeed, the 
 book gave him a double happiness, first, in the 
 doing, because the nature of its pages was like a 
 renewal of old companionships rather than a labor, 
 and second, in its hearty reception. In 1881 the 
 book had passed through twenty editions. 
 
 To the completion of " Yesterdays with Au 
 thors/* succeeded the work of writing and deliv 
 ering the twenty-seven lectures, to which we have 
 already referred elsewhere. 
 
 In the year 1877 he printed a collection of his 
 brief papers in prose, under the title of " Under 
 brush." Of this little volume a new and enlarged 
 edition was printed in 1881. In the autumn of 
 1878 appeared "The Family Library of British 
 Poetry," the joint labor of Mr. Whipple and Mr. 
 Fields, a book which has no rival of its size, num 
 berless as are the collections of poetry. Finally, in 
 1881, under similar title, was published a thin vol 
 ume, entitled " Ballads and other Verses," which 
 did not fail to attract a large company of readers. 
 
252 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Grave and gay, old and young, wished to possess 
 themselves of its contents, and " its excuse for 
 being " was derived through public as well as 
 private avenues. 
 
 Meanwhile the old habit of writing, more or 
 less, for public journals, and private clubs and 
 companies, was never altogether relinquished. He 
 was one of the contributors to the " Youth s Com 
 panion," where he printed a long list of papers 
 especially prepared to interest children in litera 
 ture. Among the subjects treated in this manner 
 I find Audubon, Tennyson, Washington Irving, 
 Charles Dickens, Charles Lamb, Wordsworth, Tom 
 Hood, Walter Scott, Mrs. Browning, Adelaide 
 Procter, Thomas Campbell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 Macaulay, W. H. Prescott, Leigh Hunt, Miss Mit- 
 ford, and " A Group of Famous American Au 
 thors." The editors of this paper continually 
 proved the value they set upon his work, by their 
 eager acceptance of whatever he would choose to 
 send them. In this little paper also were printed 
 many of his verses which he chose not to include 
 in his last volume. I venture to preserve two 
 stanzas, which should not be lost : 
 
 "When the wind is blowing fair, 
 
 Any ship to port may steer; 
 Prows that head-seas bravely dare, 
 Master .fate and conquer fear. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 253 
 
 " Souls that, freed from prison bars, 
 
 Struck the blows themselves that won, 
 Grappling with their evil stars, 
 Stand, like Uriel, in the sun ! " 
 
 It would be useless to try to trace his scattered 
 literary productions. Mention has been made of 
 the most important. It is interesting, however, 
 to recall, with all his industry and achievement, 
 how impossible it was to make him feel as if he 
 were interrupted when he was at work. He was 
 ready for others if he were wanted, and it was 
 always somebody else who said he was busy; he 
 seldom made the excuse for himself. This record 
 has, however, failed of its purpose if it has not 
 been able to convey, otherwise than by mere 
 words, the generosity, kindness, justice, and self- 
 poise which characterized him. Many tributes to 
 his generosity and kindness lie around me, but 
 to make evident that these qualities were the 
 every-day atmosphere of his life, is far more im 
 portant than to be able to recall a generous deed 
 or a kind word which might be set down here. 
 Of the joyousness and elasticity of his nature, 
 tempered by his other qualities, we are reminded 
 by a verse from William Blake : 
 
 " He who bends to his life a joy, 
 Does the winged life destroy; 
 But he who kisses the joy as it flies, 
 Lives in eternity s sunrise." 
 
254 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Of his helpfulness the world has often spoken, 
 but it may not be out of place to say, that if 
 money were to be taken in charge for aunts or 
 cousins, James was the person called upon. If 
 New York editors wished a new man for some im 
 portant post, they would send for Mr. Fields s 
 advice and suggestion. Public readers would come 
 to rehearse their parts, and learn what to read as 
 well as how to read ; young lecturers with their 
 lectures ; graduates, girls and boys, to know what 
 to do next in life ; and of authors and their manu 
 scripts, as I have before said, he was never free. 
 His judgment and good sense were as sure and as 
 swift as his sympathy. 
 
 Mr. Fields had not the time, or perhaps lacked 
 the inclination, to make extracts from books for 
 his own use. His memory was so faithful a ser 
 vant that he generally knew where to find any 
 passage which had once impressed itself upon his 
 mind ; but, long before Mr. Bartlett s excellent 
 book of " Familiar Quotations " was published, Mr. 
 Fields had printed a sheet of four pages for the con 
 venience of replying to the many persons who 
 were constantly sending to him to find the origin 
 of certain much quoted passages. 
 
 There is a large volume, however, which was 
 a kind of common repository for such things as we 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 255 
 
 feared might slip away from us, on the fly-leaf of 
 which he inscribed the following motto : 
 
 This is the coin that ne er grows light in use, 
 The gold that oftenest handled brighter glows. 
 
 OLD PLAY. 
 
 Between the two covers lies a kind of epitome 
 of the books we enjoyed, more or less together, 
 during the last fifteen years of his life. Here, 
 beside the sifted gold of literature, 1 find occa 
 sional quotations from conversation. In one place, 
 
 " Agassiz says that the world, in dealing with a new 
 truth, passes through three stages. First, saying that it 
 is not true ; second, that it is contrary to religion ; third, 
 that it was known before." 
 
 44 Kingsley said one night, if he could have but one 
 book for the rest of his life, he should choose the 4 Faerie 
 Queene above all and without hesitation ; nothing so 
 rested him and took him out of himself." 
 
 "BROOKLYN, N. Y., 1874. 
 
 " Every attention is paid here to Mr. Fields. The 
 people appear truly delighted with his lectures. One 
 old lady, seeing the pleasure he felt in receiving some 
 flowers, said : i There ! I might have brought you my 
 hyacinth. I have one growing out of a sponge, which I 
 planted in the autumn; tis Justin perfection now. I 
 wish I had brought it ! " 
 
 One night while Dickens was in America, after 
 a reading, as we sat at supper together, J., in his 
 own laughing way, and partly to excite Dickens 
 
256 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 to repeat a certain passage in the evening s per 
 formance, began by giving a portion of it himself. 
 "That s it," said Dickens thoughtfully, yet half 
 laughing, " my dear boy, you 11 be doing it your 
 self some day." 
 
 " NEW YORK, Sunday, March 8. 
 
 " Mr. Bryant said this afternoon, that no one could 
 impress upon the people of this country so well as Mr. 
 Fields the value and importance of the study of English 
 literature. Also, that no one can know more than one 
 language thoroughly well." 
 
 Sydney Smith s " Lectures on Moral Philoso 
 phy," was a favorite book of Mr. Fields, and I 
 find several passages quoted from it, especially a 
 fine one on the use of history, concluding with 
 these words : " For the object of common men is 
 only to live. The object of such men as I have 
 spoken of was to live grandly, and in favor with 
 their own difficult spirits ; to live, if in war, glori 
 ously ; if in peace, usefully, justly, and freely." 
 Among contemporary writers he read everything 
 of Mr. Froude s with the deepest interest, and I 
 find many traces of his books among these quota 
 tions. 
 
 A quatrain, quoted by Dr. Johnson, and said by 
 him to have been written by an obscure poet, a 
 clergyman by the name of Gifford, was a favorite 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 257 
 
 of Mr. Fields. The poem to which this quatrain 
 was said to belong has never been discovered : 
 
 " Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound ; 
 
 All at her work the village maiden sings ; 
 Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around, 
 Revolves the sad vicissitude of things." 
 
 I also find the following : 
 
 ^ Quillinan writes to H. Crabbe Eobinson (and Mr. 
 Fields possesses something of the same feeling), I will 
 not reveal to you, for you could not comprehend, my 
 idolatry of Pope from my boyhood, etc." 1 
 
 " Finished Life of Lord Jeffrey. How often lately 
 we have said what I find set down here, The best use 
 of going abroad is to make one fond of home. " 
 
 Again : 
 
 "Nothing shows Boythorn in more brilliant or en 
 chanting colors than his declaration, with tremendous 
 emphasis, that he had never in his life regretted any- 
 thing so much as his having failed to carry out his in 
 tention of purchasing that house, 35 St. James Square, 
 Bath, where the first idea of < Little Nell came to Dick 
 ens in one of his birthday visits to London with Forster, 
 4 and then and there to have burned it to the ground, to 
 the end that no meaner association should ever desecrate 
 the birthplace of " Little Nell." " 
 
 The following parody was also preserved by me 
 in these pages : 
 
 1 See page 222, vol. iii. 
 17 
 
258 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 LINES ON FINDING A WATCHMAN SOUND ASLEEP AT MIDNIGHT 
 ON MY DOORSTEPS. 
 
 J. T. F. 
 
 How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, 
 By all the city-rascals blest ! 
 When Night, with snowy fingers cold, 
 Returns to freeze the watery mould, 
 She there shall meet a sounder sod, 
 Than Fancy s feet have ever trod. 
 
 By fire-y hands our knell is rung, 
 
 By forms unseen our locks are sprung; 
 
 There burglars come, black, white, and gray, 
 
 To bless the steps that wrap their clay : 
 
 While watchmen do awhile repair, 
 
 And dwell, like sleeping hermits, there. 
 
 See COLLINS S ODE. 
 
 Again, the following quotation to recall an ex 
 cursion to the hills : 
 
 " PLYMOUTH, N. H., June, 1872. 
 " Arrived there the little house they fill, 
 
 Ne look for entertainment where none was; 
 
 Rest is their feast, and all things at their will; 
 
 The noblest mind the best contentment has. 
 
 SPENSER S FAERIE QUEENE, CANTO I." 
 
 One of the pleasures of Mr. Fields s life thus 
 far unmentioned was in listening to music. Few 
 persons, themselves unskilled in the art, ever found 
 so keen enjoyment in or comprehended better the 
 best work of the best artists. That unusual pleas 
 ure, in the library of a man of letters, of hearing 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 259 
 
 fine music, was often enjoyed in his. No one could 
 take greater pride and satisfaction in the success 
 of any new performance or special musical event 
 than he. He lost many public occasions for listen 
 ing to music from fatigue or preoccupation ; but 
 his delight in the neighborhood and friendship of 
 one of Germany s most distinguished musicians, 
 and his enjoyment while hearing him play in pri 
 vate, must be a compensation to recall among the 
 many dissatisfactions attending any musical ca 
 reer. 
 
 " I would rather be a fine tenor singer," he 
 used to say, "than anything else in the world." 
 
 He possessed the power of attuning the musi 
 cians themselves, which is so seldom seen. A mo 
 ment appointed for music seems sometimes alien 
 to the mood, unapt things are said or done, and 
 everything drifts away from the musical atmos 
 phere ; but he could always bring the circle round 
 with a natural ease both reassuring and stimulat 
 ing. 
 
 His musical friends who must miss henceforth 
 his " fine ear," will recognize the truth of these 
 words, and will remember his gratitude for the 
 pleasure they generously gave him. 
 
 Among the published tributes to Mr. Fields, I 
 would place first the following extract from a dis 
 course by his friend Dr. C. A. Bartol : 
 
260 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " Having known him well for forty years, and lived 
 with him summer after summer in the same house, I 
 must swear I have not known a better tempered man, 
 . . . but whoever suspected he would lack nerve made a 
 great mistake." 
 
 From the tender and discerning words of Miss 
 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, printed in the " New 
 York Independent," I quote as follows : 
 
 " Of all men whom I have known, he was one of the 
 most heartily and humanly helpful. Whether this was 
 instinct, or acquisition, or both, I cannot say (in no re 
 spect do natures differ more than in the naturalness with 
 which they lend a hand) ; but it was, at least, habitual 
 and thorough. Those who think of him chiefly in the 
 glitter of life, in the foam of things, doing what it was 
 pleasant to do, receiving what was more blessed than 
 giving, and giving what was better than receiving, know 
 not of whom they speak. The scholar, the wit, the 
 author, the host who rested his guest, the guest whom 
 everybody wanted, the friend of distinguished men and 
 women, the patron of struggling talent, the recipient and 
 the bestower of select inspirations all this he was. He 
 had life s fine wine ; but he was and had because he 
 earned and held. He was not one of the rose-wrapped, 
 predestined sybarites. He got his good things, as Lady 
 Holland once said, with her haughty smile, of the Order 
 of the Garter, 4 by deserving them. . . . 
 
 " It was a phase of his essential fidelity of nature which 
 gave him so marked a usefulness among the men who 
 have had the graver interests of women very near at 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 261 
 
 heart. His real chivalry surpassed that of almost any 
 man I ever knew. He could not, even after his illness, 
 ask a servant to help him on with his coat without a 
 beautiful accent, like a deferent regret. She was a 
 woman ; he would have spared her. . . . 
 
 " I have wished that men who regard irritability of 
 temper as a man s, and especially a literary man s pre 
 rogative, could have sat at his feet and learned how 
 manly it is to be agreeable at home. All the genial, 
 loyal, unselfish qualities in Mr. Fields struck through. 
 They had the penetrative character of what are called 
 the honest colors in a dye." 
 
 Mr. S. C. Hall sent the following touching trib 
 ute from England : 
 
 " 1 learn with deep sorrow the departure from earth 
 life of a most excellent and estimable man, when it 
 would seem to us his long career of usefulness might have 
 been largely extended even to an age such as mine 
 just eighty-one years ! He had done his work well, and 
 has his reward among good and faithful servants. 
 
 " But the loss is a loss to all human kind ; to his own 
 great country first, but as certainly to ours. I can do 
 little or nothing but honor his memory, and grieve that 
 I have lost a valuable and valued friend. But it cannot 
 be a far time hence when I shall see him again. 
 
 "I receive this day a letter written by him dated 
 April IT. 
 
 " I do not postpone the sad but solemn duty of writing 
 to whoever may be his representatives, praying God to 
 console and comfort those who remain after him, to con 
 tinue a weary pilgrimage on earth. 
 
262 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 " For myself, I am waiting but yearning for the call 
 that shall be a summons to join my beloved wife; to be 
 with her as I know she is with me. 
 
 " May God in his goodness and mercy give to those I 
 address the light He has given to me. 
 
 "S. C. HALL. 
 
 "To THE FAMILY OF JAMES T. FIELDS." 
 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote privately of 
 Mr. Fields (and I trust he and other friends, 
 whose letters may be quoted, will forgive this 
 public recognition of the value set upon their af 
 fectionate words) : 
 
 " The regrets of multitudes of friends, more than you 
 can hear or know of, have followed the departing spirit 
 of him who has left us, and their deep silent sympathy 
 abides with you. How many writers know, as I have 
 known, his value as a literary counsellor and friend ! 
 His mind was as hospitable as his roof, which has ac 
 cepted famous visitors and quiet friends alike as if it had 
 been their own. From a very early period in my own 
 life of authorship, I have looked to Mr. Fields as one 
 who would be sure to take an interest in whatever I 
 wrote, to let me know all that he could learn about my 
 writings which would please and encourage me, and 
 keep me in heart for new efforts. And what I can say 
 for myself many and many another can say with equal 
 truth. Very rarely, if ever, has a publisher enjoyed the 
 confidence and friendship of so wide and various a circle 
 of authors. And so when he came to give the time to 
 authorship, which had always for many years been de- 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 263 
 
 voted to literature, he found a listening and reading pub 
 lic waiting for him and welcoming him." 
 
 Mr. Richard H. Dana wrote from Rome, May, 
 
 1881:- 
 
 " It is chiefly with my father, after all, that I connect 
 my memories of Mr. Fields. To him he was always 
 faithful, kind, considerate, and attentive. 
 
 " Manchester-by-the-Sea became a new place after he 
 made it his summer home. The sight of him walking 
 over by the beach or the pasture, or driving up the 
 avenue in his basket phaeton, was an assurance of enjoy 
 ment, an enjoyment with this characteristic, that it 
 demanded nothing of my father. It all came from the 
 full, the overflowing resources of the guest, so cordial, 
 so affectionate, so encouraging to a man of my father s 
 temperament and habits. . . . 
 
 " Who has left so many friends to mourn him ? Who 
 has given so much pleasure to his friends while he was 
 with them ? He was greatly blessed in nature and tem 
 per, and he faithfully made the utmost of his gifts for 
 the advantage of all others." 
 
 The Governor of our Commonwealth, John D. 
 Long, wrote to express his sense of public as well 
 as private loss; also, the President of Boston Uni 
 versity ; and the President of Cornell University, 
 then our minister at Berlin, Andrew D. White. 
 Mr. White says : 
 
 " My memories of Mr. Fields are among my cherished 
 possessions. During my early professorial days he was 
 
264 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 exceedingly kind to me, giving himself trouble to smooth 
 my path at home and abroad, and just at the time when 
 such kindness was most valuable to me. Without ex 
 aggeration, most of the greatest social enjoyments I have 
 had are certainly those to which he gave me access in 
 Boston, Nahant, London, and elsewhere. 
 
 " I also owe him deep gratitude for daring, in the old 
 days of subserviency to the slave power, to publish arti 
 cles which other editors dared not touch. . . . Winning 
 and devoted as Fields was, it was not that which bound 
 me to him most. I always found in him a real noble 
 ness of heart, a deep wish to help on whatever of good 
 or true he found militant in the world. Let any appeal 
 to his deeper feelings come, and all that wonderful play 
 fulness upon the surface disappeared in a moment." 
 
 The Boston booksellers and publishers gave a 
 united and heartfelt tribute to his memory, and 
 Mr. James R. Osgood wrote privately : 
 
 " In view of my long and invariably pleasant associa 
 tion with Mr. Fields, I cannot forbear telling you how 
 grateful a sense I have of my many obligations to him, 
 and how tender a place he will always hold in my 
 memory." 
 
 Mr. Alden, editor of " Harper s Monthly Maga 
 zine/ wrote : 
 
 " The Messrs. Harper desire me to express their sense 
 of the great loss sustained by American literature in the 
 departure of one who, as author and publisher, contrib 
 uted so much to its excellence, and to its good repute at 
 home and abroad." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 265 
 
 Also, in expressing his own feeling of personal 
 loss, Mr. Alden writes : 
 
 "Into the darkest hour of my life he came giving light 
 and hope. I can never forget it. Turning to him first 
 because I found help in him how much else I found I 
 Only those who knew him nearly knew his goodness and 
 his greatness." 
 
 Robert Collyer wrote : 
 
 "He was the dearest friend I had on earth outside my 
 home. ... I have been thinking of the great host of men 
 and women to whom he was as sunshine and as all that 
 is most welcome in our human life. ... We are all rich 
 through the treasure he gave us out of his heart, the 
 great, gentle, sunny heart which was so true. The work 
 he has done in this world is quite unique and all good. 
 We cannot say better of it than time will say. Just 
 such a man was needed, and needed just where he was 
 and when he came. God s blessing be forever on him 
 for his work s sake." 
 
 George Macdonald said, writing from Casa Co- 
 raggio, Italy: 
 
 " He was so good to me and mine that from afar I 
 can understand something of his loss. ... I know, I 
 will not say knew, and love, I will not say loved him." 
 
 Mrs. H. P. Spofford wrote : 
 
 " His nature was like heaven s sunbeams, a satisfac 
 tion and a delight. I loved him with a grateful heart, 
 for he was a part of happy youth to me, a bright im- 
 
266 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 mortal shape in my memory of those days of his exceed 
 ing kindness, whose going never seemed possible." 
 
 Mr. Howells wrote : 
 
 " Perhaps I have never told you, and may fitly tell 
 you here now, how affectionately and with what unal 
 loyed gratitude I have constantly remembered my con 
 nection with him. A look or word of depreciation from 
 him would have made me very unhappy, in the place I 
 held under him ; but in all the years I was with him, I 
 had nothing but delicate kindness from him forbear 
 ance where I failed, and generous praise where he 
 thought I succeeded in my work. ... I shall cherish 
 the recollection of the little half hour he spent with me 
 in the reception room, that night, before he felt able to 
 go up-stairs. . . . He would not let me feel heavy or 
 sad about him. He was still as he always has been, 
 the genius of cheerful hospitality. There is no one left 
 like him ! " 
 
 Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson says : 
 
 " I shall always feel that I was under great obligations 
 to him at a most important time in my life. He was 
 the best and most sympathetic literary counselor I ever 
 had; and I had much opportunity to observe his con 
 stant kindnesses to others." 
 
 Rev. M. D. Conway wrote from London : 
 
 " But a few evenings ago Julian Hawthorne was here, 
 and in speaking of Mr. Fields said, 4 whom my father so 
 much loved. I had just received, also, a note from Mrs. 
 Procter, in which she spoke of your husband among her 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 267 
 
 American friends. I, too, have been proud to call my 
 self his friend, and of what literary contemporary of his 
 was he not the best and faithfullest friend." 
 
 Mr. Whipple wrote privately : 
 
 " I love him very deeply now, as I loved him when I 
 was a lad of nineteen." 
 
 Joaquin Miller wrote : 
 
 " While many stood nearer to yon and yours, few, if 
 any, admired or looked up to Mr. Fields more earnestly 
 than I. ... How much better he left this world than he 
 found it ! How many a heart was made lighter, happier, 
 each year of his manhood all men know. This vast 
 West world is a great deal better and wiser because he 
 has been. Think how few can have this said of us when 
 all is over, work with all endeavor as we may ! To me 
 Mr. Fields s life seemed the most rounded and perfect of 
 all men s I ever met. Very beautiful he seemed to me 
 in soul and body, and people loved him truly. How I 
 shall always remember that evening in Philadelphia ; the 
 President, the Emperor, the strength, and the beauty of 
 this new world ! " 
 
 Mr. Edward Lear, writing from San Remo, Italy, 
 said : 
 
 " I used to think, years ago, if anything could prevail 
 on me to cross to America, it would be that I should 
 there see James T. Fields." 
 
 Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney writes : 
 
 " I must, for myself, always remember the early wel 
 come your husband gave me when I had just come to 
 bis knowledge as a new worker in letters." 
 
268 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 And Mrs. Procter, writing from London, said : 
 
 " I think you both knew how great a regard my hus 
 band had for yours, what merry days they had to 
 gether. ... I was this morning reading his paper, 
 Leigh Hunt in Elysium, where he speaks of my dear 
 Adelaide so kindly as he always did of all." 
 
 It will be seen that only those brief passages 
 have been selected from these letters which bear 
 testimony to the character we have been consid 
 
 ering;. 
 
 Another volume would be required to contain 
 the words of sympathy and consolation, expressed 
 in every beautiful form the human heart can sug 
 gest, which his friends poured out. The following 
 sonnet, of unusual beauty and significance, from 
 Parke Godwin, must not, however, be omitted : 
 
 "I cannot wish thee comfort in tins hour 
 
 Of life s supremest sorrow; for I know, 
 By aching memories, how little power 
 
 The best words have to mitigate a woe, 
 With which, in its own bitterness alone, 
 
 The heart, amid the silences, must deal. 
 But here, where ocean makes eternal moan 
 
 Along its melancholy shores, I feel 
 How mightier than nature s loudest voice 
 
 Is that soft word, which to the ruler said, 
 Amidst his desolated home, Rejoice ! 
 
 Thy dear one sleepeth: think not he is dead: 
 All death is birth, from out a turbid night, 
 Into the glories of transcendent light." 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 269 
 
 In the month of May, 1879, after a winter of 
 many lectures, Mr. Fields went to Wellesley Col 
 lege one evening to fulfill an engagement. He 
 was to reach home at eleven p. M., and a cheerful 
 supper was awaiting his arrival. The hour for 
 his return came and went, when a telegram was 
 brought summoning me to his side. About mid 
 night I reached the college. He had received 
 every possible attention, but I saw that a violent 
 hemorrhage from the head had startled every 
 body. He was very weak, a little incoherent, and 
 indisposed to sleep. The next morning, a beau 
 tiful Sunday morning, with the consent of the 
 physicians, who did not fear relapse from such an 
 effort, we drove home to Boston, and in a few 
 days, as soon as he was strong enough, removed 
 to our cottage at Manchester. The night of our 
 arrival, soon after midnight, he was wakened by a 
 return of the hemorrhage. All ordinary methods 
 of stopping the blood were ineffectual, and great 
 loss and weakness were the result. Day after day 
 the hemorrhage returned, after the slightest exer 
 tion, until the physicians prescribed entire quiet 
 and forbade him to be moved. During the month 
 or six weeks of his confinement no one entered 
 his room, except the physician and very rarely a 
 servant. 
 
 I look back with peculiar pleasure to those 
 
270 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 days ! He was seldom tired of being read to, and 
 during the long hours of June, from morning until 
 dusk, which did not fall early on that beautiful 
 hilltop, I read to him things old and new, poetry, 
 essays, and occasionally a story of Thackeray or 
 George Eliot. I can recall one morning when the 
 pulse of: life was very low, how the music and sig 
 nificance of Milton s Allegro and Penseroso seemed 
 to take " a sober coloring," and to swing with 
 slow and solemn roar through the chambers of the 
 brain as it never had done before. It chimed and 
 rang with an immortal melody through a mist of 
 tears. And so the days wore on, and called him 
 back to me with a sense of divine and eternal 
 nearness we never had before. 
 
 Of this period I feel as Maurice de Gue rin has 
 said : 
 
 "Apres le bonheur de mourir avant ceux que Ton 
 aime je ne connais rien qui marque plus la faveur du 
 ciel que d etre admis au chevet d un ami mourant, de 
 le suivre jusqu ou Fon peut aller avec lui dans 1 ombre 
 de la mort. de s initier a moiti au mystere profond dans 
 lequel il disparait, de lever sur son visage des empreintes 
 fideles et incorruptibles, de se former en fin un trsor de 
 douleura et de pense*es secretes, qui puisse fournir u, 
 Fe tendre de la plus longue vie." 
 
 The autumn found Mr. Fields restored, but in 
 a delicate condition, which no one outside of his 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 271 
 
 home could understand. He looked in perfect 
 health, but his nerves could no longer bear any 
 strain ; therefore it was not a surprise when, in 
 the midst of his Boston lectures in 1880, he was 
 again attacked with the old trouble. This time it 
 was less alarming ; partly because no painful meas 
 ures were taken to stop the bleeding, and partly 
 because we were assured that more dangerous 
 trouble was thus averted. Again, in the spring, 
 he returned to his beloved home at Manchester. 
 " I like to think," he said, " that I have paid for 
 everything about this place by my lectures." He 
 here passed his longest, and I believe one of the 
 happiest summers of his life, though he suffered 
 from attacks of pain in the chest if he took any 
 exercise more severe than walking on level ground. 
 For five or six years he had found himself subject 
 to this pain at times after climbing or walking in 
 the wind, and used to complain occasionally of 
 feeling as if his voice were " cut off " when he 
 was lecturing. 
 
 In the autumn and winter of 1880-1881, Mr. 
 Fields continued to speak in Boston and vicinity 
 as usual. His lectures in town were more crowded 
 than ever, and as they drew near the close an 
 appeal was made to him to repeat them. The 
 temptation was great, it was an agreeable occupa 
 tion for him, and required less strength than many 
 
272 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 other things, but he was easily dissuaded from it, 
 and the wisdom of the advice appeared, alas, only 
 too soon ! One night of January, after a cold day 
 and some little exertion, he was awakened by 1 
 terrible pain well known to physicians as Angffl 
 Pectoris, or the Breast Pang, and at intervals until 
 the final attack, nearly four months later, he wai 
 subject to this suffering. 
 
 Again great quiet was prescribed, and 
 
 all these months he saw very few persons. 
 
 moment he could get any respite from suffering 
 
 he liked to have me read to him. It could not b 
 
 said of him, 
 
 He had " no minutes breathing space allowed, 
 To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy," 
 
 for this power grew day by day to the very end 
 Old favorites were the books he chiefly desired. 
 Charles Lamb was re-read with undiminished de 
 light, and Southey s Life of Nelson," and in his 
 restless uncomfortable moments, or when I was 
 called away, he would amuse himself with Mark 
 Twain in Switzerland and Germany." Montaigne 
 was one of his prime favorites, and we re-read 
 nearly the whole of it. Indeed, to recount that 
 readino-, would be to enumerate a small library, 
 for he slept very little, seldom or never fairly 
 lyino- down again upon his bed, and the long hours 
 were* conjured out of something of their suffering 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 273 
 
 by these beloved companions. " Carlyle s Remi 
 niscences" was one of the latest books we read 
 together, and Forster s " Life of Dickens " was the 
 last book he laid down. " It does not require any 
 effort, and I love to recall him/ he said to me. 
 
 Sunday evening, April 24, 1881, a little excite 
 ment in the street caused another severe attack of 
 pain, from which he recovered only to fall into 
 the eternal sleep. His face wore unchanged the 
 calm expression native to it in those later days. 
 
 His body lies at Mount Auburn, " the sepulchre, 
 oh, not of him, but of our joy ! " 
 
 Yet as a traveler on some forsaken road sees 
 the light of the city whither he is bound glimmer 
 before him on the distant hillside, so the light of 
 vanished eyes " beacons from the abode where the 
 eternal are." 
 
 It is written in the Holy "Word : 
 
 "At evening time there shall be light" 
 
 18 
 
274 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 AUF WIEDERSEHEN. 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW IN MEMORY OF JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 UNTIL we meet again ! That is the meaning 
 Of the familiar words, that men repeat 
 
 At parting in the street. 
 
 Ah yes, till then ! but when death intervening 
 Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain 
 
 We wait for thee again ! 
 
 The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow 
 Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay 
 
 Lamenting day by day, 
 
 And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow, 
 We shall not find in its accustomed place 
 
 The one beloved face. 
 
 It were a double grief, if the departed, 
 Being released from earth, should still retain 
 
 A sense of earthly pain ; 
 It were a double grief, if the true-hearted, 
 Who loved us here, should on the farther shore 
 
 Remember us no more. 
 
 Believing, in the midst of our afflictions, 
 That death is a beginning, not an end, 
 
 We cry to them, and send 
 
 Farewells, that better might be called predictions, 
 Being foreshadowings of the future, thrown 
 
 Into the vast Unknown. 
 
AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. 275 
 
 Faith overleaps the confines of our reason, 
 And if by faith, as in old times was said, 
 
 Women received their dead 
 Raised up to life, then only for a season 
 Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain 
 
 Until we meet again ! 
 
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