1881    1883

Sarah Orne Jewett Letters of 1882

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Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

Monday night
[ 1882-1883 ]*

Dear Mary

            ………….Mr. Aldrich* sent to me this morning to hurry up some Contributors Club articles* I have been doing and so I put in and did no end of work between twelve and two.  I don't believe I ever crammed so much into two short hours.  I think the result was satisfactory.  You can run a good deal faster when you are chased you know!

 
Notes

1882-1883: This tentative date is based upon Jewett's report that she has been working on a number of pieces for the Atlantic's Contributor's Club.  See notes below.
    The line of points presumably indicates an omission from the manuscript.

Mr. Aldrich:  Thomas Bailey Aldrich.  See Key to Correspondents.

Contributors Club articles:  During Aldrich's editorship at Atlantic, Jewett's pieces in the Contributor's Club column appeared mainly between January 1882 and January 1884.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories in the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Undated Letters, Folder 75, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Winthrop*

1st Mo 2, 1882

Dear Annie Fields

    When our dear Sarah* was here this afternoon I told her of the new book I was reading. I have just finished, and as I understand her that you had not read it, I send it, for I am sure you will like it in the main.

[ Page 2 ]

It is exactly in the line of our spiritualistic conversations, and reveals something of the Oriental marvels of mind-reading, trance, and the sleep of the body while the spiritual man goes abroad over the earth.

    I have been intensely interested in the book, and hope you will read it with as much satisfaction as I have.

    I was sorry to miss [ of ? ] your [ call ? ] yesterday. Will you not repeat it?

[ Page 3 ]

Life is brief, and nothing is of any real value but love and friendship.

    I am invited tomorrow evening to go to the [ annual ? ] social meeting of [ Ja Freeman Clarkes ? ]:* and if my cold will let me I think I shall go. Are not thee & Sarah also of the good man's disciples?

Ever affectionately

John G. Whittier

Notes

Winthrop:  The Winthrop Hotel on Bowdoin Street in Boston was quiet and inexpensive.
    Whittier's handwriting in the manuscript seems more than usually hurried, with uncrossed Ts and shortened spellings that often require guessing at his intentions.

Sarah:  Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Ja Freeman Clarkes:  Whittier's handwriting is virtually unreadable here, but "Clarkes" is fairly clear, the guess of "Ja Freeman" sort of fits the two preceding words. The American activist clergyman and author, James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888) was at this time minister of the Church of the Disciples in Boston.  Many New England churches held social meetings, sometimes once each year.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4686.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

K. P.* [Jan. corrected ] 3^rd (82

    My dear Annie:

        Thanks & always thanks for all you send me. I sent a note to you this A. M. This aft. we get a mail,* a ton! Ask the little owl* if she has been asked to write a love poem for the New Illustrated Weekly Journal in Philadelphia -- I have! Bismillah! Oscar Wilde* has written one ^in it^. Who will dare enter the field with him. Now Heaven save the mark!

    I have been making a horses-blanket all day long, out of old pieces of carpet that  have been

[ Page 2 ]

lying about the stable -- not the most savory occupation, not exactly conducive to meditation upon love poems. As the lady Angela* says in Patience "O Sir, leave us; our minds are but ill attuned to light love-talk!" The owlet will appreciate this reminiscence of our [ favorite corrected ] --

    Yes, dear, it was all right about the trunk: did you not get my note telling you I would [ have corrected ] it sent for & asking you to be so kind as to let the messenger bear it off? I did so write: but another time will send line as you say.

    John & Roland* left us for the city this [ morning ? ] -- John thought he should be back Thursday, so if you

[ Page 3 ]

please, Annie dearest, do not send after Wednesday here --

    I thank you so much for all your notes & enclosures & sweet kindnesses -- Kiss the blinking beloved owl for me & believe me ever & always your

C.

Notes

K.P.: Kittery Point, ME.

mail: Thaxter appears to have placed both a period and a comma after this word.

owl: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Owl and Pinny are Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Bismillah! Oscar Wilde: Bismillah is an Arabic phrase meaning: "In the name of God," also the opening phrase of the Qur'an.
    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. In the 1880s, he was known mainly as a poet.
    Neither Thaxter nor Jewett is currently known to have published in the New Illustrated Weekly.

Angela: Lady Angela is a character in Patience, a comic opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. "The opera is a satire on the aesthetic movement of the 1870s and '80s in England and, more broadly, on fads, superficiality, vanity, hypocrisy and pretentiousness; it also satirizes romantic love, rural simplicity and military bluster." The quotation comes from Act 1.

John and Roland: Thaxter's middle and youngest sons. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 2 (174-190) https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p136g.
 Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

K.P. 5^th Jan. [ 1882 ]*

   You have been so kind to write, dear Annie, & I thank you so much for all -- We could not reach the P.O. at all yesterday, but day before I sent, & wrote to you to please not forward any more letters, for I hope to be on my way to town tomorrow. By & bye, if you wish, dear Annie, I will gladly return to you ---- [ apparently random mark. perhaps a ) ]

   The thermometer is 16° below zero this morning, here. The Atlantic ocean which so "disappointed" poor Mr Oscar Wilde,* is a sight to be seen, like a plain of white cotton batting, with a column of vapor erect here & there, like the ghost in Hamlet,* -- these shaggy breathings of the waves so veil the coast that the fog-horn keeps up incessant hoots (saving the Owl's* presence.) of warning, which don't seem to belong to the bitterly clear & cloudless day. Poor Karl* & I are very comfortable, keeping house all alone. We are burning the whole deck of the schooner Coral,* tough oak that makes a mighty heat.

Ever, dear white flower, your

C.

[ On the back of page 1 ]

For the White Flower.        

Notes

K.P.: Kittery Point, ME.
    This date is based upon Thaxter's report of the U.S. tour of Oscar Wilde.  See notes below.

Oscar Wilde: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. In the 1880s, he was known mainly as a poet.
   Wilde visited the United States in January 1882. Quarantined over night on the SS Arizona in New York harbor on 2 January, he remarked in an interview that the Atlantic had disappointed him because it was so tame. This line made headlines in the days before Thaxter composed her letter.

ghost in Hamlet: Thaxter refers to Hamlet, by British playwright, William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The ghost of Hamlet's father first appears in Act I.

Owl: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Owl is Jewett; Flower is Fields; Sandpiper is Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.
 
Karl: Thaxter's disabled eldest son.

Schooner Coral: According to the Portland Daily Press of 15 June 1881, p. 4, a schooner named Coral was wrecked near the Isles of the Shoals in June 1881.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (191-209)
https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p142m.
   Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett 

[ 15 January 1882 ]*

My dear Miss Jewett:

    I want very much that you should come and lunch with me -- is there any day when you could do this? On Thursday at half past one? &

[ Page 2 ]

would you be so good as to tell me if I might ask Mrs. Fields? I should be so glad if by any chance she felt like coming. Then I would ask no one else if she preferred.

[ But ? ]

[ Page 3 ]

if this is not convenient then some other day.

    I hope it may be possible for you: &

    I am

faithfully yours

Sarah W Whitman

77 Mt. Vernon St.  Jany. 15.


Notes

15 January 1882: It seems clear that when Whitman composed this letter, she was not yet well-acquainted with Jewett.  By the end of 1883, she corresponded easily and intimately with Jewett.  It is likely, then, that this letter comes from the year following the death of James T. Fields (April 1881), as Jewett and Fields were beginning to establish the friendship that lasted until Jewett's death in 1909.  However, it is possible that this letter comes from the following year.
    Associated with this letter is an envelope -- lacking stamp and cancellation -- addressed to Miss Jewett at 148 Charles Street.
  
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Kittery Point. Jan. 27^th (82

     Dear Annie:

        I am to take my poor boy* to town ^if he will go^ & find some small hotel where I can keep him as quietly as possible for a few weeks till we can find some person to take charge of him & keep him at some steady work, for he is very capable & can do many things very well -- He is as well now as ever, as sane as any one, but the wild & unfortunate fit of passion which made him dangerous might occur again, & so he must [ be corrected ] taken away from here -- I have feared all the time, I having been in terror lest this very thing should happen -- It is a sore trial --

    I will see you at once when I come. I hope Mrs Titcomb* did not forget to bring the note I left with her for you when the telegram came Wednesday night -- And I hope it wasnt asking too much about the china -- And I hope you are well, dear, & the sweet owl.* And I send my love with the saddest heart in the world.

Your C.

[ Page 2 ]

     Of course nothing is settled & I may not be able to carry out the plan of going to town. But I will let you know whatever does happen -- If any letters come for me within the next week, will you kindly forward them here & oblige your faithful

C.

Notes

poor boy: Karl is Thaxter's oldest, disabled son. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs Titcomb: Lucy Thaxter Titcomb (1818-1908) was a sister of Thaxter's husband, Levi Thaxter.

owl: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Owl is Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 2 (174-190)
 https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p146q
 Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields


[ Fragment from before 30 January 1882 ]*


   I have had three letters from you, dear, since I wrote. I thank you for your wish to comfort me about poor Karl. But no one can imagine what it is -- & just now I cannot talk about it -- Next time, perhaps. It is an awful weight of wretchedness, but as we are

[ Page 2 ]

"in this world for discipline & not for happiness,"* it has got to be borne, I suppose. Every body must drag some weight.

-------

I am afraid the way to the P. office will get blocked up -- but Eliot* must get home tomorrow, some way, & will take this. Goodnight, dear Annie, I am yours always from the long past through the long future --

C.T.

Notes

Fragment: This part of a letter consists of a half page torn away and then pasted to the top of the following page, to form a single page.
   It concerns Karl, Thaxter's oldest, disabled son. Thaxter's letter to Fields of 27 January 1882 reports that his behavior has become so erratic that she must bring him to Boston to be placed under special care, a move she would consider only in the most desperate circumstances. While it is not certain that this fragment follows the 27 January letter, this is a reasonable guess.  See Thaxter to Fields of 30 January, when she reports that Karl seems fully recovered.

happiness: The source of Thaxter's quotation is not known, though the idea appears frequently in religious and inspirational writing.

Eliot: This may be is a Harvard friend of Thaxter's youngest son, Roland.  Charles Eliot (1859-1897) became a landscape architect, notable for his work on the Boston public park system and playing a role in establishing Arcadia National Park.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (191-209)
https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98nm51x
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

K. P. Jan. 30^th (82*

    My dearest Annie:

        How glad I was to see your handwriting tonight!

    My dear darling, I must hear all about Concord* for unhappy time to come, perhaps -- I am anxious to know, for I had not heard of it -- But now K.* is perfectly sane & sensible{ -- } it was only a wild gust of ungovernable wrath that made his brother afraid & sent him out of the house to telegraph to us, leaving two men here in case they were needed -- Poor K. was crushed with grief & regret after it -- it is just what I have been dreading & fearing all the time, some wild outburst like that,* in which he would not know what he said or did. Mr T.* has found

2

rooms for us at the Winthrop house* & we are going to try it for awhile -- it is the best thing to do for him to take him straight out of this place (-- I shall tell you all about it when I see you --) & occupy his mind with new thoughts & impressions. It is only an experiment -- if it doesn't work, I must try something else -- At first I thought I would stay here with them the rest of the winter, but now it is plain to see that I had best bring him away & leave my poor hard-working patiently-striving John at least free from this trouble. I thought when I wrote to you at first that it was all hopeless & despairing -- but as Mr T. says, it is no case for any institution yet tho' it may develop into such, & the best thing we can do at

3

present, as far as we can see, is this.

    Ah me -- It is a weary world --

    I am half sick with a cold caught coming down here that miserable day -- have hardly been able able to lift up my head all these days -- But we are to go to town & take up our quarters on Thursday next at the Winthrop House & try it: up in a sparrow's nest under the eaves where I can have [ my corrected ] work & keep at it, more like a fiend than ever. Thank you so much for sending my china. I've no doubt it is all right. Kiss my Sarah* for me & loving you both & thanking you always, dearest, for your always ready kindness, I am

Your

C.T.

Notes

K.P.: Kittery Point, ME.

Concord: Perhaps Thaxter refers to the declining health of their mutual friend, American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who died on 27 April 1882 in Concord, MA.  See Key to Correspondents.
    However, it is possible that Fields has suggested that Thaxter consider the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, NH as a place for Karl, who has recently had a psychiatric episode.

K.:  Karl was Thaxter's eldest, disabled son.
    Later in the letter, she mentions her middle son, John, who resided at Kittery Point. See Key to Correspondents.

that,:  While Thaxter probably intended a comma here, her actual mark is unclear.

Mr T.: Thaxter's husband, Levi Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

Winthrop house: EKC, the original transcriber of this letter, identifies this as Winthrop House, on Bowdoin Street in Boston, a quiet and inexpensive hotel used by John Greenleaf Whittier and other literary visitors to Boston.

Sarah:  Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 2(174-190)
https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p1509
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College..

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Sarah Orne Jewett to Emma Harding Claflin Ellis

148 Charles St

31 January 1882

[ Letterhead design of SOJ initials superimposed over each other. ]

Dear Mrs. Ellis

    I have meant to write you every day but in the first place I could find out little about Mary's* plans, and even now I am not very certain. She thinks that she shall go to

[ Page 2 ]

Newark about the middle of February and I should ^think^ the first fortnight in March would be an excellent time to appoint for her dwelling in 15th St.  So may I trouble you to put out an anchor to wind'ard for me, at the house you

[ Page 3 ]

wrote me about?  I want Mary to stay away through as much of the bad weather as possible and I hope she will go on a regular racket.

    I think that you will be amused at finding that I am still in town, but Mrs. Fields* seemed to wish so much that I

[ Page 4 ]

would not go away that I have only been out of this dear house for a day or two at a time.  Beside I was so glad to be here and it really has been the best place for I have not been well.  The weather has used me up a good deal, and I know that the longer I kept away from Berwick the better.

[ Page 5  with the letterhead repeated ]

Although I wish so much to see them all at home I really dread going back.  I am shut up enough here, but I am able to get out very little there in winter and spring weather.        However!

    I have been writing a little lately{,} mostly in the line of Contributor

[ Page 6 ]

Club sketches for the Atlantic* -- And I read and have beautiful good times with Mrs. Fields.  Cora Rice* is here a good deal and we see each other every day or two, and my other cronies are more friendly than ever.

[ Page 7 ]

I think Boston [unrecognized word] so pleasant.  Tonight Mrs. Lodge* and I are going to view Oscar Wilde* sorely against our principles!

    Haven't seen Mrs. Claflin* for a few days, but Mr. Whittier* spent most of yesterday

[ Page 8 ]

morning with us and reported that he was very well and very busy.  Mrs. Fields sends you her love and is sorry she did not see you. 

Yours always lovingly with kind regards to Mr. Ellis --

'Little Sarah'

Notes

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

Atlantic:  The"Contributor's Club" column in Atlantic Monthly consisted of short anonymous essays by regular contributors to the magazine.  In 1882, Jewett may have provided as many as five pieces for this column.  She claimed authorship of just one, "The Color Cure," which appeared in March. Richard Cary attributes four others to her: "Good Society Novels" January; "Pleasant Rooms" April; "Deplorable Improvements" (June); and "Woodland Mysteries" (July).

Cora. Rice:  Cora Clark Rice.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Lodge:  Mary Greenwood Lodge.  See Key to Correspondents.

Oscar Wilde:  During his 1882 tour of the United States, the Irish author, Oscar Wilde, lectured on "The English Renaissance" in Boston on 31 January.

Mrs. Claflin:  Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mr. Whittier:  John Greenleaf Whittier.  See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in the  Governor William and Mary Claflin Papers,  GA-9, Box 4, Miscellaneous Folder J.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

 South Berwick

February 16, [1882] 

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     I have missed you very much -- it has been so great a pleasure to see you often and I was always wishing that it would happen that we were neighbours. Since I came home on Monday, I have not done much except thinking about the things I have done lately, but I hope to begin a story before many days go by.

    I wonder if you have gone back to Danvers?¹ I venture to send this to Boston for Mrs. Fields² tells me that you were in town yesterday, and that your brother³ has been ill. I am very sorry for I know you will be worried and sad. I wish that I could do some little things for you, but after all I suppose it would not do for us to live each other's lives, and though we wish with all our hearts to take away the troubles of the people we love it would be anything but kindness. I have not read The Year 13⁴ yet. I have not felt exactly like reading -- for I am like a boat that is coming round into the wind to start on another tack -- and I have to drift a little first! I took up Warner's Life of Irving⁵ for a half hour last night and I liked it very much. I wonder if you have read it? Give my love to Mrs. Claflin and the Governor.⁶ I hope you have seen Mrs. Fields again. You don't know how much I have missed her. My sister⁷ went away this morning and I was sorry for myself but I am glad for her sake. I know she will have so much pleasure. You do not know how much love I send to you always when I think of you, and now there is more than ever before.

Yours always sincerely,

Sarah Jewett

 
Notes

1. In 1875 Whittier's cousins, the Misses Johnson and Abby J. Woodman, purchased a farm of sixty acres in Danvers and invited him to make his home there whenever he wished. The place was notable for beautiful lawns, orchards, gardens, and grapevines. Whittier suggested the name of "Oak Knoll," which was immediately adopted.

2. Annie Adams Fields (1834-1915), widow of the publisher James T. Fields, became Miss Jewett's closest friend and confidante. Miss Jewett spent most of the winter at Mrs. Fields's Boston home and part of every summer at her cottage in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. They traveled extensively together through the United States, on four European tours, and a Caribbean cruise. Mrs. Fields edited the first collection of Miss Jewett's letters in 1911, published a small life of Whittier (New York, 1893), and several volumes of her own verses.

3. Matthew Franklin Whittier (1812-1883), never a robust man, spent his middle years in Portland, then took a position in the Boston Custom House. He published a series of caustically humorous anti-slavery letters under a pseudonym. At this time John wrote to Miss Jewett: "My brother has been very ill, but is now somewhat, though I fear not permanently, better. The last of our family, he is a kind, unselfish man, whose way of life has been hard and difficult." (Pickard, II, 676.) [ See the whole letter below, 18 February.]

4. Fritz Reuter, In the Year '13: A Tale of Mecklenburg Life, translated by Charles Lee Lewes. The best-known edition was the Tauchnitz (1867) but there were numerous later reprintings, such as the G. Munro (New York, 1878). The book gives many vivid pictures of Franco-German confrontation in the Napoleonic era, rendered in Reuter's local dialect, Platt-Deutsch.

 5. Charles Dudley Warner, Washington Irving (Boston, 1881). Whittier admired "the smooth gracefulness" of Irving's style and modeled his own in part on it. The effect of this influence is "painfully obvious" in Whittier's first book, Legends of New England (1831).

 6. Whittier was the frequent guest of Mary Davenport Claflin and William Claflin, governor of Massachusetts, 1869-1871, at their town and country houses. Mrs. Claflin (1825-1896) wrote three volumes on the New England scene and Personal Recollections of John G. Whittier (New York, 1893). Governor Claflin (1818-1905) was like Whittier ardently anti-slavery; he was a trustee of Claflin University, a Negro institution in South Carolina. Miss Jewett was equally intimate with the Claflins.

 7. Mary Rice Jewett (1847-1930), Sarah's elder sister. She, like Sarah, remained a spinster and kept in close touch throughout her life. Sarah dedicated A White Heron and Other Stories (1886) to her.

 This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

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Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Feb. 17, 1882 ]*

                                    Thursday evening

Dear Mary

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Do you know that John* didn't buy you a ticket at all, but gave you one he had, for a send-off.  I think it was enough to crack anybody's heart!  Goodnight dear O. P.*  Give my love to your beloved hostesses -- and I wish I were just flying in at the window.

                    Yours ever

                             S.  O.  J


Notes

1882:  With this transcription appears this note: [So.  Berwick,  Me.,  Feb. 17, 1882.]
    The meaning of these brackets is not known; hence it is unknown how this letter was dated.  In other transcriptions, it appears such information comes from an accompanying envelope.  Also, the line of points that opens the letter text suggests that this is selected from a longer letter.

John:  Probably John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents.

O.P.:  A family nickname for Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

Danvers [2d Mo ? ] 18 1882*

My dear Friend,

    I wonder how I can reconcile myself to the old, customary life here, after my pleasant stay in Boston, and our delightful companionship there.  I cannot make thee understand how grateful and refreshing it all was, and how

[ Page 2 ]

much I thank thee for it. I did not leave the city until Thursday morning.  My brother* has been very ill, but is now somewhat, though I fear not permanently, better. The last of our family he is a kind unselfish man, whose way of life has been hard, and difficult.  For the last 15 years he

[ Page 3 ]

 
has been connected with the Naval Office in Boston.

    I was glad to get thy letter: it was so good of thee to send it! I hope thee will not hurry about writing;  there is time enough before thee; and I am sure thee need a little country rest and sleep after thy city life & folk-seeing.  I did not call on dear Annie Fields* again, though

[ Page 4 ]

 
{I} should have been glad to do it, for I never see her without a feeling of thankfulness that for such a rare, beautiful soul, and the privilege of being her friend.

    I shall probably go to Boston for a few days early in March, & after that visit Amesbury.

    I must tell ^thee^ how much I have enjoyed that queer, good Vicar of Hermanstow.* I have seen nothing so good for a long time. For it, & for how much more, I thank thee, God bless thee!

Ever with love thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

[2d Mo ? ] 18 1882:  Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

my brother:  Whittier's brother, Matthew, died on 7 January 1883.

Annie Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Vicar of Hermanstow: Richard Cary notes the misspelling here and identifies S. Baring-Gould, The Vicar of Morwenstow: A Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A. New York, 1880.

A transcriber's note reads: "Most of this letter appears in Pickard, II, 676."  This would be the second volume of Samuel T. Pickard's Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Thursday evening

nineteenth of February [ 1882 ]*

I have just finished Warners Irving* and I like it dearly -- I wish we could have read it together -- some of the chapters at any rate -- I am delighted with this last one -- though I liked it as much as I could when I saw it before in the Atlantic -- Dont you remember how good the very last pages are? I like Mr. Warner better and

[ Page 2 ]

better and there is something to be thankful for in the honest manliness and the humor and sentiment of this book.  He speaks in such a cordial way of Irving's humor and sentiment that one is the more glad to praise him for the same gifts and graces.*

    -- Dear darling I did not make myself sure about the second little letter, so when it came tonight I [though intending thought ] it was very nice

[ Page 3 ]

of you! I have not been getting on very well without you, and I had to hear from you just as often as I could. I have been in almost as stiff and crooked a state as I was after the horseback expedition to Corey Hill,* but I think the worst of this little scud has blown over and I shall be a great deal better by tomorrow. I wanted an armful of little books dreadfully sometimes and I thinked and thinked about them! and I am

[ Page 4 ]

sure you know [ deleted letters ] just as well this minute, as if I could really put my head in your lap and tease you as you sit at your desk -- It is just like being with you still -- I believe every thing ^of me^ but my boots and clothes, and the five little stones and the rest of the things in my pocket, and the hairpin -- all goes back to Charles St.* and stays with you half a day at a time -- [ a mark looking like begin and end parentheses superimposed ] Perhaps you wish you could have the

[ Apparently a missing page or more ]

[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin in page 1 ]

(Please give my love to Miss Willard.* I am so glad you told me what she said{.} I care a great deal for it but I cant think I desired it altogether. Sometimes a word like that is a great help and pleasure isnt it?

Notes

1882:  This speculative date is supported by the fact that Jewett reports reading C. D. Warner's Washington Irving biography, about which she wrote in another letter from February 1882.  See notes below.

Warners Irving:  Charles Dudley Warner (see Key to Correspondents) published his biography of the American author Washington Irving in 1881. Jewett reports reading it in another letter of 1882, 16 February to J. G. Whittier.

gifts and graces: See the Bible, Romans 12:6-8.

Corey Hill: Possibly Corey Hill or the Great Hill in Brookline, MA. a park with a notable view.

Charles St.:  Fields's Boston residence at 148 Charles St.

Miss Willard:  This sentence opens with a begin parenthesis mark, which may be in another hand.  There is no corresponding end parenthesis.
    Miss Willard has not been identified, but it is likely she is a cousin of Annie Fields, Helen/Nelly Willard (1838-1920), daughter of Eliza Adams (1795-1881) and Simon Willard (1795-1874).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[South Berwick, Me.,  Feb. 20, 1882]*


                                Monday afternoon

Dear Mary

I have just been out a little while but the wind was so raw and chilly that I put back into port and went in to dwell with Uncle William.*  I found him as steadyminded as usual and very pleasant and we gossiped amiably until I was obliged to depart.  I did not go to church yesterday -- for it was snowing most of the day.  Cousin Charlotte* turned out however and made me a call on her way home.  Carrie* was down this morning for a little while, and Mother received a visit from the baby yesterday.  I was so much amused last night.  Ann* came in to say she had thought she would take her walks abroad and go as far as the cop-house.  I immediately racked my brains to think what branch of the Copp family* could be friends of  hers -- but it turned out she was heading for the wake of a Duffy girl,* and it was the corpse-house she mentioned!  though I was too stupid to understand.  We were very glad to get your letter and the postal card this morning.  I had been wondering if you would get to the ferry-house in time to meet Hetta* -- but wasn't it nice you should have met Dr. Swan?  Did he have anything to say about the Gates's?*  I had a very pleasant letter from Cora this morning.  She said she met Grace at a lunch party and thought she seemed pretty well again.  She has been at Cambridge with Georgie.*  Georgie herself spent yesterday with Cora and they went to Trinity but Mr. McVickar preached.*  Mrs. Field's letter was uncommon long and lovely, and she had Miss Phelps* a spending Sunday with her, and was properly solemnized in consequence.  I have been reading a good deal since you went away and I hope to begin to write some time this week but I don't know.  I think I should like to fall asleep for a month or two, and I am pretty sure my society wouldn't be much loss.  The dogs and birds are well and I have borne with your clock so far!  You don't know how often I think of you, and you must remember everything that happens to tell me!  which makes me think of the woman who said to her child Be absolutely perfect, that's all I ask!*

    Give ever so much love to Miss Ward and Hetta and much for yourself goes in this letter and I hope it won't spill out.  My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Ward and Miss Hayes* if she is still there -- so no more at present from yours with esteem

the Queen.*


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [South Berwick, Me.,  Feb. 20, 1882,   SOJ to MRJ  c/o Rev. W. H. Ward,  Abington Ave., Newark, N.J.]. 

Uncle William:  William Durham Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

Cousin Charlotte: Richard Cary says in notes to an 1872 letter: "Elisha Hanson Jewett (1816-1883), first cousin of Miss Jewett's father, was a prominent railroad and building contractor, a bank director and state senator from South Berwick. His first wife, also named Sarah Orne Jewett, was the daughter of his uncle and business associate. His current wife was Charlotte Tilton Cross."

Carrie ... the baby: Caroline Eastman Jewett and her son, Theodore.  See Key to Correspondents.

Ann ... Copp family:  Ann is presumably an Irish employee, but she has not been identified with certainty.  Nor is there information yet available about the Copp family of South Berwick, though Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston would have been familiar to the Jewett sisters.

Duffy girl:  The identity of this person who died in February 1882 in South Berwick has not been determined.

Hetta:  Jewett expects Mary to see members of the Ward family:  Miss Susan Hayes Ward, her brother William Hayes Ward, and their sister, Hetta.  See Key to Correspondents.

Dr. Swan ... the Gates's:  There is some possibility that Mary has met a well-known New York homeopathic physician, Dr. Samuel Swan (1814-1893).  To which Gates family Jewett refers also cannot be known easily.  She records writing a letter to Vattie Gates in her diary of 15 January 1869.  This seems likely to have been Vashiti / Vashti Gates (1848-1925), daughter of Ephraim Church Gates and Vashiti / Vashti Randall Pickins of Calais, ME.  She married Bradley Llewellyn Eaton (1850-1937) in 1872.  The "Find a Grave" pages for this couple offer a good deal of information about their families.
    Or perhaps, Jewett refers to the popular novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar (1868), returning to a previous conversation. See Key to Correspondents.

Cora ... Grace ... Georgie:   Cora Clark Rice, Grace Gordon who married Jacob Treadwell Walden, and Georgina Halliburton. See Key to Correspondents.
   
but Mr. McVickar preached:  The tone of possible disappointment in this statement may result from the expectation that the popular Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) would have preached.  He was rector of Trinity Church (Episcopalian) Boston from 1869 until he became Bishop of Massachusetts in 1891.  Mr. McVickar's identity is not certain, but probably this is William N. McVickar (1843-1910), who in 1897 became Bishop of Rhode Island. At the time of this letter, he was rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia.  It is not clear why he would be preaching in Boston, except as a guest.

Mrs. Field's ... Miss Phelps: Annie Adams Fields and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.  See Key to Correspondents.

all I ask:  This quotation is from a novel by Harriet Waters Preston (1836-1911), Love in the Nineteenth Century (1873) p. 11.

Mrs. Ward and Miss Hayes:  The identities of these people are not easily determined.  William Hayes Ward's wife and mother both had died before the date of this letter.  The Hayes family was large and prominent in South Berwick, as suggested by the Ward families' middle names, but the identity of this "Miss Hayes" is not yet known. 

the Queen: Among her immediate family, Jewett accepted the nickname, the Queen of Sheba (sometimes Sheby).  She often referred to herself and signed her letters with variants of this title. In the Bible (Kings 10 and Chronicles 9), the rich Queen of Sheba visits King Solomon to "prove" his famed wisdom.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

February 21, 1882

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     Don't think that you must answer this letter -- if I thought I gave you a bit of trouble I should be so sorry! But I am a very near relation of yours now, you know;¹ and I like to have something to do with you and just now, sending a letter is the only way. I can't say how glad I was to hear from you this morning. It was like being with you again for a few minutes, and to tell the truth I have been wishing that I could put myself back into the midst of those days in Boston. I have missed Mrs. Fields* so much! I fairly long to see her again and it seems a month instead of a week since I came away. I hear from her very often and that is a great pleasure, but every letter makes me wish all the more to be close beside her.² I think you know better than most people can how dearly I love her, for you know how well worth the best love in the world she is. I could not love her any better now, but I shall by and by, as fast as I grow better myself. I do not believe you begin to know how much she cares for you, she so often spoke of you in the most loving and tender way, and she was always a great deal happier after she had seen you. I am so glad that you are to be in Boston again early in March and I have already made a plot to go down for a day and night and perhaps we will have another twelve o'clock breakfast, and tell some new ghost stories, and be otherwise dismal!

     My sister Mary* went to New York within a few days after I came home and she is having the best of good times and will not be at home for a month yet, but if my mother is very well I do not see why I cannot go away for a little visit. I am very lonely here at this time of the year, for I am always used by the weather, and have to stay indoors, and I grow dull and sad in spite of myself. I don't mean to fret, and I do love my home, and cling to it more and more fondly every year, but I hardly ever feel very well all through the winter, and like to be where the outside life helps me to forget myself.

     I brought some books down with me, some of my own and some that I brought from the bookshelves in Charles St. and they keep me company. But it has been one of the times when I have cared for people more than for books, and found that a cold sheet of printed paper did not make up for a voice I like to listen for, or a hand I like to get hold of. I wish to do some writing as soon as I can but somehow I have not liked the thought of it yet. You will say I need a bright red room to stay in, and will recommend my own prescriptions in "The Colour Cure." Did you see that bit of The Contributors Club for March?³ I wrote it and Mrs. Fields laughed over it a good deal, which was satisfaction enough, wasn't it?

     I can look out of your windows at Danvers now and see the tall Norway spruces shouldering all the snow they can get hold of. There are some that look like them at the side of the house here, but we are shut into the village and cannot look off across the fields. You must give my kind remembrances to your household, and tell Phebe⁴ that I expect to be taken out in style with her dog team. My dog Roger⁵ is very well and was glad when I came home. Goodbye dear friend and I am yours most lovingly.

S. O. J.


Cary's Notes

1. In letters to Mrs. Fields (at Huntington Library) Whittier had referred to Miss Jewett as his "adopted daughter."

2. Her husband, James T. Fields, died April 24, 1881.

3. "A Color Cure," Atlantic Monthly, XLIX March 1882), 425-426. Since faith in old-fashioned medicine has declined, Miss Jewett examines the suggestion that there is more therapy in agreeable colors than in dosages of disagreeable drugs. The tone -- her father was a doctor -- is gently satiric.

4. Phebe Woodman Grantham was the adopted daughter of Whittier's cousin Abby J. Woodman. In her childhood she lived at Oak Knoll and was the object of much affection by Whittier, who wrote the poem "Red Riding Hood" for her. She became extremely possessive of Whittier in later life and, from accounts in Albert Mordell's biography and a letter by Miss Jewett to Samuel T. Pickard, could be unseemly sharp in defending her interest.

5. See Miss Jewett's letter to Gertrude V. Wickham (Sarah Orne Jewett Letters, ed. Richard Cary [Waterville, Maine, 1967], pp. 53-55). Miss Wickham incorporated this material in "Sarah Orne Jewett's Dog," St. Nicholas, XVI (May 1889), 544-545. Roger, "a large Irish setter, of wide and varied information, and great dignity of character," was one in a long line of Jewett pet dogs.

Additional Notes

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Louise Chandler Moulton

South Berwick Maine

22 February

[ 1882 ]*

[ Letterhead with superimposed initials, SOJ ]

My dear Mrs. Moulton

    I am afraid you have been thinking me both rude and unkind, but your little note came just before I was to leave town, and then I was ill, and since I came home I have been ill again, and I have felt very unlike writing.

[ Page 2 ]

I wish I could have seen you, but I shall be in town again in April and you will not have gone away I hope?  I thought of you while you were the other side of the sea, and I hoped that you were stronger and better

[ Page 3  ]

than when you went away in the spring -- It is a great puzzle to me of late, why we should be given a certain sort of work to do and be made ready for it, only to be told to lay it down!  But all our puzzles will look very simple and easy

[ Page  4 ]

to be solved by and by wont they?

    I am sure you are finding Boston pleasant?  I hated to come away for I never have been happier there, although my illness made me miss a good many things -- I send you a thousand good wishes and thank you so much for the kind little notes.  I am so sorry I did not see you.

Yours sincerely

Sarah O. Jewett.


Notes

1882:  With this letter is a matching envelope addressed to 28 Rutland Square, Boston, and cancelled February 23, 1882 in South Berwick, ME.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Library of Congress in the Louise Chandler Moulton papers, 1852-1908.  MSS33787.  This transcription is from a microfilm copy of the manuscript, on Reel 8 of Microfilm 18,869-15N-15P.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

   [ Feb. 23, 1882]*

         Thursday 23rd

Dear Mary

    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Did you send me those beautiful Japanese stout little bowwows?*  They came from New York -- like Mrs. Claflin's* that I have adored for some years?  I love them more than I can tell.  I should hug whoever did send them.  Good-by with love to Miss Ward and Hetta* -- and no end for yourself  -- 

from the Queen.*


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [So. Ber.  Me.   Feb. 23, 1882,   SOJ  to  MRJ,   c/o Dr. Ward,   Abington Ave, Newark, N.J.]  The line of points that opens the letter text suggests that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

Japanese ... bowwows:  One might guess that Jewett refers to ornamental dogs, but that is only a guess.

Mrs. Claflin's:  Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin. See Key to Correspondents.

Miss Ward and Hetta: Miss Susan Hayes Ward and her sister, Hetta.  See Key to Correspondents.

the Queen: Among her immediate family, Jewett accepted the nickname, the Queen of Sheba (sometimes Sheby).  She often referred to herself and signed her letters with variants of this title.  In the Bible (Kings 10 and Chronicles 9), the rich Queeen of Sheba visits King Solomon to "prove" his famed wisdom.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Sarah Orne Jewett

[ Mr. Howes ? ].* Feb. 23^rd

(82

My dearest owl:* if I had written all the notes I have thought to you since you flitted, there would been a whole company of soft white moths aflutter around you the livelong time, a snowstorm of notes -- But alack, alack, I gasp for breath, I am so hurried. I have been working a week on Alice Howe's* elaborate bowl & had it 'most done. Yesterday went into Somerville to see poor Ovidia* leaving it to dry on top stove as always did, & lo, it went off, it [ burst ? ] with a terrible explosion most scared poor K.* to death, he sitting here alone, keeping house, reading. Got to do it all over, but dont mind -- only wish had more time.

[ Page 2 ]

Flower came too which was gone, too bad! Went to dine with Flower other night. She was dear. But we both want Owl -- Quawked about owl a good deal. Hope owl and Flower will go cross water in Spring. O my! how lovely to think of -- must do it!

    Hope owl is untwisted of pains. Quawks love to owl across the nasty snow all time.  Eva V. B.* spent aft. with Sandpiper. Nice. Karl & I going to have type-writer -- he thinks he can write all my letters then & copy all mss. Write again soon, Sweet owl. Leaves windy always open for dear fluffy owl, & any moths she may send to wander this way -- Loves owl, oh cant tell how much & is her breathless

Sandpiper.

 
Notes

Howe's: This transcription is uncertain.  Thaxter resided in Kittery Point, NH during the winter of 1882, but perhaps she was visiting at Alice Greenwood Howe's Boston residence when she wrote this letter.  See notes below.

owl:  Owl (Jewett), Flower (Annie Adams Fields) and Sandpiper are nicknames the three used with each other. See Key to Correspondents.

Alice Howe's:  Alice Greenwood Howe. See Key to Correspondents.
    Thaxter supplemented her income by hand-painting china to order.

Ovidia: Ovidia was one of Thaxter's Norwegian immigrant friends, living permanently on the Isles of the Shoals.  Like several members of her family, she suffered from severe mental illness and was institutionalized in the asylum at Somerville, MA.  See also Norma Mandel, Beyond the Garden Gate pp. 80-3.

K: Karl, Thaxter's eldest son, who was disabled and lived with Thaxter throughout her life.

Eva V. B.: Baroness Eva von Blomberg.  See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. MS Am 1743, Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Additional Correspondence Series: IV. 2 letters to Sarah Orne Jewett from various correspondents, (102) Box 2. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Danvers 2nd Mo 25    1882

Dear Annie Fields

    Though thee says thy letter is not to be answered, I must just say it was exceedingly welcome, and that I thank thee for it.

    I wish I could have heard thee read my verses in the Atlantic.* They would ^have^* seemed more to me ever after.

[ Page 2 ]

The letters of Mrs Child* are not yet arranged fully, and there seems some doubt about their readiness for publication until next fall.  Miss Parsons* niece of Mrs C. has been ill and is doubtful of her ability to do the work, and ^has^ requested Mrs Sewall to ask Col Higginson to do it.  I do not know whether he will answer. [ For ? ] myself at Mrs Sewall's request, I [ unrecognized word ] to write a brief

[ Page 3 ]

introduction, partly biographical. I cannot get all the facts I need, but shall try to do something, though at great disadvantage. I wish Mrs. Sewall could feel like taking the matter in her own hands. She [ would ? ] know more about the dear, poor woman than anybody else.

    I hope thee are not quite alone, though I scarcely know who could supply the place of our friend Sarah Jewett.* I hope when I visit Boston

[ Page 4 ]

again, I shall find her with thee. In the mean time I shall think of thee as busy in the Lord's work. I am always, with affection & gratitude, thy friend.

John G. Whittier

Notes

verses in the Atlantic:  Whittier's "At Last" appeared in the March 1882 Atlantic Monthly, pp. 874-5.

^have^:  This insertion is in a different ink, and may be by a different hand.
    Whittier's handwriting in this manuscript seems more than usually hurried, with a number of shortened spellings that often require guessing at his intentions.

Mrs Child:  Whittier refers to his partnering with others to produce Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883).  Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-1880) was an American abolitionist, civil rights activist, novelist, and journalist.
    Whittier's partners in the editing enterprise included reformer and activist Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) and Harriet Winslow Sewall (1819-1889), poet and second wife of American reformer, Samuel Edmund Sewall (1799-1888).  Mrs. Sewall is credited with most of the editorial work.

Miss Parsons: Sarah Maria Parsons was Child's niece and correspondent. Little more has yet been learned about her.
    Colonel Higginson is Thomas Wentworth Higginson. See Key to Correspondents.

Sarah Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4811.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

Thursday evening [February-March 1882]

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     If my mother is quite well¹ and everything is all right here I think I shall spend Sunday in Boston. But please don't tell Mrs. Fields if you see her, for I have set my heart on surprising her. I shall be in all day (unless we go to church at four o'clock).

     I have been hoping that I should see you, and wondering if this was not the time for you to be in town too. I have not finished The Year 13, but you see, I looked at it and found it was so good that I would not read it until I was sure the right time had come. And when I did begin it I was interrupted.

     My friend Mrs. Rice² has been staying with me and we have had such a good time together! and yesterday when she went home I went with her as far as Exeter to see my grandfather³ and did not get home until this afternoon. I wonder if I shall ever be ninety-three years old and as chirpy as he is!

     I do not say anything about the summer plan⁴ because I want to talk about it and a letter is no good.

Yours always most lovingly,

Sarah

 
Notes

 1. Mrs. Caroline F. Perry Jewett (1820-1891) was a semi-invalid during the last decade of her life.

 2. Cora Clark Rice (1849-1925) was one of Miss Jewett's earliest Boston friends who introduced her to the social and cultural life of the city. Married to the son of a Massachusetts governor, John Rice, she devoted much time to philanthropies and the Home for Incurables in Boston.*

 3. Dr. William Perry (1788-1887) of Exeter, New Hampshire, was the most distinguished physician and surgeon in that section of the country in his time. A decisive and inspiring man, he rode spirited horses until he was past eighty and performed surgeries at ninety-two. Miss Jewett dedicated The Story of the Normans (1887) to him.

4. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields had begun discussing details of their first European jaunts during which they would touch on England, Ireland, Norway, Belgium, Italy, France, and Switzerland, and were to meet Tennyson, Charles Reade, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, the Charles Dickens family, and Christina Rossetti.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

63 Mt Vernon St

14' .)  [ 1882 ]*

My Dear Friend

    I have just got thy note.  I have made arrangements to stay here through the week, so that I may have the pleasure of seeing thee, possibly, before I leave.  I am glad thee like the Year 13.*  The slow, quaint Dutch humor of it is sometimes [ irresistable so spelled].  Thine always,

John G Whittier

Notes

1882:  In a letter to Whittier of 16 February 1882, Jewett says she has not yet read In the Year '13.  The letter seems to follow Jewett's to Whittier of Thursday evening [February-March 1882].  The 3 marks after "14" are difficult to make out and are rendered here as they appear.

the Year 13:  Whittier refers to Fritz Reuter (1810-1874)  In the Year '13: Tale of Mecklenburg Life, which had been published in English translation in 1867.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields

New York March 1^st 1882

Dear Friend

    I shall venture to retain the Letter you sent me if I may and put it among the family archives.* The paper was written right out of my heart because I was so glad for the beautiful bit of work you had done and "because he was most noble and a king"* and I loved him as I have only loved one man besides in all my life and he also is among the immortals.

    You must come some day and see us. It is too short a tether you have made for your life now, and now and then you must let it out a knot or two and make other places glad beside Boston & Manchester. And some day before this young gentleman gets the ring on my Annie's finger* I want her to come and see you for a few days because it will be so good for her and so pleasant.

Yours always   

Robert Collyer

Notes

archives: Collyer omits many periods in this letter. I have supplied them wherever they seem necessary.

king:  Collyer quotes these lines from an unidentified poem in his sermon, "Vines and Branches," the first in his collection, The Life that Now Is (1871).
    In Annie Fields's memoir of her husband, James T. Fields, she quotes Collyer's tribute letter, sent after Mr. Fields's death:

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. (p. 265).

Annie's finger: Collyer probably refers to the expected engagement of his daughter, Annie.  It appears, however that she never married.  See Collyer in Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

Thursday afternoon

[ 2 March 1882  ]*

Dear Mary

    Cora* and I have been to Carrie’s* to dinner and I meant to send you a letter by the two o’clock mail but somehow I forgot it until I was up there and it was raining & too late. Mother departed for Exeter at ten -- She was going today at any rate she said; and hearing of Mrs -- Tarleton’s* death of course made her more anxious to get there, thinking that Aunty* might

[ 2 ]

go away today -- It was very sad to think of the poor woman’s dying, away from all her friends wasn’t it? Mrs. Fiske* said there was nothing in the telegram except that she had died suddenly and Will* took the afternoon train and went right on. She said that he had a note from Mrs. T. the first of the week and she was in her usual health then -- Mother

[ 3 ]

took the a little trunk and thought she might stay some days, so I am glad to have Cora here, not that sister is afraid to stay alone however.

    -- It has been pouring since yesterday until a little while ago and the snow is going very fast indeed. I went in to see Uncle William* a little while ago and he was lively. You would laugh to see the way that Jack goes round with John Tucker* -- they cannot bear

[ 4 ]

to part! Sister hasn’t much news -- but she kindly sends her love to Mrs. Ellis* and yourself. Mother wished me to tell you that she has written to Mrs. Beamis* and sister kept forgetting to mention that she has had pretty pussy willows for some days, that she [ found ? ] from the Junction road. So no more at present from your very affectionate Queen of Sheby.*


Notes

2 March 1882:  This date is based upon the death date of Sarah Fiske Tarlton on Tuesday 28 February 1882.  See notes below.

Cora:  Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

Carrie:  Carrie Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs -- Tarleton: Sarah Walker Fiske (20 September [1813 or 1814] - 28 February 1882) was a sister of Francis Allen Fisk (1818-1887), who married Jewett's maternal aunt, Abigail Gilman Perry (1824-1868).  Note that whether the surname ends in "e" seems an arbitrary choice among family members.
    Sarah Walker Fiske married James [ Monroe or Madison] Tarlton (1809-1880), a businessman who served as U.S. Consul at Melbourne, Australia, 1854-1860.
    She apparently died in Manhattan, NY.
    Sources vary on a number of details. See Wood & Torbert Families, The Fiske Family (pp. 59-62) and History of Plymouth, New Hampshire (p. 668).

Aunty: Probably, this is Lucretia Morse Fisk Perry, sister to Jewett's mother and Abigail Gilman Perry. See note above on Mrs. Tarlton. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Fiske: It is possible that this is the wife of one of Francis and Abigail's sons. John Taylor Fiske (1866-1940) married Mary Amelia Lillie (1862-1946). Frank W. Fiske (1861-1886) married Abby (1862-1947). The Fiske/Fisk family resided mainly in Concord, NH.

Will:  Probably this is William Perry Fiske (1853-1914), son of Francis Allen Fiske (1819-1887) and Abigail Gilman Perry (1824-1868). He apparently did not marry.

Uncle William: William Durham Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Jack ... John Tucker:  Though Jewett appears to have written "Jack," it is possible she wrote "Jock."  She is not yet known to have owned a dog named "Jack," but "Jock" the dog is mentioned in some of her other letters.
    For John Tucker, see Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Ellis: Emma Harding Claflin Ellis. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Beamis: This person has not been mentioned in other Jewett letters.  Without more clues, she cannot be identified.

Queen of Sheby:  One of Jewett's family nicknames. See Key to Correspondents.

 The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection: Jewett Correspondence MWWC0196_02_00_128_01.
New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Mary Barrell to Sarah Orne Jewett

York March 2nd 1882

    Dear friend

        It has been my intention to write you for a long time* I find in my mind to write you to this morning to ask you why your long silence how your health is, and where and how you have spent the cold stormy winter I sent you an almanac the first of January not hearing from you I concluded you were from home. M^r Freeman* brought in a paper last evening ^mentioning^ you were going to travel the coming season It did not say either by sea or land. [ In ? ] society many go to Europe, we think you will make one of their number. You must write and tell us all about yourself. How are your mother and sisters, any more little boys or girls to call you aunts. Did Mifs Breiton* return home! It looks very dreary now, but the lower part of the Town is fast-filling up with houses -- Two Boston ladies are going to have a

[ Page 2 ]

house built the [ oposite so spelled ] side of the river near the Bridge  M^r Freeman has been in York the most of the winter he thinks of leaving soon I will send his kind regards to you. We do not know as Mrs Lawrence* or her friends are coming to York or not she was in Washington the last of the week Betsey* [ joines so spelled ] with me in much love to you, your mother, and sister you must write us soon and tell us all about yourself How is Mrs Rice?* give Betsey and my love to her. The weather is dark and snowy. If you do not leave before the weather becomes warm and pleasant you must ride down and see us

Ever think of me with the same affection

I bear to you

Mary Barrell.

Notes

time: Barrell uses little punctuation in her letter. I have chosen to give her text as near as I can to how she wrote it, leaving the reader to punctuate as seems helpful.
    Jewett and Annie Adams Fields sailed for Europe near the end of May 1882.

Freeman: Mr. Freeman has not yet been identified.

Breiton: This transcription is uncertain, and this person has not yet been identified.

Mrs. Lawrence: This person has not yet been identified.

Betsey: Elizabeth Barrell, Mary Barrell's sister.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs Rice: Probably Core Lee Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
     Barrell, Mary. 1 letter; 1882, bMS Am 1743 (17).
    Associated with this letter is an envelope addressed to Jewett in South Berwick, stamped "Missent" and "Forwarded," cancelled on 27 March, with "1882" handwritten above the addressee.
     This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 3, 1882]*

 
Dear O. P.*

    We are going on as usual and I haven't much to tell you, only I know from experience how nice it is to hear that everything is going on all straight.  Mother wrote this morning that she found Grandpa nicely, and that Aunty and Fanny were going to Concord last night so I suppose the funeral is today.*  It seems very forlorn some how or other, and yet death is far less forlorn than a lonely life that seems a little adrift and uncertain.  I always feel as if there were a great deal better chance in the next world for such people than there can be in this.  I think Mother was quite stirred up about it -- and I dare say it brought back a good deal to her.


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [South Berwick,  Me.,  Mar. 3, 1882,  SOJ to MRJ,  c/o  C. W. Ellis, Esq.,   250 East 15th St., N.Y.C.]  This would indicate that Mary is visiting at the home of Emma Harding Claflin Ellis.   See Key to Correspondents.

O.P.:  A family nickname for Mary Rice Jewett.

Grandpa ... Aunty and Fanny ... Concord ... funeral: Grandpa is Dr. William Perry; Aunty should be Lucretia Morse Fisk Perry, daughter-in-law of her grandfather; Fanny would be her daughter, Frances F. Perry.  See Key to Correspondents.
    See Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett of 2 March 1882 for information about the funeral of Sarah Fiske Tarlton.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[March 6, 1882]*


                            Sunday afternoon

Dear Mary

    ………Mar seems in excellent health but is at present at Taddy's,* so there is no message.  She has now returned and sends her love in which Cora and I join.  Love to Missis Ellis.*  I hope you will indulge her and yourself in some pretty show this week so no more at present from yours with esteem

            The Queen of Sheby*


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [South Berwick, Me.,  March 6, 1882,   SOJ to MRJ  at Mrs. Cushman's,  128 E. 16th St.,  N.Y.C.] The line of points that opens the letter text suggests that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

Mar ... Taddy's: Mar is an occasional nickname for the Jewett sisters' mother, Caroline.  Taddy is Theodore Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.

Cora ... Missis Ellis:   Cora Clark Rice and Emma Harding Claflin Ellis.    See Key to Correspondents.

The Queen of Sheby:  Among her immediate family, Jewett accepted the nickname, the Queen of Sheba (sometimes Sheby).  She often referred to herself and signed her letters with variants of this title.  In the Bible (Kings 10 and Chronicles 9), the rich Queen of Sheba visits King Solomon to "prove" his famed wisdom.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

[ March 1882 ]*

[ A fragment with missing material at the beginning ]

that I am going too -- I grow more and more sure that Mother will think it all right. Mary* said so -----

    I have been out for a little drive and what do you think I found but some pussy willow half in bloom! So I must [ send corrected ] you some to put in water until they fluff out entirely -- I had another letter from Whittier* today. I was almost sorry I had written him when I first saw it, but not afterward -- Sunday would have been such a short day if I had been with you -- darling! [ inserted bottom right three unrecognized words ___ __ excused ?]

[ Page 2 ]

think of it under the circumstances! and at any rate it [ is corrected ]  just as well for me to be here on a day when the reliable John* takes his walks abroad. After Cora* goes I will try to go to you for a day -- I think we ought to be talking over no end of [ business corrected ] affairs, and studying our geographies -- Darling I didn't mean to suggest that you shouldn't say that you are going to foreign parts! -- but that it might be kept as much as possible to ourselves for the present

[ Manuscript breaks off.  No signature. ]


Notes

March 1882:  This fragment seems to belong with other letters between Jewett and Fields as they began planning their first European trip together in early 1882.

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

Whittier:  John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.

John: John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents.

Cora:  Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich

Tuesday morning [ March 1882 ]

Dear Lilian

    Every day I am disappointed because I cannot get to see you, but I have had a great Manchester cold ever since I came from home a fortnight ago, [ at ? ] first I am a little better and then a good deal [ worse corrected ]! I get on pretty well when I dont go out, but that is disastrous in itself! And I complain more about

[ Page 2  ]

you really than I do about me! -- I am so* sorry every day to think what a bad winter this has been for you. Please give my love to Mrs. Richardson* and I do hope that the change of homes will work a charm for her.

    You and I may see each other under strange skies before long.  A.F.* says that you are the one person who knows our (not very well

[ Page 3  ]

settled) plans. I have only told my sister Mary* this week, and she approves so highly that I feel now as if there really were plans. We are waiting for a letter today to tell us many things about the journey. I am so glad to have kept it secret -- as Mrs. Bell* once said -- "The minute you say you are going you are gone!"  Please

[ Page 4  ]

give my love and goodbye to the boys and to dear T.B.*  We are agreed that he never had been so charming and so delightful as that night at dinner! Everybody has come back & said so!

Yours most affectionately

S. O. J.

Notes

March 1882: While this date is speculative, it has some support.  Jewett seems to refer to a major upcoming trip during which she anticipates spending time with the Aldriches.  In March of 1882, she was anticipating her first trip to Europe with Annie Fields and seeing the Aldriches there.  Also, Jewett refers to the Aldrich "boys" as living at home.  In 1882, they turned 14.

so:  Jewett underlines this word twice.

Mrs. Richardson: According to George Carey's "The Rise and Fall of Elmore," "William Richardson, known to his intimates as “Will Dear” ... had made a small fortune when he invented the clothing snap, the popular forerunner of the zipper, and with some of his money he built Seawoods [in Tenant's Harbor, ME], a 13-room house that faced the ocean. Richardson’s sister-in-law married Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and soon his large rambling cottage, The Crags just to the north of Seawoods, was drawing to Elmore such literary luminaries as Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett."
    Unfortunately, little additional or corroborating information has been discovered. 

A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Bell:  Probably Helen Choate Bell. See Key to Correspondents.

T.B.:  Thomas Bailey Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents. The Aldriches' twin sons, Talbot and Charles were born in 1868.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Baily Aldrich Papers, 119 letters of Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich, 1837-1926. MS Am 1429 (117). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
    At the bottom left of page one, in another hand, is a circled number: 2725.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

March 7, 1882

                                Tuesday

Dear O. P.*

    . . . . . . . . . . . . . Do you know that Mother seems as pleased as Punch* about my going.  Somebody in Exeter had heard about Mrs. Fields* and inquired why I didn't go with her, and Mar was evidently hoping I would!  I haven't heard her say a word that made me think she really felt bad about it. Sister sails the 24th of May in the Scythia from New York* -- and tell Mrs. Ellis* that I hope she will console me at the last moment.


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [South Berwick, Me.,  Mar. 7, 1882.  SOJ to MRJ,  c/o C. W. Ellis, Esq.,  250 E. 15th St.,   N.Y.C.] The line of points that opens the letter text suggests that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

O.P.:  A family nickname for Mary Rice Jewett.

pleased as Punch:  The character, Mr. Punch, of "Punch and Judy" puppet shows, though he behaves outrageously, typically triumphs over adversity in the end, and so is pleased with his final situation.

Mrs Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

New York:  Jewett and Fields sailed from New York to England on 24 May 1882.

Mrs. Ellis: Emma Harding Claflin Ellis. See Key to Correspondents.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich

[ Letterhead in red, top left, initials SOJ superimposed ]

  South - Berwick

7 March 1882

Dear Duchess*

    I am moved to write you today, but I haven't anything to say that ^it^ is worth your while to read!  I should have enough to say though if we were together and I wish very much I could get hold of you!

[ Page 2 ]

    The plans for the flitting across the water* get on famously, and I grow more interested every day.  I see more and more clearly that it is the very best thing for me, and I hope to come home in the fall [ deleted words ] good for something both to my friends and myself!  I think Mrs. Fields* and I will have a most lovely time together and we mean to stay as long in

[ Page 3 ]

a place as we can and not try to do too much travelling.  I am deeply interested in the account of your French studies!  It is exactly what I ought to be doing myself, but I hate studying -- and I must get on as best I can. I think it must be a great pleasure to 'Adolph'*  ------ 

    Cora Rice* has been with me for a week and you dont know how much I have enjoyed her. I think it is the very pleasantest time

[ Page 4 ]

we ever had together and that is saying a great deal.

    -- I think I shall go to Boston for a night within a week or two -- I do not believe that I can stay away longer just now -- but I wish to talk over things with Mrs. Fields.  You dont know how much I have missed her! --

    -- I hope you will give my love to your [ household corrected ] of faith.

    -- Did you have a good time in New York? and how are Tal and Charley?* Did Mr. Aldrich find that the splinters of the Club*

[ Up the left margin of page 1 ]

would be any use? I was so mad because I forgot to sign the telegram 'Sadie'!*  Good bye dear Duchess -- Cora sends love -

Yours always

S.  O.  J.   

Notes

Duchess:  Lilian Woodman and her husband, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, were affectionately nicknamed among their friends as the Duchess and Duke of Ponkapog. 

flitting across the water:  Jewett and Fields sailed from New York to England on 24 May 1882.

Mrs Fields: Annie Adams Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

'Adolph':  This reference remains mysterious, though he may have been an Aldrich family pet or employee.

Cora Rice:  Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

Tal and Charley:  The Aldriches' twin sons, Talbot and Charles were born in 1868.

splinters of the Club: Perhaps Jewett refers to the Contributors' Club column in Atlantic Monthly. She may refer to one her own pieces for that column.  Richard Cary believes she was the author of "Woodland Mysteries," which appeared anonymously in July 1882.

Sadie: Sadie Martinot, after the American actress of that name, was a nickname for Jewett with the Aldriches. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Baily Aldrich Papers, 119 letters of Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich, 1837-1926. MS Am 1429 (117). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
    At the bottom left of page one, in another hand, is a circled number: 2701.

---

Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields

New York March 10, 1882

Dear Friend

    We will wait until you get back and have all the leisure you want.* There is not the least hurry. I dont think she* has said aye aye sir yet, but of course she will one of these days and then we shall know the worst which is also the best. Annie has gone west to stay with Emma five or six weeks. Their mother goes to Colorado to see her boys and her grand boy Norman.

    Give the kind regards of this household to Miss Annie Thackeray as was and tell her we all want her to tell some more stories. And if you should stumble on Bolton Abbey call and see Mrs Anna Williams* at the pretty cottage covered with roses and

[ Page 2 ]

and say I told you how glad she will be to see any friend of mine.

    With a blessing on the journey

Yours

                Robert Collyer

NB. A few days about Bolton Abbey and the woods and moors will be as the very gates of heaven to the writer of Deephaven.* The Brontës* haunted the place but that was after my day. Dear me if you do not go to Yorkshire whats the use of going to England. That is England and the exact centre of England is Bolton & Ilkley six miles down the river.


Notes

want: Collyer omits many periods in this letter. I have supplied them wherever they seem necessary.

she: Collyer probably refers to the expected engagement of his daughter, Annie.  It appears, however that she never married.  See Collyer in Key to Correspondents.

Anna Williams:  Fields and Jewett did not report a visit to Bolton Abbey or to Mrs. Williams during their 1882 travels in England.  However, they did meet British novelist Anne Isabella Thackeray, Lady Ritchie (1837-1919).
    Collyer mentions both Anna & Hannah Williams in other letters.  Perhaps they are the same person.  Little is yet known of Hannah Williams, but she apparently was an acquaintance of his family in West Yorkshire. She is mentioned in Old Yorkshire (1881) edited by William Smith, with an introduction by Robert Collyer.

Deephaven:  Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.  Her first novel, Deephaven, appeared in 1877.

The Brontës: The Brontë family of Yorkshire included the three famous authors, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

[ Composed on decorative hotel letterhead containing this information: Quincy House, J. W. Johnson & Co., Proprietors. Cor. Brattle Street and Brattle Square.  A date line reads "Boston" followed by a line for the specific date, then "188_" ]

Boston  10th, 3d Mo 1882*

My dear Mrs Fields

    I meant to have mentioned to thee the [ Reason ? ] of this note{,} Mrs [ Perry or Percy ? ],* who is very anxious to get some situation where she can earn a livelihood. She is of excellent family, her father Mr Edwards was a former proprietor of the Portland Daily Advertiser. She married a young lawyer Mr ??? who died, leaving her [ somewhat ? ] destitute.  My niece Mrs Pickard* knows her well & that she is a very capable and [ deleted letters ] worthy young woman.  Is there no place for her!*

[ Page 2 ]

She is ready & willing to take any honest work to do. She will tell thee what she can do, & if thee can find her any advice or aid, I shall be more than ever gratefully & lovingly thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

Perry or Percy: This transcription is uncertain, and the name could be Penny or any of several other possibilities. The woman has not yet been identified.
    Two brothers in the printing business, John Edwards (1802-1886) and William Eustis Edwards (1804-1877), were owners of the Portland Advertiser during the 1820s to 50s (See Maine Library Bulletin v. 1-6, p. 52).  It appears that William Edwards had only one child, a son, making it likely that John Edwards was the father of the woman Whittier wishes to aid.  However, information about these families at this time is too sketchy to rely upon.

her!: Whittier seems to have written an exclamation point, but perhaps it really is a question mark.

Mrs Pickard: Richard Cary says that Elizabeth Hussey (1843-1909) was the daughter of Whittier's brother Matthew and namesake of his sister. She married Samuel T. Pickard, editor of the Portland Transcript and, later, biographer of Whittier.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4837.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

  [ Embossed letterhead is a W with a C intertwined ]*

63 Mt Vernon St

Monday a.m.

[Postmark:  Boston Mar 12 1882]

 My dear friend,

    I have just seen dear Mrs. Fields* who tells me that thy mother is unwell.  Of course, much as we want to see thee, we cannot ask thee to come if thy presence at home is really needed. I ought to be at Danvers to attend to some writing which I

[ Page 2, back side of the embossed page 1 ]

can only do there; but I shall stay here until I find that we cannot expect thee this week; and, if I have to leave without seeing thee, I shall insist on thy spending a day with me at Amesbury, the last of this month or the first of April.  But Mrs F. & I hope to see thee in Boston some day this week.

    I suppose the bluebirds have got to South Berwick, by this time. 

[ Page 3 ]

They were busy welcoming the pussy willows & the first tiny green blades of our reluctant spring, when I left Danvers.

    G. W. Claflin thinks of going to Washington tomorrow, and I shall be left alone save Mrs Freeland.  We miss Mrs Claflin* greatly.  Always, and most heartily thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

Letterhead:  The letterhead probably belongs to William Claflin.

Mrs Field:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

G. W. Claflin ... Mrs. Claflin: Governor William Claflin and his wife, Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin. See Key to Correspondents.  

Mrs. Freeland:  This person remains as yet unknown.  Mrs. Claflin's mother was Mary Sophia Freeland (1802-1868), so Mrs. Freeland may be a relative.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

 

63 Mt Vernon St

Boston 12th 3d Mo.*

1882

My dear Friend

    Sarah O. Jewett

    I was disappointed by thy telegram last night, as I anticipated the great pleasure of seeing thee to-day.

    But, I hope I shall see thee yet; and to that end shall stay here a few days longer.  My niece has gone back to Portland, and Mrs. Claflin is at Washington and the Gov is in Bache{-}

[ Page 2 ]

lor quarters, and I am keeping him company.  I wish thee was here.

    Mrs Fields* called at the Quincy House,* day before yesterday. She was not as usual on her errands of mercy.  If I was a painter I should take her as a model of an angel, -- a true ministering spirit. She will be lonely today for lack of thee.

    I shall expect to hear of thy arrival sometime this week -- as early as Wednesday I hope.

Ever affectionately thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

12th 3d Mo.: Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

Mrs. Claflin .. the Gov: Governor William Claflin and his wife, Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin. See Key to Correspondents.  

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents. Fields's errands of mercy usually were for the Associated Charities of Boston.

Quincy House:  A major Boston hotel during the 19th century, at the corner of Brattle Street and Brattle Square.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick Monday

[13 March 1882]*

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     I was obliged to give up my plan for spending Sunday in Boston because my mother was ill, and I am sorry to say that she is not well enough yet for me to leave her, though she is much better today.

     I am more grieved than I can tell you, to lose the chance of seeing you, and there were a good many other things which seemed to make it necessary for me to go to town for a day or two. I am afraid that I cannot get away before Thursday but possibly on Wednesday. I shall surely see you before Mrs. Fields* and I go away, but I wish to see you twice! and three times! and four times -- . I was so glad to get your letter this morning. I believe it is only you who can say the right things of Mrs. Fields and even you can never say too much.

     Berwick is all deep snowdrifts and deeper mud; you ought to be glad that you are living on the top of that nice dry hill¹ but I do hope that you and Govr. Claflin* are behaving very well, so you will not get scolded when Mrs. Claflin gets home!

Yours lovingly,

Cary's Note

1. Whittier’s house was in fact near the foot of Po Hill in Amesbury. Abbreviated from Powow, site of former Indian nocturnal ceremonials, it was a landmark for craft that sailed up Newburyport harbor. Whittier refers to the hill in “Abram Morrison,” “Miriam,” and “Cobbler Keezar’s Vision.”

Additional Notes

1882:  Cary dates this letter in February or March of 1882, but it seems clearly to have been written after Jewett received Whittier's first and perhaps his second 12 March 1882 letter.

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Govr. Claflin: See Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin in Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich

Tuesday
[ March 1882 ]*

Oh my dearest Duchess*

    I cant begin to write the Ki-zis that I say to myself and have been saying ever since I got your letter. It didn't reach me until yesterday as Mr. Aldrich will tell you, and isn't it going to be the pleasantest summer that ever followed a melancholy spring!* Of course we will keep company! We are going to Norway about

[ Page 2 ]

the 10th or 15th of June -- thinking it will be much better to go right on with Mrs. Ole* for protector. And we shall return to London the first of July or certainly within the first week, just in the time to meet you and have some larks. It seems to be growing pleasanter every day! The [ deleted letters ] Princess* thinks she is going to make a truly royal progress and one of Queen Elizabeths Expeditions* will be nothing

[ Page 3 ]

to it! I feel better already for I began to think I was too tired to go on with the same things much longer. I know you and I will be worth a thousand times more to [ ourselves apparently corrected from ourselfs ] and our friends when we come back in the fall -- I cant begin to tell you how glad I am you are going, dear. It was [ deleted word ] the most harrowing agony not to be able to tell Mrs. Fields and I was reading the letter and Ki-yi-ing right in

[ Page 4 ]

her face and eyes -- so she also was made to suffer! -- but I hope she knows by this time -- Wont she be delighted [ ! ?]

    I was so sorry not to see you for I was counting upon it -- and if I had felt 'up to it' I believe I should have made a pilgrimage to Dorchester.  I only wonder you have n't  had a worse time of it, for I knew you were getting worn out just as fast as ever you could --  Do be careful now, Duchess. I cant bear to have you so miserable -- but we will make up for

[ Up the left margin of page 1 ]

all our woes this summer! Ki-yi! Give my love to the author of A Cough* and give my love to Mr. Pierce* and tell him how glad I am about the cruise -- And [ that ? ] you and

[ Up the left margin of page 2 ]

I have little larks on [ toast ? ] all of our own to keep!

Yours always

S. O. J.

[ Up the left margin of page 4 ]

I have thought so many times what fun it would be if you were going.


Notes

1882:  This date has been added in pencil within brackets at the top of page 1, presumably by a Houghton Library archivist.  It is supported by Jewett's discussion of an anticipated trip to Europe, including to Norway with Mrs. Ole Bull.  See notes below.

Duchess: Lilian Woodman and her husband, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, were affectionately nicknamed among their friends as the Duchess and Duke of Ponkapog. 

melancholy spring:  James T. Fields, husband of Annie Adams Fields, with whom Jewett will travel to Europe, died in April 1881, and Mrs. Fields remained in deep mourning and depression during the following year and after. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Ole:  Sara Chapman Thorp Bull. See Key to Correspondents.

the Princess ... Queen Elizabeths expeditions:  Jewett apparently refers to herself as "the Princess," perhaps in reference to one of her nicknames, "The Queen of Sheba."  She refers to the English Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) famed for her "royal progresses."  These are discussed in The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (1999) by Mary Cole Hill.
    Jewett often omits the apostrophe in possessives.

author of A Cough:  The Finding Aid to the Collection of Thomas Bailey Aldrich Materials in Colby College Special Collections lists this item:  Folder B2: A Cough., 1882. Description Poem. Holograph, signed manuscript.  When the poem was published has not been determined.

Mr. Pierce:  Henry Lillie Pierce (1825-1896)  A close friend of the Aldriches, the Baker Chocolate executive and politician often invited the Aldriches to join him in travel, notably in the winter and spring of 1896, when Pierce, the Aldriches, Annie Fields and Jewett sailed the Caribbean together on Pierce's steam yacht, the Hermione.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Baily Aldrich Papers, 119 letters of Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich, 1837-1926. MS Am 1429 (117). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
    At the bottom left of page one, in another hand, is a circled number: 2699.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 15, 1882]*

Home Tuesday

Dear Mary

    . . . . . . . . . Sister had two letters this evening from Truly thy friend,* and he is going to remain throughout the week! and is expecting dear Sarah who will strive to go.  I am busy with some writing now, a story I have had in mind for some time and I believe I will finish it tomorrow and next day, if I can, and take it with me when I go --  and have it off my mind.  It's the Mate of the Daylight.*  I think you have received particulars?  Good-night with love from Mother and me to you and all.  It is too funny for anything and he marked the most cleris [clearest?] things in it for fear I shouldn't see them -- I am in such a hurry for you to read that book Whittier gave me!  Tell Cousin R.* I am going this summer if you want to.  Peoples know it to Bystin and I dont make any seckel* though I haven't told it much here.

                    Yours
                    the Queen


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [So. Berwick,  Me., Mar. 15, 1882, SOJ to MRJ].  The line of points at the beginning of the text suggest that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

Truly thy friend:  John Greenleaf Whittier

Mate of the Daylight:  Jewett's story first appeared in Atlantic 50 (July 1882).

Cousin R:  At this time, Mary R. Jewett was visiting their cousin Roxalene Orne (1818-1887), who had married Alexander R. McHenry (1814-1874).

Bystin ... seckel:  Jewett apparently uses dialect renderings of "Boston" and "secret." However, one should keep in mind that, particularly in the case of "seckel," other eyes might read the manuscript differently.

the Queen:  Among her immediate family, Jewett accepted the nickname, the Queen of Sheba (sometimes Sheby).  She often referred to herself and signed her letters with variants of this title.  In the Bible (Kings 10 and Chronicles 9), the rich Queeen of Sheba visits King Solomon to "prove" his famed wisdom.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[1882 -- March]*

The eleven weeks will soon go, won't they?  When I think about losing all the summer here I feel very bad, but as I told Mrs. Fields the other day -- either our friends are very self-sacrificing or else they are glad to get us off, there seems to be such general satisfaction.  They all stood on their heads with pleasure at Exeter and Mae* has remembered at her youth in a way that is surprising.  To think how sister suffered at thinking how she should break the news to Mar!*  You must have had a good rake with Clara Perry!

Notes

1882 - March:  This date seems correct, for 11 weeks prior to the May 24 departure for Europe of Jewett and Annie Adams Fields would fall in the middle of March.  It seems clear that this is a fragment of a longer letter.

Mae:  The identity of this person is unknown.  Perhaps it is supposed to read "Mar."

Mar:  Mar is an occasional nickname for the Jewett sisters' mother, Caroline.

Clara Perry: Though almost certainly a relative of the sisters' mother, the identity of this person is unknown.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 18, 1882]*

Saturday

Dear Mary

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I did not have time to send you a word yesterday for I was busy all day.  In the morning Cora was here for awhile and then Mrs. Fields* and I went over our journey together and made lists and then Whittier* came and was in his most delightful mood and he stayed to breakfast and some time afterward.  Then Mrs. Fields went to the Charity Building* and I went downtown and did an errand and afterward we went to Cambridge to see Longfellow* and had a lovely night.  He had said that he wanted me to come out when I came up, so we "put it through".  He was delightful and the girls were both at home which was nice.  He is better than he was a while ago.  We went to see Mrs. Ole Bull* but she had gone in town and I stopped for a minute at the Horsfords* -- then we came in.  Cora came to dine and F. Perry* in the evening.  Won't this be nice:  Mrs. Ole Bull thinks she will go to Norway and wants us, if she does, to make her a visit.  Sister would love it.  You take a steamer from England and it isn't much [illegible]  I will write more tomorrow but must stop now.  I'm going home this afternoon and promise to see Truly thy friend first beside doing other things.

        Love to Cousin R.* and all

                             Yrs. ever   S.  O.  J.


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [Boston, Mass.,   Mar. 18, 1882,  SOJ to MRJ,  c/o Mrs. Alex R. McHenry,  1937 Chestnut St.,  Phila., Penna.]  The line of points at the beginning of the text suggest that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

Cora ... Mrs Fields:  Cora Clark Rice and Annie Adams Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

Whittier: John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents. At the end of the letter, Jewett refers to him by his nickname, "Truly thy friend."

the Charity Building:  Helen Winslow in Little Journeys in Literature (1902), chapter 3, says: "At the council-table in "Ward Seven's" office in the Chardon Street Charity Building of Boston Mrs. Fields has sat since the organisation of the Associated Charities, and has borne a large part in the general directorship, besides, from the beginning."

Cambridge to see Longfellow ... the girls:  In 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) had four living daughters: Alice Mary, Anne Allegra, Edith, and Fanny.  Longfellow died on 24 March 1882.

Mrs. Ole Bull: Sara Chapman Thorp Bull. See Key to Correspondents.  The visit to her in Norway took place in the summer of 1882.

the Horsfords: The family of Eben Norton Horsford. See Key to Correspondents.

F. Perry: Probably this is Frances F. Perry, daughter of Lucretia Morse Fisk Perry. See Key to Correspondents.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

March 20, [1882] 

My dear Friend:

     It is too late to write a long letter but I must tell you how glad I am to have seen you. It was lovely to be with you and Mrs. Fields that day at her house. I don't believe I shall ever forget it. When I came home I found that my mother was much better and she wondered why I didn't stay over Sunday. That would have been very pleasant, but I didn't get the letter which she had sent to me. I think I shall go down again next week to meet my sister and do some errands with her, but I shall not see you then!

     It seems more like spring than when I went away -- the sun has made the snowdrifts ashamed of themselves, but there are too many of them now. I was out driving a little while this afternoon. John¹ makes the appeal that the horses need driving. I must tell you about John someday, for I am very fond of him; he has lived with us for a long time. He used to be in the Army and in the time of the war he was badly hurt. He was devotedly fond of my father and came here because he wished to be with him. He is really a most pleasant companion; I like most to be with him for the sake of the dear old days when Father was here, but he has a charming knowledge of woodcraft and a refinement that is very rare in a man who used to be so knocked about the world. I believe he would almost forsake his own family for Father's sake!

     Sometimes I think a great deal about leaving home for so long, and think of it sadly too in spite of all its pleasures, but I grow more sure every day that it is right. I shall surely see you again first. I hope that your writing will not give you trouble. I have been writing another little scud for The Contributors Club today.²

Yours always,

Sarah

Notes

1. John Tucker (1845-1902) was the Jewetts' hostler and general factotum. He came to work for Dr. Jewett on a temporary arrangement around 1875 but remained for the rest of his life, trusted and treated like a member of the family.

2. Probably "Deplorable Improvements,” Atlantic Monthly, XLIX (June 1882), 856-857, in which Miss Jewett yearns for a league among summer boarders for the preservation of antiquities in small country places, another chapter in her lifelong defense of provincial values against urban invasion.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 21, 1882]*

Saturday

Dear O.P.

         There is a nice [blot?] on the other side of this paper, but sister thinks it will do for a sound churchwoman who goes to the circus in Lent.*  I had thoughts of passing Sunday in Boston having been written a pretty letter by Truly Thy friend -- it being half thees and the other half yours and very engaging. He is passing a few days at the Quincy House.*


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [South Berwick, Me.,  Mar. 21, 1882  [to] SOJ to MRJ  c/o Mrs. Ellis,  230 E. 15th St.,   N. Y. C.]

O.P.:  A family nickname for Mary Rice Jewett.

the circus in Lent:  For Christians, Lent, the five and a half weeks before Easter, is to be a period of serious reflection and austere living. Attending the circus would not be an appropriate activity for this period.

Truly Thy friend ... Quincy House:  Thy Friend is John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.  Quincy House was a hotel in downtown Boston, on Brattle Square.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

 

Danvers      3d Mo. 22     1882*

My dear Friend

    I realized in opening thy letter to-day the subtle truth of thy charming paper in the "Contributors" Department of the Atlantic.* I felt that something of thee was in the little sheet, & was glad of that little{.}  I wish thee had staid

[ Page 2 ]

in Boston over the Sabbath, since thy mother was so comfortable.  I did not leave until Tuesday yesterday [ so written ]. I went out to call on Longfellow* Sunday p.m. & found him too ill to see me.  He sent word to me how sorry he was.  I came away feeling very sad [ but, so written] I think his folks are afraid of his seeing any body, and that

[ Page 3 ]

the slightest complaint of illness on his part alarms them.  Dr. Holmes* spent Saturday afternoon with me, and we had a right good time, alternating from grave to gay.
   
    I did not see Mrs Fields* after thee left.  Elizabeth Phelps* spent Sunday at Hotel Claflin,* but she was sadly ill from her sleeplessness.  Her new story in the Atlantic opens well. 

[ Page 4 ]

I cannot not see how she can write at all under the circumstances.

    All thy friends are pleased with thy prospects. You will have a delightful time  --  I almost envy you that Norwegian visit.*

    I half suspect thee may be in Boston at this time, but my letter can wait thy return, as it amounts to nothing except to say that I am gratefully thy friend

John G Whittier

Notes

3d Mo. 22: Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

"Contributor's" Department:  Jewett appeared several times, anonymously, in the "Contributor's Club" section of Atlantic Monthly during 1882. Her March essay was "The Color Cure," and Richard Cary believes she also wrote a follow-up piece for April, "Pleasant Rooms." Whittier could refer to either of these, though Jewett had recommended the March essay to him in her letter of  21 February 1882.

Longfellow:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died on March 24, 1882.  See Key to Correspondents.

Dr. Holmes:  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs.  Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Elizabeth Phelps:  Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward).  See Key to Correspondents.  Her novel, Dr. Zay, began to appear in an Atlantic Monthly serialization in April of 1882.  This novel about a woman physician is likely to have influenced Jewett's composition of A Country Doctor (1884).

Hotel Claflin:  There not being an actual "Hotel Claflin" in Boston or Newtonville, Whittier presumably is joking about the busy social calendar at the Governor Claflin home.  See Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin in Key to Correspondents. 

Norwegian visit:  During their first European trip together in 1882, Jewett and Fields visited Mrs. Ole Bull in Norway. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.  Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 22, 1882]*

Tuesday night

Dear Mary

    . . . . . . . . . Miss Grant* and I are under full sail on the dress in preparation for the London season!  It is a good deal of an undertaking.  [Canton?] crepe* isn't the easiest fabric to handle that ever was.  Carrie* was down this afternoon in full war paint and brought your letter.  Mr. John Varney and wife are deaded -- that is Mr. V. has "skipped" as Alex. used to say and his wife has every prospect of it, and Mr. James Wentworth and Mr. True Godwin's [Goodwin's?] wife. I asked Miss Grant if he would feel bad and she said she guessed True knew where he's got to!  Aunty* sent for Mother to come up to a concert which was declined with thanks -- so no more at present from the Queen of Sheby* with much love to all.


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [So. Berwick, Me.,  Mar. 22, 1882,  SOJ to MRJ  1937 Chestnut St.,  Phila., Penna.]  The line of points at the beginning of the text suggest that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

Miss Grant:  Olive Grant.  See Key to Correspondents.

Canton crepe:  Canton crêpe is "A soft silk crêpe with a pebbly surface originally associated with Canton in China, with bias ribs. Made in Britain, but exported to China, hence its name."

Carrie:  Caroline Jewett Eastman.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mr. John Varney and wife are deaded -- that is Mr. V. has "skipped" ... Alex ... Mr. James Wentworth and Mr. True Godwin's [Goodwin's?] wife:  The identity of this Alex is not known.  As Mary may be visiting the widow of Alexander McHenry at this time, she may refer to their son, Alexander R. McHenry (1849-1899). The report of Olive Grant's store of gossip is difficult to sort out, especially given Jewett's light tone about what appear to be deaths in the Varney family.  The Varneys, Wentworths, Trues and Goodwins all were large and prominent families in South Berwick.  At about this time, a John Varney and a James Wentworth were employed in a local textile mill.  In Pirsig's The Placenames of South Berwick, is a photograph of True E. Goodwin (1850-1918) and his family at Hamilton House (p. 38).

Aunty sent for Mother to come up to a concert:  Which aunt and which concert remain unknown.

the Queen of Sheby: Among her immediate family, Jewett accepted the nickname, the Queen of Sheba (sometimes Sheby).  She often referred to herself and signed her letters with variants of this title.  In the Bible (Kings 10 and Chronicles 9), the rich Queeen of Sheba visits King Solomon to "prove" his famed wisdom.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[March 23, 1882]

Wednesday night

Dear Mary

    Your letter tonight was truly delightful and I shall make a poor and undeserved reply. -- not being in a frame for writing -- having written a little scud, and consorted with Miss O. G.* beside.  We are getting on very well but it is slow work.  I am going to let her take her time and not try to sew myself for I think she needs the money and I would rather she had it than I have the work!!


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription:[So. Berwick, Me.,  Mar. 23, 1882,  SOJ to MRJ,  1937 Chestnut St.,  Phila., Penna.].

Miss O. G.:  Olive Grant.  See Key to Correspondents.
    Jewett also refers to writing a "scud" in her letter to Whittier of 20 March.
    According to Richard Cary, this probably was "Deplorable Improvements,” Atlantic Monthly, XLIX (June 1882), 856-857.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

3d mo., 24, 1882

With regard to modem Spiritualism I have had a feeling that it was not safe or healthful for mind or body to yield myself to an influence the nature of which was unknown. There is a fascination in it, but the fascination is blended with doubt and repulsion. I am disgusted with the tricks and greed of these mediums; their pretended spiritual intercourse has none of the conditions which Tennyson's "In Memoriam"*  describes, and I do not know that I really need additional proof of the life hereafter. I think my loved ones are still living and awaiting me. And I wait and trust. And yet how glad and grateful I should be to know! I must believe that our friends are near us -- that they still love and watch over us.

Notes

March: This letter appears in The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1894) v. 9, p. 677.

modem Spiritualism: Spiritualism is a religious movement beginning in the 19th Century, during Whittier's lifetime; it included among its beliefs that living people could communicate with the spirits of the dead.
    See also, Terry Heller, "Communing with the Dead: Celia Thaxter, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Adams Fields." SOJTP 2020.

Tennyson's "In Memoriam":  British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) published the completed long poem In Memoriam A.H.H.  in 1850. It seems likely that Whittier refers to sections 92-94 of the poem. There Tennyson gives reasons why he would doubt any vision of the deceased Arthur Hallam or any prophecy that seemed to come from him. Further, he does not believe that Hallam's spirit would make itself materially visible to his eyes, for the spirit of a dead person would communicate only with the spirit of a living person, not through the material means of the senses. And such communication can occur only when one is pure of heart and mind:

In vain shalt thou, or any, call
    The spirits from their golden day,
    Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields


     March 24. [1882]*

     Today is father's birthday.* I wonder if people keep the day they die for another birthday after they get to heaven? I have been thinking about him a very great deal this last day or two. I wonder if I am doing at all the things he wishes I would do, and I hope he does not get tired of me.

Notes

1882:  Fields places this selection from a letter in 1882.

birthday:  Jewett's father was Theodore Herman Jewett (Portsmouth, N. H., March 24, 1815 -  September 20, 1878).

This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911),  Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett

[Mar. 24, 1882,]*

Thursday night

Dear O. P.*

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I haven't much news tonight and I am pretty tired, so I shall send you more love than letter.  I must copy a sonnet for you to read that Whittier* wrote for Mrs. Fields and me. It fairly brought the tears to my eyes.  Do show it to Cousin Roxalene.*  Miss Grant* is so pleased with your message and wants me to tell you that she has some sleeves for you to trim!


Notes

1882:  The transcriber includes this note with the transcription: [So. Berwick, Me., Mar. 24, 1882, SOJ to MRJ, 1937 Chestnut St., Phila., Penna.] The line of points at the beginning of the text suggest that he has transcribed only part of the letter.

O.P.:  A family nickname for Mary Rice Jewett.

sonnet ... Whittier:  John Greenleaf Whittier wrote "Godspeed" to memorialize the European trip of 1882.

Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
     Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
     Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here, or there, love follows her in whom
     All graces and sweet charities unite,
     The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
     Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
     God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
Comfort, console, bless; safely bring,
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.

Cousin Roxalene:  Cousin Roxalene Orne (1818-1887) married Alexander R. McHenry (1814-1874).

Miss Grant:  Olive Grant.  See Key to Correspondents.

This text is from transcriptions from mixed repositories, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, folder 63, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers Collection. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

[ Begin letterhead ]

Danvers, Mass.

[ End letterhead ]

Oak Knoll

3rd Mo 25. -- 1882

My Dear Friend

    Another of our dear and beloved has passed from us to join those who await us. The little circle first broken by the calling away of dear Fields is once more narrowed by the departure of Longfellow.* Emerson, with his wonderful intellect clouded, Dr. Holmes & myself alone remain.

    How sorry I am that I could not speak

[ Page 2 ]

to him & take his hand when I called last [ Sunday ? ] ! -- I must wait a little while now.  I hope & trust he has found a joyful welcome from those he loves and who loved him on earth.

    I know what thy feeling must be; and with sincere sympathy I am always thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

Longfellow:  American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807- 24 March 1882). Annie Fields lost her husband, James T. Fields, on 24 April 1881.
    Whittier includes in his generation of American literary figures, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suffered from dementia in his later years, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. See Key to Correspondents.
    A penciled X, probably in another hand, appears in the left margin next to this paragraph.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4809.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Alice Mary Longfellow


[ 25 March 1882 ]


Dear Miss Longfellow

        I cannot help telling you how sorry I am for you -- the sorrier because it is not so very long ago that my own dear father went away,* and I know only too well the pain and loneliness that these sad days will bring.

        Yours always sincerely

            Sarah O. Jewett

25th March.

South - Berwick


Notes

my own dear father:  Alice Longfellow's father, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, died 24 March 1882.  Jewett's father, Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett, died 20 September 1878.

The manuscript of this letter is held in the archives of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters NHS; Correspondence of Sarah Orne Jewett.  HWLD-B139-F94 1882-03-25 Sarah Orne Jewett to AML 001.  Transcription and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

     Saturday morning, [ 25 March ] 1882.

     I have just seen the notice of Longfellow's death,* and while it was hardly a surprise, still it gave me a great shock. Are not you glad that we saw him on that pleasant day when he was ready to talk about books and people, and showed so few signs of the weakness and pain which troubled us in those other visits? It will always be a most delightful memory, and it is all the better that we did not dream it was your last good-bye. I can't help saying that I am glad he has gone away before you had to leave him and know it was the last time you should see him. I dreaded your getting the news of this after we were on the other side of the sea, darling!* After all, it is change that is so hard to bear, change grows every year a harder part of our losses. It is fitting over our old selves to new conditions of things, without the help of the ones who made it easier for us to live, and to do our best that is so hard! I have just been thinking that a life like that is so much less affected by death than most lives. A man who has written as Longfellow wrote, stays in this world always to be known and loved -- to be a helper and a friend to his fellow men. It is a grander thing than we can wholly grasp, that life of his, a wonderful life, that is not shut in to his own household or kept to the limits of his every-day existence. That part of him seems very little when one measures the rest of him with it, and the possibilities of this imperfect world reach out to a wide horizon, for one's eye cannot follow the roads his thought and influence have always gone. And now what must heaven be to him! This world could hardly ask any more from him: he has done so much for it, and the news of his death takes away from most people nothing of his life. His work stands like a great cathedral in which the world may worship and be taught to pray, long after its tired architect goes home to rest.

     I cannot help thinking of those fatherless daughters of his. I know they were glad and proud because he was famous and everybody honored him, and they are being told those things over and over in these days, and are not comforted. Only one's own faith and bravery help one to live at first.

Notes

Longfellow's death: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet, perhaps best remembered for his long narrative poems such as The Song of Hiawatha (1855). He was probably the best-known and most respected American poet of the nineteenth century.
    Jewett's tribute to Longfellow in this letter was reprinted as "Sara Orne Jewett's Tribute," The Bookman 34 (November 1911), p. 221.  The quotation of the tribute had this introduction:

  We recall few nobler tributes than that written by the late Sara Orne Jewett when she heard the news of Longfellow's death. It was contained in a letter to Mrs. James T. Fields which is printed in the Letters of Sara Orne Jewett, a book that has just been published by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

other side:  Jewett and Fields were planning their first trip to Europe together for the summer of 1882.

fatherless daughters:  Wikipedia says that Longfellow and his wife, Frances, had six children: "Charles Appleton (1844-1893), Ernest Wadsworth (1845-1921), Fanny (1847-1848), Alice Mary (1850-1928), Edith (1853-1915), and Anne Allegra (1855-1934)."  Jewett and Fields were particularly close to Alice.

This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911),  Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich

Monday
[ 27 March 1882 ]*

Dearest Duchess*

    This is only the beginning of a letter which I shall finish some day or other! I was so sorry to hear that you were tired out the last of the week, but I hope the three days in Ponkapog did wonders

[ Page 2 ]

for you -- I should think you would be tired out twice over, but dont you dare tell me the same thing! The white frock is as good as done and looks very well{.} I ought to get a [ drive ? ] off some friend to show it! because it

[ Page 3 ]

will not be likely to come back alive. Or if it does it will not be with the freshness of its (second) youth. I am continually grateful about the other frock, which would have been the last straw.

    Tell dear Mr. T.B.A. that there are more club-ers* growing but not yet written.  Sadie* means

[ Page 4 ]

well!  Sadie wants to go to Mrs Vincent's benefit* the third of April and to [ deleted letter ] her own benefit on the Saturday following but she fears she cannot. Sadie is really going to sing again ^in^ Patience,* and I will write this day to Cora Rice* to secure tickets. I am going to be there for Easter -- Ki-yi!  I think I shall stay in town a week (or more!)

[ Page 5 ]

and Princesses* and Duchesses and people of lower rank will be cheerful together. I shall make almost all my visit at Cora's this time, but I shall send about more or less afterward for a few days -- Then I am coming home to stay right here until I go away. Dont you think [it corrected ] will be very

[ Page 6 ]

nice for us to go to Norway to see Mrs. Ole Bull?* I shall be sure to get "the makings" of (a punch? no.) a contributors clubber out of all Norway. I am going to throw away all my best pen holders before I go, and only carry a hard lead pencil gnawed to a point with my teeth -- to write home that I am well. Literature in every form is to be disdained. I'm coming up

[ Up the left margin, then down across the top of page 5 ]

this week for a day and I shall see you so you needn't write! I am tired almost to death but thats no matter. Good by dear.

Yours ever

Sadie.


Notes

27 March 1882: This date almost certainly is correct, supported by Jewett's indication that she and Annie Fields are planning a visit to Norway as part of their 1882 European tour.  She speaks of 3 April and Easter (9 April 1882) as in the future, so Monday 27 March is the latest probable date for this letter.
    However, confusion arises from Jewett mentioning the benefit for Mrs. Vincent and from noting that she hopes to see "Sadie" in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881) in Boston before her departure for Europe.
    She could not mean Sadie Martinot, who traveled to London herself in April of 1882, where she performed for about a year.  As the notes below indicate, Sadie Martinot was in Boston in Patience in July 1883, and the anticipated benefit for Mrs. Vincent probably took place in 1884.

Duchess:  The Aldriches were affectionately known among their friends as the Duke and Duchess of Ponkapog. See Key to Correspondents.

club-ers:  In the early 1880s, Jewett regularly provided short anonymous essays to the Atlantic Monthly "Contributors' Club" column. Two pieces probably by her appeared while she was in Europe in 1882, "Deplorable Improvements" in June and "Woodland Mysteries" in July.  Other essays possibly by her appeared in 1883 and 1884.

Sadie: One of Jewett's nicknames.  With the Aldriches, this would have been Sadie Martinot, after the actress of that name. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Vincent's benefit:  Probably this is Mary Ann Farlin Vincent (1818-1887), a British born Irish-American actor. She began her acting career in 1834, and so in 1884, she would have been on the stage for 50 years.  She married James R. Vincent (d. 1850).  She joined the stock company of the Boston Museum theater in 1852, where she continued until her death.
    In a letter of December 1883, Jewett writes her sister Carrie that she believes there will be a benefit held for Mrs. Vincent in 1884, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of her career.

Patience:  Jewett may refer here to the actress from whom her Aldrich nickname derives: Sadie Martinot.  See Key to Correspondents.
    According to the Historical Review of the Boston Bijou Theatre, Sadie Martinot appeared in the casts of two Collier's Standard Opera Company Productions at the Boston Bijou in 1883, Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan, July 2-7, and The Mascot by Edmond Audrain, July 9-13.
    If this letter is from March of 1882, then Jewett must refer to a different actor and production of Patience.  There apparently was a production in Boston at about this time by the Braham-Scanlan Boston Miniature Ideal Opera Company, featuring child performers.

Cora Rice: Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

Princesses: Probably Jewett writes of herself as a princess, referring to another of her nicknames used mainly within her family, "the Queen of Sheba."

Mrs. Ole Bull: Sara Chapman Thorp Bull. See Key to Correspondents.
    Jewett and Annie Adams Fields visited Mrs. Bull in Norway in late July, during their European tour (24 May - 25 October 1882).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Baily Aldrich Papers, 119 letters of Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich, 1837-1926. MS Am 1429 (117). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
    At the bottom left of page one, in another hand, is a circled number: 2669.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick, Maine

March 27, [1882] 

My dear Friend:

     I wish to send you just a line tonight to thank you for your letter and for that sonnet which Mrs. Fields sent me.¹ It has touched my heart and given me more pleasure than I can begin to tell you. You do not know what a beautiful thing it is to me -- the dearest of all gifts, and the best of treasures. It always makes me so happy to think that you care for me and that I can give you a bit of pleasure.

     The Norway journey is decided upon and Mrs. Fields says today that Mrs. Ole² will cross in the same steamer with us. I shall be watching things in that northern country for you and myself too. I wish you were going to be there. We are only going to spend a few days in Ireland after all!³ I found that Mrs. Fields cares very much to get to London for Dickens' birthday, the 9th of June, and I said we must do it, and perhaps when we go down to Cornwall a little later Liza⁴ can go back to the Emerald Isle to see more of her friends than we can take time for.

     I have been reading the Caroline Fox book⁵ and I like it very much. But for a Cornishman give me his riverench the praste of Morwenstow!⁶ I did not get to town last week after all, but I hope to see my way there before many days. Mrs. Fields writes me in a way that makes me wish to be with her more than ever. All this of the last week will tire her sadly.* Good night and God bless you!

Yours affectionately,

Sarah

Cary's Notes

1.  "On the occasion of a voyage made by my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett" Whittier indited "Godspeed," first published in The Bay of Seven Islands, and Other Poems (1883). Miss Jewett is limned in lines 8-10:

And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.

2.  Sara Chapman Thorp (1850-1911) met the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull while he was on concert tour in Wisconsin, and became his wife. After 1876 they spent summers in Cambridge, joining the Holmes-Lowell-Longfellow circle, playing often at the Fields's home. Mrs. Bull wrote Ole Bull: A Memoir (Boston, 1883).

3.  They spent ten days in Ireland, touching on Cork, Glengariff, Killarney, Enniskillen, Portrush, Giant's Causeway, Belfast, and Dublin. Mrs. Bull entertained them for a fortnight in Norway.

4. Mrs. Fields's personal maid, frequently mentioned by Miss Jewett in her letters home on this trip.

5.  Memories of Old Friends, edited by Horace N. Pym (Philadelphia, 1882), a volume of extracts from her journals and letters. Caroline Fox (1819-1871) was an English Quaker, friend of Carlyle and John Stuart Mill.

6. Miss Jewett's interest in the "praste" is attested by the presence in her library of three volumes: S. Baring-Gould, The Vicar of Morwenstow: A Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A. (New York, 1880); Hawker's Poetical Works (London, 1879), and his The Cornish Ballads With Other Poems (London, 1884). Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields did stop at Morwenstow one day during their tour. (Fields, Letters, p. 17.)

7.      Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875), antiquary, poet, and parson, led a thoroughly eccentric and self-satisfactory life. Among his extravagant acts was posing as a mermaid on moonlit nights to the awe of crowds watching from the shore, keeping as a pet a pig that accompanied him on pastoral visitations, and formally excommunicating a cat. His Cornish ballads, however, are superior renditions of local legendry.

      Whittier also "enjoyed that queer, good Vicar of Hermanstow [sic]" and thanked Miss Jewett for introducing him. (Pickard, Life and Letters, II, 676.) 

Additional Notes

tire her sadly:  Jewett refers to the death of their beloved friend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on 24 March, 1882.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

  Oak Knoll

[ Begin letterhead ]

Danvers, Mass.

[ End letterhead ]

3d Mo. 31 1882

My dear Friend,

    Thanks for thy letter of the 27th.  I wonder when thee will be in Boston.  I expect to go to Amesbury the last of next week on the 7th or 8th and shall be there for some time when I shall hope to see thee.

[ Page 2 ]

I had a letter from Mrs. Fields* giving an account of Longfellow's funeral.*  I think she has felt his death very much; and there are some other things, which I doubt not she will explain to thee, which have moved and interested her.  I think she needs thee.

    I have just heard from my brother* at Wilmington, Del. His state of health has not

[ Page 3 ]

greatly improved as yet, though he himself is hopeful.  I am glad he is not [ in the ? ] reach of our disappointing Spring.  I suppose thy sister* is at home now. Pray remember me to her, and think of me always as thy friend entirely.

John G Whittier

Notes

3d Mo. 31: Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Longfellow's funeral:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, and his funeral was on 26 March. See Key to Correspondents.

my brother:  Whittier's brother, Matthew, died on 7 January 1883.

thy sister: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.  Transcription by John Richardson. Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Saturday afternoon

[ March/April 1882 ]*

I came so near seeing you today Darling that I miss you all the more because I gave it up.  This morning [ deleted letters ] I said to myself why shouldn't I go to you and spend Sunday and come down on Monday (with Cora,) and it was the loveliest thing in the world to think about, so pretty soon I tumbled out of bed and felt very eager and happy, and I was to take the two oclock train, and reach Charles St. before you came in yourself, and then I didn't exactly know where I would be when you [ deleted word ]

[ Page 2 ]

hurried up the stairs to get ready for dinner -- Oh darling I cant bear to give up this lovely long evening I might have had with you! But you must see that when I came down stairs I found that mother looked even more pale and tired than ^when^ she came home last night and she told me that she was not feeling quite well by every thing she did much plainer than if she had talked a great deal about it. And a little later

[ Page 3 ]

John* (who rarely takes a holiday) said that he hoped to go to Portsmouth if it is good weather tomorrow and might he have one of the horses?  So [ I corrected ] thought that mother might not like to stay alone tonight, and I didn't wish to break up John's plans, and I shall like to keep my eye on the furnace if he is gone!  and so  ----  I couldn't see my little books, and there is a little crack in my heart

[ Page 4 ]

that never will be mended until I do see you dear.  Mother brightened up amazingly after it was too late to go!  and I suppose I really might have been away as well as not but it did not look like it and I did what was right then.  I feel as if I were tying myself to the rigging* this time!  --  for you did want me to come today, didn't you darling?  It was dismal to have Mother propose that I should go over to Exeter and spend Sunday!  I couldn't

[ Breaks off, no signature ]


Notes

March 1882:  This date is penciled in the upper right of page 1 in another hand.  This date is supported somewhat by Jewett's indication that Cora Clarke Rice is with her. See Key to Correspondents. Jewett reports in another letter from March 1882 that Rice is visiting her in South Berwick.

John: John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents.

tying myself to the rigging:  Probably an allusion to Homer's story of Odysseus having himself tied to a mast so he can hear but not be captured by the enchanting singing of the Sirens. 

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday Noon

[ March/April 1882 ]*

Dear darling

    I have just sent you some pussy willows. I waited for them to bloom out a little bit. I dont know how they happened to show themselves so early here this year -- but it is a willow I know of old to be an early [ bloomer corrected ] -- -- I send you a little poem of Lily Fairchild's* which I am sure you will like to see. Once when I was there I had a lot of

[ Page 2 ]

my verses which we looked over, for she has always wished me to make a little book of them -- And when we came to the boat-song* that [ deleted word she ?] you liked, it reminded her of this one of hers, and after she said it she wrote it off for me --        I am having a good time with Cora*-- she is in her sweetest and dearest and quietest mood, and I can see already that she is feeling better --

[ Page 3 ]

We [ talked corrected ] a good while last evening because there was really so much to say! and we stole up to bed at last feeling like [deleted word ] two guilty children, but Mother was kind and [ did not corrected ] hail us, and tonight I mean to repay her [by corrected ] turning in very early indeed! -- The weather is very thawy but I am getting on pretty well.  I have told John* to bring round the long

[ Page 4 ]

sleigh and take [us corrected ] out for a drive but I am afraid the roads are soft. Tomorrow I am going to try to get up early and take Cora over the pond and through the woods [ to corrected ] the scene of the Winter Drive sketch* -- John thinks the logging roads will yet serve us!

    Dear love I am so often sending you messages -- and I hope the 'little white [mother ?]' dont forget them by the way -- Are you sure you know how much I love you? If you dont I cant tell you! but I think of you and think of you

[ Up the left margin of page 1 ]

and I am always being reminded of you -- Good-day! and I long for your letter tonight. I am yours most lovingly. -- SO.J.


Notes

March 1882:  This date is penciled in the upper right of page 1 in another hand. The note appears again on p. 3. Though there is little evidence to support this date in the letter, Jewett speaks of her story published in 1881 as a recent one.  See notes below.

Lily Fairchild's: Elizabeth Nelson Fairchild.  Which of Fairchild's poems Jewett included is not yet known. See Sally Fairchild in Key to Correspondents.

boat-song: Jewett's poem "Boat Song" was published in the late 1870s, though it is uncertain exactly when.  It appeared set to music in 1879.

Cora: Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

John: John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents.

Winter Drive sketch: Jewett's "A Winter Drive" appeared in Country By-Ways (1881).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett

April 3, 1882.

     Is it really a year of special change and flux? or is it only that one has grown old enough to see what moving waters run below this crust of continuance? I am not sure, but I think it is this last.

Note

This transcription appears in Letters, Sarah Wyman Whitman.  Cambridge, MA:  Riverside Press, 1907, "Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett: 1882-1903," pp. 61-109. 

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

April 4, [1882]

My dear Friend:

     I wish very much that I could see you today! I came home from Boston last night but your letter had reached me there in the morning, and I was more than glad to get it. I was in town several days and I shall go back again on Saturday to make some short visits before my longer voyage begins. I shall be in town two weeks and then come back here for the last month before the 24th of May. I shall spend the 24th of April with Mrs. Fields.* I shall not let her stay alone that day even if she wishes it, and I don't believe she will.¹ I shall surely see you in Amesbury by and bye. I want to know how to think of you there. It is like having people go off into space when you don't know what they see from their windows or where they keep their books.² Mrs. Fields said she hoped she could see you too. She was as busy as ever, and for many reasons I was glad I could be there for a few days. She was so sorry about Longfellow's having gone.³ I think she misses him more and more but it touched me very much because she kept saying she was so glad to think that he and Mr. Fields were together. They would be so happy! Really she seemed to think more of that than anything that belonged to the change, and it was giving her a wonderful pleasure. And she had written me about the strange experiences of last week and week before. You know I was growing curious enough about such things! and I found out where this person lived, and went alone one day to see what she would say to me! Don't say anything to anyone about it, please, Mr. Whittier, for nobody is to know but you and Mrs. Fields. I didn't tell "The Sandpiper"⁴ to whom I suppose I owe it all!! I was most suspicious and unbelieving even after Mrs. Fields told me and it really wasn't until after I had gone home again and began to talk it over that I quite took in the strangeness of it. It seemed quite an everyday thing that that strange woman should be talking about my life and my affairs as if she had always known me. I thought she was quick-witted and, after she told me to ask her questions, that she was clever in "putting two and two together." She told me first that I was going away before long, that there would be a good many people all together in one place, and, without saying it was the steamer, gave a picture of it all. She told me what a good time I was going to have and how much better I was to come home, that it was even going to be pleasanter than I thought, and there was to be no accident, that father wouldn't have let me take that steamer if there had been misfortune ahead. She said "James" wished to speak to me, and described Mr. Fields perfectly. (She had already told me all about Mrs. Fields and our going together) and she said he and my companion for the journey were very near each other "like one person." She told me wonderful things about my father and about his death and our relation to each other, and what he said to me was amazing. There was a great deal that came from him and from Mr. Fields that is the most capital advice, the most practical help to me, perfect "sailing orders" you know! All this I should be so glad to tell you someday. They said they had made all the plans for Mrs. Fields and me and helped us carry it out, that we needed each other and could help each other. I wish I could tell you all that now! But of all things I believe this startled me most and was the proof that there was no sham. The woman told me my father liked so much a friend who was with him there, they were much together and he was very fond of her. "Her name is Greene, do you know her? -- Bessie, I think; Bessie Greene." And I said no, he had never known such a girl and I never had, but after I had told Mrs. Fields almost everything it suddenly flashed into my mind, and I said, "What was that Miss Greene's name, the daughter of your old friends who had studied medicine and was so charming, and who was lost in the Schiller when Dr. Susan Dimock was?" and she told me "Bessie."⁵

      Now wasn't that very strange? From what I know of her, she would delight Father's heart, and they have somehow found each other. There was no "mind reading." I have not thought of her for months, but it all needed no proof, and it gives me such a pleasant glimpse of father's life. It was a very long talk and it was very pleasant. There was much about my writing, and about my taking care of myself, that showed on someone's part a complete knowledge of "the situation."

     I do not think I care to go again, though it was said Father wished to say one or two other things before I went away. I can't tell you how much good it did me, for it made me certain of some things which had puzzled me. I should like to go to another "medium" someday, to see what was common to the two, for I still have "an eye out" for tricks of the trade and yet I can't help being ashamed as I write this, for it was all so real and so perfectly sensible and straightforward, and free from silliness. Mrs. Fields did not ask any questions but I sometimes did. I said, "Do my father and the person you call James know each other?" and I was answered that I ought to see them laugh, they were having great fun over me. They came to me together to tell me so soon after Mr. Fields died, which was the truth, for the Sunday I went to hear Dr. Bartol's⁶ funeral sermon last spring I had a sudden consciousness of their being in the pew too, in a great state of merriment. The sermon was very funny and Father was as much amused as Mr. Fields himself. Dr. Bartol was a classmate of Father's. I had always wished that Mr. Fields and Father could know each other, and I remember how glad I was that Sunday!

     I have written you this long rambling letter, but I could not wait to tell you all that I could write of that strange day. It doesn't make me wish to run after such things; I only feel surer than ever of a companionship of which I have always been assured. It was no surprise when the message came from father that he knew me so much better than when we saw each other and that he was always with me, and loved me ten times more than when he went away. And I was given a dear and welcome charge and care over Mrs. Fields which I can speak about better than write to you. I think this has been a great blessing to her, and a great comfort. I do not believe she will go again. I cannot imagine making it a sort of entertainment, and letting it be the gratification of curiosity. No good can come of that. I believe it would take away too much of our freedom of choice which is something to which we cannot cling closely enough. One does not think of seeking these impulses and teachings of the spirits, only of listening to them gladly when they come. But one sails with sealed orders* so often, that the help which came to me the other day was most welcome.

     Now I must say goodbye to you. Won't you send me the photograph before you go away from Danvers, (unless there is one at Amesbury) for I want it so much. I met my sister* in Boston and she is coming home today. She was greatly pleased with the kindness of your message to her.

Yours always lovingly,

Sarah O. Jewett

I hope that your brother will soon be growing stronger. I wished before that you would tell me how he was getting on.

 
Notes

1.  April 24 was the first anniversary of the death of James T. Fields (1817-1881), publisher, poet, biographer, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Annie Fields, his second wife, was seventeen years younger.

2.  Whittier's bookshelves were on one side of the chimney in his unpretentious "literary workshop," and his writing desk on the other side. Books, however, overflowed into nearly all the rooms in the house. The northern window near the desk offered a view of the street and the southern slope of Po Hill. In this room Whittier wrote "Snow-Bound" and many other of his popular successes. For a full description, see Pickard, Life and Letters, I, 160.

3.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died March 24, 1882.

4.  Miss Jewett's nickname for Celia Thaxter (1835-1894), after the title of her widely reprinted poem. Mrs. Thaxter (best known for Among the Isles of Shoals) gave serious credence to esoteric spiritualistic phenomena;* Whittier seemed never quite sure of the extent of his belief; and, despite this letter, Miss Jewett was most apt of the three to make light of psychic communication. Miss Jewett edited and wrote prefaces for Celia Thaxter's Stories and Poems for Children (Boston, 1895) and The Poems of Celia Thaxter (Boston, 1896).

  5. The steamship Schiller lost its bearings in heavy fog and was wrecked thirty-five miles off Land's End, England, on May 7, 1875, with a loss of some three hundred and fifty lives. Miss Susan Dimock (1847-1875), trained in surgery at the University of Zurich, was house physician of the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Miss Elizabeth Greene, same age, was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Greene, editor, historian, and postmaster of Boston; and the daughter of William Batchelder Greene, theologian, colonel in the Civil War, and author of books on the science of history, the theory of calculus, socialism, and Hebrew and Egyptian antiquities. Miss Greene, a favorite in society and active in philanthropy, was already looked upon as "one of the most benevolent ladies in Boston."

  6. Cyrus Augustus Bartol (1813-1900), graduate of Bowdoin College, was a Unitarian clergyman influential in the religious life and thought of Boston for half a century. An associate of James Russell Lowell's father, Rev. Bartol became noted for his original, radical, epigrammatic sermons.

Additional Notes

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields, recently widowed, the wife of James T. Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

sealed orders:  Wikipedia says: "Sealed orders are orders given to the commanding officer of a ship or squadron that are sealed up, which he is not allowed to open until he has proceeded a certain length into the high seas; an arrangement in order to ensure secrecy in a time of war."

my sister:  Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

esoteric spiritualistic phenomena: Paula Blanchard speculates in Sarah Orne Jewett (2002) that Fields and Jewett visited the medium recommended to them by Celia Thaxter. At this time, Thaxter was seeing Mrs. Jennie Potter. Though little is known about Potter, several others have recorded encounters with her.  See Light 1:1 (1881), p. 78, and Facts 2-3 (1883) p. 164.
    See also Communing with the Dead: Celia Thaxter, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Adams Fields (2020).

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields (fragment)*

[ April 1882 ]*

Monday noon

My own dear darling, your letter makes me wish to fly to you. There is one thing about it all; it seems to have been done to make you surer than ever that the love still holds and follows you -- You were sure already, and it does not seem to me that this was needed, but -- here it is! And I think you are right in your saying that there shall be no more of it -- no more, I mean, of your going outside to find what is your own and will come to you at any rate. It is simple curiosity that sends most people to mediums;* if one has need of these revelations they will come unsought. I never shall forget that morning last winter when that message was told me for you as you sat writing at your desk -- But for Celia this will work wonders, if only her imagination is not fascinated and excited by the wonder and mystery of it. I think we should hold it as sacred a thing as possible for her [sake?] and help her to reverence it, and not dream of degrading it into a mere satisfaction of curiosity. Thank God for anything by which a human soul is helped to see more clearly the reality of our spiritual life in this world or the next!
    -- My heart went with every word you said about Mrs. Ole* and [the/her] summer plan. Why is not July better than June in that northern country? and there will not be anytime all summer so good for England

Notes

fragment: An earlier transcriber notes: "It is not clear where the remainder of this letter is. The collection has some individual pages -- and it is possible that the closing is there.  Annie Fields has written "1882" in pencil at the top of the first page. James T. Fields died in April of 1881 -- and Annie went through bouts of depression and despair over her loss.

April 1882:  While the year almost certainly is correct, the month is less certain.  Other letters from March and April of 1882 indicate that Jewett and Fields at this time visited at least one spirit medium, separately and perhaps together.

mediums:  Annie and Sarah apparently consulted a medium prior to the European trip referred to in this letter. See also, Terry Heller, "Communing with the Dead: Celia Thaxter, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Adams Fields." SOJTP 2020.

Mrs. Ole: Annie and Sarah visited Sarah Chapman Bull, the American born widow of famed Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, on the island of Lyso on and after July 15, 1882. See Blanchard, p. 143.
 
The manuscript of this letter is at the University of New England, Maine Women Writers Collection,  Jewett Collection  correspondence corr052-soj-af.01.  New transcription by Terry & Linda Heller,  Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday

[ April 1882 ]*

Dear love I hate to keep sending you letters instead of going to you myself, but by and by there will be no letters at all!  Your little word of last night has just come and I wish I were going to be there to welcome you home from the perils of Bridgewater!*  There is a great comfort in thinking of having a glimpse of you within two or three days and I am sure of that.  It is a hot tiresome day -- and I did not get up until very

[ Page 2 ]

late -- and what book do you think I read in bed?  a hand-book of anatomy, and I found it very interesting!!!  Sometimes I think I should like to give up the world the f. and the d.* and be a doctor, though very likely I am enough of one already to get the rest of it for myself and perhaps I have done as much as I can [ deleted letter ] ever could for other people.

   ( Now this is a plan I have.  Let us tell Mrs. Ole* we wish to have June in England )*

[ Breaks off.  No signature.]

Notes

1882:  This year is given by Fields in her transcription. Fields almost certainly is correct, as the letter speaks of plans for their 1882 summer trip to Europe.

Bridgewater:  The Bridgewater State Farm in Massachusetts, according to The Asylum Projects,  opened in 1856 and served as a prison mental hospital throughout its history.

the f. and the d. :  What Jewett means by these initials is not yet known. 

England):  Parentheses penciled in another hand.

Mrs. Ole:  Sara Chapman Thorp Bull.  See Key to Correspondents.
    Jewett and Fields paid an extended visit to Mrs. Ole Bull in Norway during July, as part of their 1882 summer trip to Europe.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.


Annie Fields's Transcription
The following transcription of the above letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), p. 60.

     Tuesday, 1882.

     I hate to keep sending you letters instead of going to you myself, but by and by there still be no letters at all. Your little word of last night has just come and I wish I were going to be there to welcome you home from the perils of Bridgewater.#  It is a hot, tiresome day, and I did not get up until very Late, and what book do you think I read in bed? A hand-book of Anatomy, and I found it very interesting. Sometimes I think I should like to give up the world, the f -- , and the d -- , and be a doctor, though very likely I am enough of one already to get the best of it for myself, and perhaps I have done as much as I ever could for other people.

Fields's note

#Bridgewater State Farm, which was then a most unpalatable place.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields (fragment)


[ Spring 1882 ]*

Tuesday evening

Dear love I have just read your two letters, and I long to go to you and to hold you close and fast -- to make you sure how dearly I love you and to drive away something of your sad loneliness. You are tired my darling; I keep telling you that over and over. I cant bear to have you say these

[ Page 2 ]

things, or what is far worse feel them when you know how I love you and think of you and am living for you so much of my time. Oh dear Darling wont you remember all this and let it give you a little comfort, and in whatever sadness and trouble may come never push

[ Page 3 ]

the thought of me away as not being part of it and ^or^ having to do with it. I believe I belong to you as much as one can belong to another but when you grow very sorry you go away from me into the shadows all alone. I suppose God means that we shall do

[ Page 4 ]

that and must do it sometimes in our lives but I will always follow you lovingly as far as I may and wait until you come back to me again. Nobody loves you better than I do except that one whom you wish to love you best . And whatever you will take from

[ Missing material; no signature ]

[ Up the left margin and across the top margin of page 1 ]

I liked so much the editorial in the Herald I sent. Coolidge* sent me a lovely dark green notebook & pocket book together.


Notes

Spring 1882: This letter seems closely related to the preceding and following letters of Sarah Orne Jewett to Fields.  It is possible this is part of the preceding letter. Both respond to Fields experiencing depression, probably near the time of the anniversary of her husband's death, which took place on 24 April 1881.

Coolidge:  This is not certain, but probably Jewett refers to Katherine/Catherine Scollay Parkman Coolidge. See Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is at the University of New England,  Maine Women Writers Collection,  Jewett Collection  correspondence corr053-af-soj.02.  New transcription and notes by Terry Heller,  Coe College. 

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Thursday

[  April 1882 ]*

Oh my dear darling your two letters have come and I don't know what to say. It fairly stung me to have my own dear love say that nobody would keep her out of it -- Dear Fuffy* if I had thought that this summer would have been easier and happier for you anywhere else I would have helped you go there. It can't be that you think I might have been more thoughtful of you -- but

[Page 2]

indeed this seemed best and does seem best -- And in a few days I shall be with you not to leave you alone again except for a few days while you stay there. Won't it make you more contented to know that really I have been looking forward to being with you there in a way I never have before -- besides fairly longing now for the rest and quietness. I have more care than I ever have had before this

[Page 3]

summer -- and it has made me get through it all and be glad -- because I know that afterward I am going to be by the sea with you. When I think of you it seems wrong that I can't always be with you to take care of you and love you and not let you be lonely -- but dear darling so long as I really must be away part of the time it does make a difference that we belong to each other in a sweet way-- and can keep

[Page 4]

the thought of it in our hearts when we are apart. So let us try to wait the rest of the time and know that it will be all the dearer when we are together. It is hard to write for I could so much more easily tell you this if I were with you -- indeed I should not need to tell you at all. It makes my heart ache to think of your sadness and loneliness, but oh my darling don't let us forget that there is a great blessing sent with it all -- and that God does not mean to punish us

[Cross-written on p. 1, left margin and top ]

or torment us but to bless us and make us more and more his own dear children. I only hope that this note will carry you a little of that great love that fills my heart for you.

Your own Pin*

[Cross-written on p. 2, left margin]

I send you Lilian H's* letter. How touching it is about the Longfellows.* I knew too that they wanted so much to go to you.

[Cross-written on p. 3, left margin and top]

No -- the letter got spoiled -- but she only said beside that other's [?] wishing to go to Manchester that Mrs Ole* was there & it was about my coming down &c by and by


Notes

April 1882:  Original transcriber notes appearing with this text read: (nd but late summer 1881 -- AF has written 1881 in pencil at the top. James T. Fields died in April of 1881 -- and Annie, devastated, cut herself off from friends and family for a time. This letter indicates an earlier intimacy than most scholars assume. See Paula Blanchard, pp. 134-135. )
(in sleeve marked K-l). 
    Almost certainly the transcriber's dating is incorrect.  In April of 1881, Jewett and Fields were still relatively new acquaintances, and they did not yet refer to each other by the nicknames of Pin and Fuff.  The occasion of this letter probably is the approaching first anniversary of the death of James T. Fields, which took place on 24 April 1881. Several other references in this letter suggest it relates in time to other Jewett letters of April 1882.

Fuffy: a Fields nickname. See Key to Correspondents.

Lilian H: Very likely this is Mary Leila ("Lilian") Horsford, the oldest daughter of Eben Norton Horsford.  See Key to Correspondents.

Longfellows: Fields and Jewett were friends of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow family. Longfellow had died the previous March. See Alice Mary Longfellow in Key to Correspondents.

Manchester:  Annie Fields's summer home, the Gambrel Cottage, was in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.

Ole:  As Ole Bull died in 1880, Jewett presumably refers to Sara Chapman Thorp Bull. See Key to Correspondents.

Pin:  A Jewett nickname. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is at the University of New England,  Maine Women Writers Collection,  Jewett Collection  correspondence [n.d.] corr054-soj-af.03.  Unknown original transcriber, with additions and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Danvers

4th Mo, 28, 1882*

My dear friend

    I was greatly interested in thy account of the girl with the withered arm. How beautiful it was her reception at her new home! In that blessed Charity work, there is doubtless much to depress and discourage, and you need now & then an incident of this kind.

    It was very kind and thoughtful in thee to send

[ Page 2 ]

me Mr Pierce's letter.*  I hope the "sisters three" will pull through, or suffer themselves to be pulled through. It is hard to help those who need help most of all -- genteel poor folks. As the Duke of Argyle said of kings, they are "kittle cattle to shoe behind."

    The news of Emerson's death* has just reached me. How our friends glide from us! I begin to feel awfully alone. And yet sometimes those who have gone away seem very near to me. Or is it that I ^am^ getting very near to them! --

[ Page 3 ]

Is Mrs. Thaxter still in Boston? I suppose Sarah Jewett* has left before this.

    If I am in Boston before you leave, I shall [ deleted letter ? ] just call to say God be with you!

Ever & affectionately thy friend.

John G. Whittier

Notes

1882:  The paragraph on Emerson's death has a penciled X in the left margin.  The rest of the letter -- excepting this paragraph -- appears to have a light penciled line on each page from upper left to lower right.

Mr Pierce's letter: It is likely that this is Henry Lille Pierce. See Key to Correspondents.
    The "sisters three" have not yet been identified, but he may refer to the three surviving daughters of their mutual friend, the recently deceased American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

Duke of Argyle:  Whittier quotes from Sir Walter Scott's (1771-1832) novel, The Heart of Midlothian (1818), in which the Duke comments that kings are like unruly cattle, difficult to herd from behind.

Emerson's death:  Ralph Waldo Emerson died on 27 April 1882.  See Key to Correspondents.

Celia Thaxter ... Sarah Jewett: See Key to Correspondents. Whittier refers to the trip to Europe, upon which Jewett and Fields soon will depart.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4807.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

K. Point -- 29^th Apr.

[ 1882 ]*

My dearest:

   K.* & I reached here yesterday aft. & found everything much better than we expected, so that it was really pleasant & I was so rejoiced to see my Roland -- he is able to get about a little on crutches, but he has to be awfully careful yet -- Its a great trial -- Annie had the house "as neat as wax", whatever that may mean! but really it was beautiful to see what pains she had taken & how everything shone -- My little room was so fresh & trim & dainty, no speck of dust anywhere, & everything so comfortable & pretty, it was a pleasure to go into it. It makes all the difference from comfort to despair, having her. And she is so fond of Owl's sandpiper!* How is dear owl? Gone home, on the flit, I suppose --

   You dear! How I think of you! Did I not tell you how your pendulum would swing back into great joy from that deep dark?* Always it is so. For me -- some how all things are new -- it is a new heaven, & a new earth -- the old joy & elasticity of childhood comes back once more --

   I find lots to do & am busy as I can be -- snatch a minute only to say God bless you dear, & I will write from the Shoals where we hope to be on Monday. Mr Thaxter is going in about a week to take Karl & his [ machine corrected ]* to Boston to the [ proper corrected ] authorities & get it patented if it is all we hope -- Karl will come in from Shoals. He wants

[ In the left margin of page 1 ]

to put it in running order perfectly [ adjusted to the calligraph out there ? ],* so that there may be no mistake before they take it to Boston -- Ever my darling your

C.

Notes

1882:  Boston Public Library has assigned this date to the letter.  The rationale for this is not given.  Roland Thaxter was suffering from an injured knee at this time. He eventually had surgery in November 1882.

K.: Karl is Thaxter's oldest, disabled son. Roland was her youngest son. See Key to Correspondents.

Owl's sandpiper: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Owl and Pinny are Jewett; Flower is Fields; Sandpiper is Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

deep dark: Thaxter refers to Fields's depression after the death of James T. Fields the previous year, 24 April 1881.  See, for example, Thaxter to Fields of 30 October 1881.

machine: Karl worked for several years on a device for printing photographic enlargements.

out there: The text within the brackets is not visible on the scanned image of the manuscript page. I have, therefore, accepted the transcription provided by EKC. What the text means remains unclear as well.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (172-190) https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p158h
 Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

148 Charles Street

Boston

Sunday [April 30, 1882]

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     Now listen to this sad story! Yesterday I drove over from Bradford to Amesbury to see you and you had gone to Danvers, and it is a wonder I did not sit down to cry on the doorstep! Miss Annie Johnson¹ was with me and two young friends beside, and at first I was deeply grieved because I had dragged them so far on false pretenses, but they had a very good drive and a great deal of pleasure in spite of their disappointment. So did I; but it is too bad I could not have seen you. However, there may be time yet.

     What a pleasant country it is! and it was all new to me yesterday beyond the house where you lived when you were a boy. I had been there before, and was glad to go by again. The brook was in a great state of excitement and the willows were growing yellow and will be fit to make whistles from in a day or two! I wish I could go there with you some day.

     Miss Johnson was so sorry to miss you; but she means to drive over again when she is sure you are in Amesbury.

     I am spending a last Sunday with our dear A. F. before we go away, which will be in little more than three weeks now. Miss Phelps² is here too. Mrs. Fields and I are going out to Concord* this afternoon. I am sure she sends you her love with mine.

Yours most affectionately,

Sarah O. Jewett

 
Cary's Notes

1. Annie Elizabeth Johnson (1826-1894), Maine-born daughter of the Reverend Samuel and Hannah (Whittier) Johnson, was principal of Bradford Academy (now a college) from 1875 until her death. Miss Johnson was a close friend of Miss Jewett's sister Mary and her cousin Abba Fisk.

2. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911), author of The Gates Ajar and other religious romances, was another of Whittier's broad coterie of female friends whose works he admired and generously praised. She had religion, reform, literature, and insomnia as common interests with Whittier.

Additional Notes

A.F.:  Mrs. Annie Adams Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

Concord: Jewett and Fields plan to attend the 30 April funeral of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Concord MA resident, who had died on 27 April. See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

 

Oak Knoll
    Thursday

[ 4 May 1882 ]*

My dear Friend

    Day before yesterday I got thy letter telling me that that Miss Johnson of Bradford* had actually been at my house in Amesbury -- and I was not there!  I immediately went to Boston rather hoping

[ Page 2 ]

I should find thee there, but thee had left.  I saw Mrs Fields* for a few moments; I thought ^she^ seemed a little nervous about the expedition, but thee will be all right as soon as she & thee are aboard ship.  And I am not to see thee before you leave!  I am sorely disappointed.  I thought

[ Page 3 ]

I could write thee as soon as I returned to Amesbury, and that thee could fix a day when I might expect thee. Well! I shall have to think often of when we parted at the Mrs Claflins* -- but it is too bad.

    I hope thee go in good spirits, though of course, it will {be} rather hard to leave thy mother & sister.  But they I know will feel that it is the best possible thing

[ Page 4 ]

for thee to do, a god send of an opportunity which occurs very seldom{.} Thee & dear Annie Fields will be such mutual help to each other.

    Good [bye ?], dear friend.  I shall follow thee in my thoughts. With grateful affection thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

1882:  A transcriber's note reads: Postmark;  May 5; in 1882, May 5 fell on a Friday. This letter refers to the imminent departure of Jewett and Fields on their first voyage to Europe, which took place on about 24 May 1882. 

Miss Johnson of Bradford:  Whittier's home in Haverford, MA, is across the Merrimack River from Bradford, MA. Richard Cary says "Annie Elizabeth Johnson (1826-1894), Maine-born daughter of the Reverend Samuel and Hannah (Whittier) Johnson, was principal of Bradford Academy (now a college) from 1875 until her death. Miss Johnson was a close friend of Miss Jewett's sister Mary and her cousin Abba Fisk."

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs Claflins:  Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin.  See Key to Correspondents. 

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

May 5 [1882] 

Dear Mr. Whittier:

     I wish you could come to South Berwick for a day or two! I do want to see you very much and we would drive down the Sligo road and go anywhere you please out of doors, and indoors you should be made as much at home as you liked. There are only my mother and sister* here. I do not go for two weeks and I shall be more than glad if you feel like coming. My sister has been saying how much she wished you would make us a little visit.

     Yes, I find too that Mrs. Fields* begins to dread the going away, but that day at Concord tired her very much and she is altogether tired out at any rate. I think, in her wish to drive away her sadness, she has tried to carry too much care and work, and she feels the burden of it beside the weight of the sorrow itself. She needs more than ever to have this change and rest.

     I wish you were here tonight and we would make the fire last a good while into the night and have a talk over it.

Wednesday, May 10th 

     I wrote all this and went away to Portland for a day or two leaving my letter unfinished in the desk. I do hope that you can come, next week -- or this. There are so many things to talk about, but I must stop writing. God bless you! I do hope I shall see you before I go away.

Yours most affectionately,

Sarah

 

Notes

sister:  Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
    Jewett and Fields attended the 30 April funeral of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Concord MA resident, who had died on 27 April. See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Saturday afternoon

[ 13 May 1882 ]*

Dear darling it seems to be a slight consolation to write to you! ---- (I was glad to get that dear short little letter this morning but alas! you were keeping the rest of it until today.

    I am afraid that Mother is 'in for' one of her very bad colds and in that case I suppose it will be a good many days before I can leave her, and) I shall miss Truly thy friend,* which

[ Page 2 ]

is very sad [ the intended to ] think of -- so I am not going to think of it ! x x  I just pulled one of your letters out of my pocket with these things written on the back of it -- (I was looking over The Land of the Midnight Sun which seemed a most charming book -- and Chaillu* says of some dear and pathetic Finnish people who lived near the Arctic Sea: "They did not care about the allurements and wealth of the world. 'There is another life,' said the old woman to me: 'let us be good

[ Page 3 ]

and love God with all our hearts!' " -- And this was a quaint epitaph for some rich old Swedish robber-nobleman of the 14th Century:

Here lie
The Swedish Chancellor B. Jonssen
In Safety buried:
And his son Sir Canute.
Armagard Thy wife, follows Thee Canute.

-- Is not that most touching. I dont know why, but it made me think of Whittier's poetry -- It is more like some poems of Longfellow's* on second thought -- but it was Truly thy friend who came first to my mind -- Do you suppose

[ Page 4 ]

that anybody will ever write out the laws of association?* --

    (-- And in this mornings mail came a nice new Good Literature* so I thought of my Queen Anne and her Kingdom of Letters,* and that it seemed to be holding its own, and I suppose her majesty was very pleased, wasn't she?  We must have a copy sent after us -- Mary* will do it, and I will leave a roll of newspaper wrappers on purpose for G.L.* and we will squabble for it when it comes.) (Didn't you think

[ Manuscript breaks off ]

Notes

13 May 1882:  Fields penciled 1895, possibly, then deleted it and wrote 1892 in the upper right of page 1.  However, hints in the content suggest a much earlier date, in the spring of 1882, as they were planning their first trip to Europe. Jewett has been reading a book published in 1881 and she mentions a short-lived magazine (1881-1883), and she implies that they are in the process of planning a trip that will require publications being sent after them. Further, she concludes that she will not have a chance to see John Greenleaf Whittier before they depart, which almost certainly places this letter within the 2 weeks before their trip. Saturday 13 May is probable, but 20 May is possible.

(I : The parenthesis marks around this passage have been penciled by Fields.

thy friend: John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.

Chaillu: Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (c. 18311903) was a French-American zoologist and anthropologist. His The Land of the Midnight Sun (1881) was based on five years of studying "customs and antiquities" of Scandinavia.
    The first passage appears in volume 2, p. 54: They did not care about the allurements and wealth of the world. "There is another life," said the old woman to me; 'let us be good, and love God with all our hearts! ' "
    The passage on the epitaph appears in volume 2, p. 347; Jewett has not presented it exactly as it appears in all caps: Here lie / The Swedish Chancellor, Bo Johnson,/ in safety buried, / And His Son Canute./ Armagard, thy wife, follows thee, Canute.

Longfellow's:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. See Key to Correspondents.

laws of association: It is not clear whether Jewett refers to the formal ideas about what brings ideas into mental connection as formulated by Aristotle, John Locke and others.  Though she uses the term, it is not certain that she is aware of their work.

(-- And:  This and the remaining parenthesis marks in this letter were penciled by Fields.

Good Literature: This weekly magazine, published in New York by the Good Literature Publishing Company, seems to have gone by this name for only a short time: 1881-1883.  It later took a new title, Critic, though it is not clear quite how and when this happened.  Jewett seems unlikely to have been writing about it to Fields until at least the time of planning their trip to Europe in the spring of 1882.

Queen Anne and her Kingdom of Letters: Jewett could be whimsically referring to Annie Fields, suggesting that she has appeared in some significant way in a current issue of Good Literature.  Or perhaps she refers to a friend of Fields, Anne Thackeray Ritchie. However no significant appearance of either has yet been discovered in the 1882 volume. Or, perhaps, she refers to an actual Queen Anne.

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

G.L.:  Presumably meaning Good Literature.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

Danvers

5 Mo. 13, 1882

My dear Friend

    How kind it was in thee to write me amidst the worries and cares of preparation for thy flitting across the water,* and to add to all thy troubles the necessity of entertaining dull company by inviting me to South Berwick.  I know it would it would be wickedly selfish of me to accept such

[ Page 2 ]

an invitation, but I certainly should do it if I could. Fortunately for thee, I have been kept back by illness, and the north-east winds blowing over all the icebergs between here and the Pole. And then I must be in Amesbury next week, in attendance upon our Quaker Quarterly Meeting,* and to meet my niece Lizzie,* & my

[ Page 3 ]

 brother* if he is able to get there.

    So, I must let thee go with my written benediction,* and with grateful thanks for thy books, and still more for thyself.  I am always and affectionately thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

5 Mo. 13:  Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

the water: Jewett and Fields departed on their first voyage to Europe on about 24 May 1882.

Quaker Quarterly Meeting: Whittier was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers).  Quarterly meetings of the Society of Friends are gatherings of regional representatives to worship and conduct business.

niece Lizzie: Richard Cary says: "Elizabeth Hussey (1843-1909) was the daughter of Whittier's brother Matthew and namesake of his sister. She assumed the other "Lizzie's" place in Whittier's household from 1864 to 1876, the year she married Samuel T. Pickard, editor of the Portland Transcript and, later, biographer of Whittier.  This letter appears in Pickard's biography,  Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, II, pp. 679-680.

my brother:  Whittier's brother, Matthew, died on 7 January 1883.

written benediction:  Richard Cary notes: "Whittier wrote the sonnet "Godspeed" for "my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett" on the occasion of their first departure for Europe in 1882. Not to be outdone, Miss Jewett eulogized him in "The Eagle Trees," Harper's, LXVI (March 1883), 608."

Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
     Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
     Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here, or there, love follows her in whom
     All graces and sweet charities unite,
     The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
     Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
     God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
Comfort, console, bless; safely bring,
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.

"Her in whom all graces and sweet charities unite" is generally agreed to be Fields, while "her for whom New England's byways bloom" is Jewett.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.   Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

May 14^th  Shoals.

[ 1882 ]*

    My dearest:

        How glad I am to have your letter telling me of your visit to Mrs P.!* How interesting it all is! How good you are to tell me!  The Pinafore* is going to Ports. to take poor Bernt Ingebertsen,* my poor sweet little [ Antomina's ? ] father, to Somerville -- Poor child, her heart is almost broken & I ache for her -- it is a terrible hard place for her to get over & while I try to cheer her I feel all the time how hopeless it is -- Time -- time -- that is all -- Time will soothe her sorrow{.}

[ Page 2 ]

    I am so glad Rose & Mr Darrah* have met & "talked it over"! I want to hear from Rose, & shall try to get time to write. -- I heard from the dear owl* & I wrote -- but oh, we seem so far away! days & days before we get a mail! Everything, all time, is so uncertain, without the postman most especially!

    The song sparrows are singing thro' all this cold storm-- what a cold storm! Like December-- Julia's* garden & mine are chilled & discouraged -- but the sun will shine by & bye --

    Dear Annie I cannot realise the

[ Page 3 ]

time is so close for your going* -- dear me, whatever shall we all do when you are away! Don't get too tired before you go -- easy to say, but hard to prevent, I know -- but do remember what J.* said, Flower dear.

 I have written this note with an accompaniment of poor Mina's sobs, which she [ mainly ? ] tries to control, as she goes about her work -- They are bringing her father from Smutty-nose & will stop here for the mail. O poor child -- it is worse than death. I look at my poor Karl* at work near me on his machine, & think what may be before me. I pity the poor girl with more than common pity. Their little home was so sweet, they were so happy -- this poor man only asked for leave to work like a galley slave-- it was his joy-- And now he is nothing{.}

[ Page 4 ]

Dearest, give my love to Pinny & write to me, but dont take your minutes from rest, you kind dear

Your loving

        C.

Notes

1882:  Boston Public Library places this letter in 1882.  This is reasonable because Thaxter refers to Fields going away for some time; Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett sailed together for Europe in May 1882.

Mrs P:  EKC, the original transcriber, identifies this person as Mrs. Paine, presumably Mary Elizabeth Greeley (1836-1920), the wife of  John Knowles Paine (1839-1906), an American composer who also served as professor of music at Harvard University.  Both were regular summer visitors at the Isles of the Shoals.
    However, it seems more likely that she refers to the spirit medium, Jennie Potter, whom Thaxter mentions in her letter to Fields of 24 May.  See the notes for that letter.

Pinafore: The Laighton brothers' steam tug that ran irregularly between Portsmouth, NH and Appledore.

Bernt Ingebertsen: This name is sometimes spelled "Ingebretsen."  Norma Mandel, in Beyond the Garden Gate pp. 80-3, names the Ingebretsens as among the early Norwegian immigrants on the Isles of the Shoals. Ingebertson apparently has been living on Smutty-nose, one of the Shoals islands.
    Mandel notes that several members of another family, the Berntsens, suffered from mental illness.
    Somerville, MA was then home to the Asylum for the Insane, now the McLean Hospital.

Rose & Mr. Darrah: The context makes clear that Thaxter refers to her friend, Rose Lamb. Rosanna/Rose Lamb (1843-1927) was a prominent American artist. Lamb, like Thaxter, was a student of William Morris Hunt. Annie Fields memorialized  Robert Kendall Darrah (181822 May 1885) in an obituary.
    Thaxter seems to be collecting impressions from her various friends who have consulted Mrs. Potter, including Fields, Lamb, Darrah and Jewett.

owl:  Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Owl and Pinny are Jewett; Flower is Fields; Sandpiper is Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

Julia's: Julia Laighton. See Key to Correspondents.

your going: Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett sailed together for Europe on about 24 May 1882

J.:  James T. Fields, deceased husband of Annie Fields. And here Thaxter refers to Fields by one of her nicknames, Flower. See Key to Correspondents.

Mina:  Mina Berntsen is mentioned often in Letters of Celia Thaxter (1895).  See also Norma Mandel, Beyond the Garden Gate pp. 80-3.  The use of names is confusing. Mandel says that Mina Berntsen was the daughter of Ben Berntsen, but this letter says that she is a daughter of Bernt Ingebertsen. Mandel identifies the Ingebretsons and the Berntsens as different families.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 2(174-190),   https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p1623.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

May 16 [1882]

My dear Friend:

     I have nothing to say about your brother and your niece, but as for the northeast wind and the Quarterly meeting¹ I have no patience with them! I do wish with all my heart that it had been possible for you to come and if you should find a day when you can get away I do wish I could see you here. You know you can take the Eastern R.R. and come straight here. I would give anything if I could manage to get to Amesbury but though I am not really so busy with doing things with my two hands as one might suppose, it seems necessary for me to be here. Just now we begin to feel sure of what has been vague before -- that I am to be away for a good while -- and people are going and coming from the house beside, though the last of the week I do not think there will be any guests.

     You don't know what a happy two days I have just had with our dear A. F.* who came down to spend Sunday with me. She and my mother naturally felt like knowing each other before I go away with her. It was grey, chilly weather but we took a drive down Sligo Point which she wished to see on your account as well as mine, and she went away quite in love with the Berwick country -- and looking delightfully rested beside. I do not think she worries now about going away. We were always talking about you!

     Now here in the envelope are some verses I hope you will like a little, for I am sure you will read the love I have for you between lines that may be full of faults, and in a damaged state, if you look at them only as literature! Mrs. Fields and I didn't see any eagles though we looked with all our eyes for them on Sunday. The verses are to be printed in Harper's² by and by, that is if you do not say no yourself to Mr. Alden.³

     And now goodbye and God bless you if I don't see you again, though I cling to the hope that I may. You have made life on this side of the sea, and my dear New England, mean so much more to me that I am sure that however far away I shall wander it will never be away from you.

Yours aff'ly,

S. O. J.

Cary's Notes

1. Whittier had just declined an invitation from Miss Jewett to spend a day or two at South Berwick before she embarked for Europe. "Fortunately for thee I have been kept back by illness, and the northeast winds blowing over all the icebergs between here and the Pole. And then I must be in Amesbury next week, in attendance upon our Quaker Quarterly Meeting, and to meet my niece Lizzie, and my brother if he is able to get there." (Pickard, Life and Letters, II, 679-680.)

2. "The Eagle Trees," Harper's, LXVI (March 1883), 608, a poem of eight octets dedicated "To J. G. W." and exalting him as a giant in spiritual stature akin to great pines and high-flying eagles.

3. Henry Mills Alden (1836-1919), editor of Harper's for half a century until his death, was highly selective of Miss Jewett's work, turning down about as much as he accepted. He was at the dock to bid the ladies bon voyage.

Additional Notes

A.F.:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields (fragment)*

Shoals. [17^th corrected from 18 ? ] May -- [ 1882 ]

    Your little pencil note was so welcome! You dear, to think of me & write! I'm so glad you had a good time with Sarah -- Of course she was lovely & all her "places" beautiful in rain or shine -- I think of you every minute!

    18^th -- How near the time comes! I am so sorry I can't stand on the wharf & wave to you and owlet to the last glimmering speck -- Strange to say I like to do this thing, like to hold on to my loves as long as light will let me, till distance devours them from me. I had a letter from Mr. Whittier* -- he says he is coming

[ Page 2  ]

here in June, or first July. Your ears should have [ shut ? ] about that time! He seems to be satisfied with us & our belief!*  I shall love to see him --     But, dear me, I think there will never be any summer --! Something is the matter with the world & the weather! the bitter east never ceases blowing & the sun won't shine -- Our gardens are blighted with frost, Julia's & mine. She sent to Vick* (and now Vick is dead, too!) and got roses & lilies & daffydowndillies, her garden is full, but deary me! not a blink of warmth or sun! But she's so happy, she needs no sun, tho' her plants do. I wish you could have seen her & my mother* last night planting a waterlily in a tub by the garden fence! It was a subject!

[ Page 3  ]

Do scribble me a line in the shelter of the smokestack some day & send from Queenstown. Do!


Notes

fragment: This letter was selected and edited for inclusion in Letters of Celia Thaxter, edited by her friends A.F. and R.L. (Annie Fields and Rose Lamb), where it was placed with letters of 1882. This placement is correct, as indicated by Thaxter's references to the imminent departure of Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett on their first voyage together to Europe.
    The manuscript includes a number of marks and notes, presumably by Fields and Lamb to guide the publication. These are not included in this transcription.

Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. Later, she is referred to by her nickname, "owlet."

Whittier:  John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.

our belief:  Probably Thaxter refers to her increasing interest in Spiritualism, reflected in other letters from this year between Thaxter, Whittier, Jewett and Fields.

Vick:  James Vick (1818-1882) was a Rochester, NY seedsman. He was editor of the Genesee Farmer and Vick's Illustrated Monthly.

my mother: Thaxter's mother died in November 1877, five years before this letter. Her mother in the garden would have to be an apparition.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, California: James Thomas Fields Papers and Addenda (1767-1914),  mss FI 1-5637, Box 63 FI 1- 4214. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Fields and Lamb Transcription for Letters of Celia Thaxter
    Note that this paragraph was taken from two different letters.

    To Annie Fields. Shoals, May 18, 1882.

    How near the time comes! I am so sorry I can't stand on the wharf and wave to you and Sarah to the last glimmering speck. Strange to say, I like to do this thing, like to hold on to my loves as long as light will let me, till distance devours them from me. I had a letter from Mr. Whittier; he says he is coming here in June, or first July. But, dear me, I think there will never be any summer! something is the matter with the world and the weather; the bitter east never ceases blowing, and the sun won't shine. Our gardens are blighted with frost, Julia's and mine. She sent to Vick (and now Vick is dead, too!) and got roses and lilies and daffydowndillies. Her garden is full, -- but, deary me! not a blink of warmth or sun! But she's so happy she needs no sun, though her plants do. It was really bright yesterday, though so cold. At night a wondrous flaming sunset, but the robin sang of rain all day. I never saw the coast so clear in all my life. We saw the White Mountains, Washington and Jefferson, and saw the buildings on the top of Mount Washington with a glass! That is something I never expected to see! We could hardly believe our eyes. I wonder what convulsion of nature will transpire! This morning it is black and bitter as December.

---

 
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

[ May 1882 ]*

Sunday Dearest Fuff --

      I was so sorry after I had sent the letter that I wrote at night it is little use to write those things that after all can only be said. But I know that these times of depression are largely physical with you. Don't think that I am unfeeling if I say that it is not only your sorrow when you feel as if your surroundings are all wrong and you yourself all wrong and unfitted, in 'such a final way.' I begged you before you went to Manchester to remember that this time of reaction and distaste was sure to come. You worked very hard the last two or three weeks in town and I saw what was coming. At such times whatever makes you unhappy and especially your sorrow and loss are sure to seem sharper than ever. And I say again that the last of your summer is going to be happier and better than this first month, dear darling. Forgive me if I ever forget how sad your heart is but when it is so much to me to have you and to be with you I do forget sometimes that in a certain way it is less to you than to me. But I thank Heaven that I am anything to you, and that is enough. Yet if I have learned anything it is this, that such times of dissatisfaction and suffering have always come to you, and they are not only part of these few years, but are the law of your nature and of every nature that is being taught the deeper lessons of life. The toil of the spirit on its upward way, the fulfillment of its duties and realization of its [deleted word] visions sometimes strains the poor body beyond
 

Notes from an earlier transcriber

An Incomplete* Letter from Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Fields. It is not clear where the remainder of this letter is.  The collection has some individual pages and it is possible that the closing is there... 8 5 02.  Though undated, it clearly is from after the death of James T. Fields in April of 1881, after which Annie went through bouts of depression and despair over her loss.

New notes

May 1882:  The reference to the first month of summer and the promise that later summer will be better suggests that Jewett refers to a planned trip to Europe for summer of 1882.

The manuscript of this letter is at the University of New England, Maine Women Writers Collection,  Jewett Collection  correspondence corr059-soj-af.08.  New transcription by Terry & Linda Heller,  Coe College.

---

24 May - 25 October, 1882
Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields sail to Europe
Letters from this trip are gathered as a separate document:
 Jewett Letters from Europe.

---

Celia Thaxter to Mrs Locke

Winthrop House

Boston, Mass --

Oct 11^th (82

Mrs Locke:

    Dear Madam:

        Your note was mislaid & has just turned up.

    It is so much trouble to make the illustrations to my books, painting in water color over the page, that I have concluded not to do it again under a price of ten dollars, which would include the book ($1.25) & twelve illustrations. If you care for it at that price, or know of people who would, I ^am^  willing to fill any orders between now & xmas. Each vol. contains photograph & autograph -- of course, the higher the price paid, the greater the number of illustrations --

Very truly C. Thaxter.

[ Up the left margin ]

Be kind enough to reply ^soon^ that I may arrange my work accordingly --

Notes

Locke:  There are other letters to Mrs. Locke in various archives, but she has not yet been identified.
    While this letter has little to do with Sarah Orne Jewett, as it probably never was seen by her, it is included here because it provides a glimpse of a friend and fellow artist's business practices.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Chicago Historical Museum, Small Manuscripts collections: MSS Alpha Thaxter.
    With this letter in the collection of the CHM is an autographed fair copy of Thaxter's poem, "Within and Without" (1885). As the poem is not known to have been published before 1885, it seems unlikely that this copy was included in this letter.  Whether the ms. has any other connection with this letter is not yet known.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

  W.H.* Nov. 10^th (82

    Dear & ever dear Annie:

        Mrs Lang* has written to ask me to go to the Oratorio* with her on Monday night -- but I dare not be away that night lest my Roland* should want me, for Mr T.* goes to his New Bedford reading on that evening & has to be gone several more Mondays -- I dont know at all how the life at the hospital will be, but I feel as if I must stand ready for the first weeks, at any rate, to be at my poor boy's call, if he needs me. Dearest I gave yours & Pinny's* messages to "truly

[ Page 2 ]

thy friend --"* he was full of tender interest & going soon to see you. If you want me, dear, shall I go to you Tuesdays instead of Mondays? We did not talk of Roland the other night -- You know he ought to have been under surgical care all this time, but he thought his own care was enough & dreads so coming to the city -- we could not persuade him. But [ tomorrow ? ] I trust will see him here.  I shall take my water colors, & take up my abode in the hospital! That is, I mean I shall be there all the time I can. Poor Roland, [ stopped corrected ] still in the threshold of his life, -- heaven knows how long,-- it may be years before he walks --

    Bless you, my darling -- How is it with you?

[ Up the left margin of page 2  ]

Do send me a word --

     I expect Roland tomorrow. Ellery Jennison* went down to get him -- Mr T's reading coming today.

Your most loving C.

Notes

W. H.: The Winthrop House on Bowdoin Street in Boston, a quiet and inexpensive hotel used by John Greenleaf Whittier and other literary visitors to Boston.

Mrs Lang: Probably this is the singer Frances Morse Burrage (1839-1934).  Fields and Jewett were acquainted with her and her husband, Boston musician Benjamin Johnson Lang (1837-1909).

Oratorio: Probably Thaxter had been invited to attend the oratorio, The Creation by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), which took place in the Mechanics Building in Boston on Sunday 12 November 1882. Benjamin Johnson Lang was organist for this performance. See History of the Handel and Haydn Society, of Boston, Massachusetts, v. 1 p. 430.

Roland:  Thaxter's youngest son, who has experienced a developing problem with one of his knees.

Mr T.:  Thaxter's husband, Levi, who made a career of presenting readings of the poems of Robert Browning.

Pinny's: Thaxter is using an intimate nickname shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Pinny is Sarah Orne Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

thy friend: John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.

Ellery Jennison: Samuel Jennison (1821-1900), was a Cambridge, MA area lawyer, who married Mary Lincoln Thaxter, sister of  Thaxter's husband, Levi, and of Lucy Thaxter Titcomb. Their 4 children were: Lucy White, Samuel Ellery (1856- ), Katharine Almy, and Robert (b. & d. 1861). See The Giles Memorial, pp. 275-6.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (191-209), https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p272j
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

W. H.* Sat. night

Nov. 11^th

[ 1882 ]*

    My dearest one:

        I did try to get round for a peep at your lovely face today but I have been half distraught with everything today & failed in what I so greatly desired. I have spent most of the day at the hospital with Roland* -- The Drs haven't yet decided about him but I hope, oh I hope they will say I can have him here to take care of, for it is so sad there at the hospital & the moans & groans of the sufferers all about make my boy's heart heavy within

[ Page 2 ]

him. O, I must have him here with me-- I can take such care [ unrecognized mark ] of him, will not think of anything else if only they will let me have him.  Of course I wouldn't think of it if it were necessary or better for him ^at the hospital^ but I don't think its either -- hope not!

    You dear dear Annie, thanks, thousands, for the splendid gnarled olive & the most interesting report -- I'm so glad to see it -- want to show it to Roland if I may keep it a little longer -- O how I want to see you again!  If I only get Roland here I can

[ Page 3 ]

^get^ off once in a while, for Aunt Lucy will be here, & Karl, & Mr T.* part of time.  I am awfully busy with orders* for Xmas & work with all my might & main every minute -- worked all the time at the hospital -- How goes it with you, beautiful darling? I think of you all the time -- I am yours faithfully -- fondly

C.T.

Notes

1882:  This letter fairly clearly follows Thaxter to Fields of 10 November, as she continues reporting upon her son Roland's knee surgery.

W. H.: The Winthrop House on Bowdoin Street in Boston, a quiet and inexpensive hotel used by John Greenleaf Whittier and other literary visitors to Boston.

Roland: Thaxter's youngest son has had surgery on a knee.

Aunt Lucy ...Karl, & Mr T.:  Karl is Thaxter's oldest son, who is disabled. Mr. T. is her husband, Levi. Lucy Titcomb is Levi Thaxter's sister.

orders: Thaxter earned a small income by painting china and hand illustrating books.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893, MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (191-209)
 https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p2786
     Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Nancy (Mrs. Henry Oscar) Houghton

South Berwick

12 November 1882

Dear Mrs. Houghton

    Thank you very much for your kind note of welcome which Mrs. Fields* forwarded ^to^ me here.  I need not tell you what a charming summer I have had or how delightful it is to be at home again -- and the best part of it is that I am so much stronger & better than when

[ Page 2 ]

I went away in the spring. -- I hope to be in Boston a good deal this winter and then I shall certainly see you.

    Will you please tell Mr Houghton that I was sorry not to see him longer last Thursday, but I was going to take the next train for home and was in a great hurry.  Kindest regards to him and to all your household and I am yours most sincerely

Sarah O. Jewett

Notes

Mrs. Fields:  Annie Adams Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Small Library, University of Virginia, Special Collections MSS 6218, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Annie Adams Fields to Mr. Sayer

Nov. 15^th 1882

[ Begin letterhead ]

148. Charles Street.
   
        Boston

[ End letterhead ]

Mr. Sayer:*

        Dear Sir:

            Mr. Paine* has requested me to supplement his reply to your note by making some suggestions about the best authorities to be consulted regarding organization -- in benevolent work.

    So far as I know Dr. Chalmers* of Glasgow was the first man who introduced not only the idea but the practice into our English speaking world. I believe

[ Page 2 ]

the work was inaugurated about the same period in [ Elsenfeld ? ] Germany* where while the [ found. lasted or lived ?] it reached greater perfection than it has done elsewhere, but through a fault in the plan as we think, introducing political influence and compelling persons by law to [ deleted word ] visit, the work seems to have

[ Page 3 ]

fallen off and degenerated greatly in that place. Dr. Chalmers' work on the contrary took root in America and I dare say has left its mark also in Glasgow.  If you can find no manual from his hand at least in the life of him published last year, there is a reference to his plans -- Frederick Denison* of London has left a book behind him which should be read by any one hoping for success in this difficult science.

[ Page 4 ]

Among our contemporaries Mifs Octavia Hill* easily stands first as an authority or the authority -- Her two books the first a pamphlet describing the tenements in Blank Court and methods of visiting and the second a series of essays (which have been reprinted here in Boston at ten cents at the Charity Building) really contain all that is necessary in starting such work ----- practically all that can be said -- I have just seen Mifs Hill in London.  She says more and more it becomes a question of education for Visitors as well as visited --

    Forgive this hurried letter and believe me respectfully

Annie Fields

Notes

Mr. Sayer:  This person has not yet been identified.

Mr. Paine: Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (1835-1910), a Boston lawyer, philanthropist and social reformer, who among other positions was for a time president of the Associated Charities of Boston, with which Annie Adams Fields was connected.

Dr. Chalmers:  Probably, Fields refers to Dr. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), Scottish minister and reformer. WorldCat lists no life of Thomas Chalmers in 1881, but Norman L. Walker published Thomas Chambers in London in 1880.

Elsenfeld Germany: The transcription of Elsenfeld is uncertain; this guess is supported by there being such a town in Germany. Though social reform related to pauperism became important in 19th-century Germany, how the town of Elsenfeld figured in this movement is not yet known. 

Frederick Denison: Identifying this person proves more difficult than one would expect. In her book, How to Help the Poor (1883), Fields refers several times to Edward Denison, never to Frederick Denison.  Presumably, she has mistaken his name in this letter, for there seems to be no likely recipient named Frederick Denison. If she did err, then two likely but not certain candidates emerge.
    Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) was an English Anglican theologian and a founder of Christian socialism. The book Fields refers to, out of dozens of his publications, may be The Kingdom of Christ (1838).
    Edward Denison (1840-1870), an English liberal politician and philanthropist,"left behind" only two posthumous books, A Brief Record (1871) and Letters and Other Writings (1875).

Octavia Hill: English social reformer Octavia Hill (1838–1912). By 1882, she had published Homes of the London Poor (1871), with a section on Blank Court, and Our Common Land and other Short Essays (1877).

The manuscript of this letter is held by Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA: Annie Fields Letters, 1882-1911, MS 58.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Hotel Winthrop

11 Mo 20  1882

My dear friend

    I should have been happy in the acceptance of thy kind invitation last night but for the fact that I had been with my sick brother* at East Boston, & came back too tired for further exertion. I need not tell thee that I am sorry always to lose any

[ Page 2 ]

opportunity of meeting one, who, (with her & [ thy / my ? ] dearest friend) has made life seem to me brighter, happier & better.

    I am glad thee like Mrs Child's letters.* I missed the letters to dear Fields* when I looked them over. I did not see the compilation until it was printed{.} The work was mainly done by Mrs Sewall

[ Page 3 ]

who, I think, was not aware of Mrs C's correspondence with Mr. Fields.

Ever & gratefully thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

sick brother: Whittier's brother, Matthew, died on 7 January 1883.

Mrs Child's letters: Whittier refers to his partnering with others to produce Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883).  Lydia Maria Francis Child (18021880) was an American abolitionist, civil rights activist, novelist, and journalist.
    Whittier's partners in the editing enterprise included reformer and activist Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) and Harriet Winslow Sewall (1819-1889), poet and second wife of American reformer, Samuel Edmund Sewall (1799-1888).  Mrs. Sewall is credited with most of the editorial work.

dear Fields:  James T. Fields, husband of Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4787.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Thursday morning

[ 23 November 1882 ]*

Dearest Darling T.L.*

    This is a lovely day, but I shall have to stay in now until my cold is better. I have been thinking about this day last week when I marched upstairs and surprised you, and wasn't it dear to be together again!

    I have finished Lorna Doone* and there is ever so much

[ Page 2 ]

that is perfectly delightful in it, but it is a great deal too long. And, to me, very often tedious -- though I suppose it is high treason to say so -- )*  I had such a wretched dream last night that I have felt very happy by contrast ever since I waked up and found it wasn't true. I thought you had gone back

[ Page 3 ]

to Europe to stay all winter, and I didn't know what I should do without you. I was wandering about in the house in Charles St. and the sun was shining into your room and it was so full of sunshine and so empty and poor Pin* did almost break her heart and was so rejoiced when she waked up. It was a great surprise to find it wasn't true for there never was a dream that seemed more real and sorrowful.

    = ( I am all alone just now for Grandfather and Mary*

[ Page 4 ]

and Mother are all out and I wish I had you here for an hour all to myself --) Why shouldn't it be like the wise East Indian who came calling on young Eglinton* on the high seas? It would be a great astonishment to Sandpiper* if I learned how to travel in that way and sometimes 'lighted down 'forninst' her.  Tell Pin three things when you write again, if you liked anything in the report of the [ Psychic corrected ] Society and if Miss Adams liked her bonnet, and if Miss Guild* appeared to like her flowers that we carried that day in the rain{.}

[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]

(I have been reading "Yesterdays"* a long while today with more pleasure than ever. and I have at last sent the knife to Jamie Beal).* Oh! Pin is such a cold you know, T.L. !!  I should think you would find a loud sneeze go off as you open this [ letter corrected ]. T. L. not to get cold!

From her dear Pin)

Notes

23 November 1882: This date is based upon a subsequent letter of 26 November, in which Jewett thanks Fields for her report on her sister's bonnet. This choice also is supported by  the knowledge that Jewett and Fields were interested in Spiritualism at this time and that the letter seems to have been written after their return from their first European trip in the summer of 1882.

T.L.:  A nickname Jewett gave to Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Lorna Doone:  Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor (1869) is a novel by English author Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900).

so -- ) :  The end parenthesis mark appears to be penciled in another hand. All of the rest of parentheses in this letter also seem to have been added in pencil by another hand.

Pin:  Pinny Lawson (Pin), one of Jewett's nicknames.

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Eglinton: Almost certainly Jewett refers to William Eglinton (1857-1933), a British spiritualist medium, who was exposed as a fraud several times, notably in a series of publications in the journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 1886-7.  Abdullah / Abd-ū-lah, one of Eglinton's "controls," was a large bearded "East Indian" who materialized often during Eglinton's performances. See also 'Twixt Two Worlds: A Narrative of the Life and Work of William Eglinton (1886) by John Stephen Farmer.

Sandpiper: Celia Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.
    Thaxter became interested in Spiritualism in about 1882 and, for a while, drew in Jewett and Fields as well.  Jewett seems to be making gentle fun of Thaxter's reports of her Spiritualist sittings. See also, Terry Heller, "Communing with the Dead: Celia Thaxter, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Adams Fields." SOJTP 2020.

Psychic Society: Society for Psychical Research, an organization that sought a scientific basis for Spiritualist phenomena, and that often found itself debunking popular spiritualists such as William Eglinton.

Miss Adams ... Miss Guild: Miss Adams is the eldest sister of Annie Adams Fields, Sarah Holland Adams (1823-1916).
    The transcription of "Guild" is uncertain, as is this person's identity.  A Back Bay neighbor of Annie Fields was Fannie Carleton Guild, who was the principal of Guild's and Evans' Commonwealth Avenue School in Boston.

"Yesterdays":  While this is not certain, it seems likely that Jewett refers to Yesterdays with Authors (1871) by James T. Fields, husband of Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Jamie Beal:  James H. Beal, brother-in-law to Annie Fields.  See Annie Adams Fields in Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Sunday noon

26 November [1882]*

Thank you for the medicine which came last night.  I believe it has done me good already -- and tomorrow I think my cold will be well enough for to go out doors --  I dont know how much of a story I shall get done but I have just started one, and am so full of it that it ought to whisk [ itself corrected from it ] off in a very little while, but yesterday the pen balked at the end of the second or third page and would travel no farther on that occasion!  However I am sure of the yarn and I

[ Page 2 ]

shall be telling T. L.* it is done next thing -- as soon as I get up a little more steam.  It is funny how a cold takes hold of one -- for it doesn't seem to be enough of an illness. --

    -- I am going to call the story The ^A^ New Parishioner *-- --

    -- Grandpa* departed yesterday afternoon in high feather. I never did see such a chipper old lark! His youngest and best beloved boy, Uncle John -- is coming on from Cincinnati this week for a little visit so I dare say they may

[ Page 3 ]

both come down for Thanksgiving [ or corrected ] or after it at any rate --

    Grandpa lit on A Little Pilgrim* and read it with all his might while I looked on at first to see him slam it down with great wrath. He prides himself on a very grim theology but he said "This quite coincides with my views" -- so I dont know where to place him at present for the little pilgrim certainly doesn't seem to be an expounder of [Jonathan corrected ] Edwards!*

    (I was quite overjoyed at the report of Miss Adams's* bonnet

[ Page 4 ]

Does she seem to be having a good time in Berlin? -- but of course she does!)

    Always wants to be with T.L. on Sundays! Misses her most of any day and loves her and wants her very much. My dear darling it is a comfort just to be in the world with you and I am your own Pinny. (Lawson).*

    (My love to Ida* -- Dear little T.L. to send the medicine -- T.L. is Pinny's doctor and she means to have no other whatever)

[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]

Mother just said "How beautiful that poem of Mrs Fields's was for Mrs. Stowe,* better than anything! and went on to mention the flatness of the the show to Pins great delectation. Pin to bestow (perhaps) the gift of twine in the little glass box)* but not to give photographs --

[ Up the left margin of page 2 ]

Naughty Pin! but T.L. would be so miser'ble afterward you know pe'haps.

[ Up the left margin of page 3 ]

(Nice Pin -- has writed a letter to Susan Travers -- )*

[ Added in pencil up the left margin and then the right of page 4 ]

I had such a dear dismal note from Thy Friend* -- and he had got as far as calling interviewers "wild beasts of Ephesus.*

[ Page 5 ]

about the photographs -- I probably shall get them in a day or two and we will see what is really missing -- ) That ^It^  was dear for ^to give away^ the poppy,* but I am going to keep both mine {--} I love them so, and I am going to hoard them awfully and not let anybody touch them unless it is my little T.L. when she has given both hers away, and is howling with sorrow -- I had such a dear dismal note from Thy friend* -- + he had got as far as calling interviewers "wild beasts of Ephesus." -- I think

T Whittier*

[ Page 6 ]

he will be going back to Danvers next thing -- It is too bad he gets so tired out -- and then he always has that heavy sorrow about his brother's illness --

Good-by! -- [T. L. cant spell Frökin* right written in very large script ]    [ but Pin can. in very small script. ]


Notes

1882:  This date is supported by the publication of Jewett's story "A New Parishioner" in April 1883 and by the appearance of Fields's tribute to Harriet Beecher Stowe in December 1882.  See notes below.

T.L.:  Richard Cary says that T. L. is a "covert pet name which Miss Jewett teasingly applied to Annie Fields. No revelation [of its meaning] has yet been discovered in any of Miss Jewett's public or private writings." 

Parishioner:  Jewett's "A New Parishioner" appeared in Atlantic Monthly (51:475-493) in April 1883.

Grandpa ... Uncle John: Dr. William Perry (1788-1887) was Jewett's maternal grandfather.  One of his grandsons was John T. Perry (1832-1901), who married Sarah Chandler (1833-1897).  Technically, however, he would be Jewett's cousin, but 17 years older.

A Little Pilgrim: Given the date of this letter, from among many similar titles available at the time, this is likely to be The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen (1882) by Scottish author Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (1828-1897).  In the preface, Mrs. Oliphant writes: "The sympathetic reader will easily understand that the following pages were never meant to be connected with any author's name. They sprang out of those thoughts that arise in the heart, when the door of the Unseen has been suddenly opened close by us; and are little more than a wistful attempt to follow a gentle soul which never knew doubt into the New World, and to catch a glimpse of something of its glory through her simple and child-like eyes."

Edwards: Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758) was an American Puritan preacher and Congregationalist Protestant theologian.

Miss Adams's ... Berlin: Miss Adams is the eldest sister of Annie Adams Fields, Sarah Holland Adams (1823-1916).  She moved to Europe after her mother's death in 1877, where she settled in Germany and became as translator into English of the works of Hermann Grimm.

(Lawson):  This and most other parentheses on this letter appear to have been added in pencil and in another hand. This one, however, is in dark ink.
    Pinny Lawson is one of Jewett's nicknames. See Key to Correspondents.

Ida:  While Jewett could be referring to Ida, the sister of her friend Ellen Mason, or to another correspondent, Ida Agassiz Higginson, it is more likely in this case that she refers to Annie Fields's niece, Ida Gertrude Beal.  See Annie Fields in Key to Correspondents.

Mrs. Stowe:  In Atlantic Monthly 50 (December 1882 Supplement), "The Birthday Garden Party to Harriet Beecher Stowe," Annie Fields contributed a poem (p. 9) , written in Europe, to the collection of tributes offered to American author Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 1896) upon her 70th birthday.

Birds were singing in the trees;
    Summer was abroad as now,
With her troop of murmuring bees,
    And blossoms ‘round her brow,

When, seventy years ago, there came
    A little child to view the land,
Who found a torch with lighted flame
    Made ready to her hand.

Fearless she held the fiery tongue
    Close to her white and tender breast;
When lo! the pain became a song
    And prayers for the oppressed.

Mother of a new-born race,
    Daughter of a race to be,
Regent through the boundless space
    Of sad humanity!

Is there realm to vie with thine,
    Whither mortals may aspire?
Torch of love, the flame divine,
    Hath called thee ever higher.

Who has taught the seer to know
    Sorrow that was not her own!
Who has made her face to glow
    Glad for another's crown!

But by home fires, when day is done,
    Charming young and soothing old,
Dearest laurels you have won,
    While hearth-stones have grown cold.

Friend, how calm your sunset days!
    Your peaceful eyes are set on heaven,
For peace upon the promise stays,—
    Who loves much is forgiven.

box):  The manuscript is unclear as to how parenthesis marks are distributed and by which hand in this marginal passage.

Susan Travers -- ):  Susan B. Travers. See Key to Correspondents.

Thy Friend:  John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.
    Given that Jewett adds pages to this letter that repeat the note about Whittier, it is not clear that this penciled material is in her own hand.
    The poet's brother, Matthew Franklin Whittier (1812-1883), died on 7 January 1883.

Ephesus: St. Paul mentions his struggle with these beasts in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:32.   Whittier repeats the phrase in Anti-Slavery Poems, in his satirical "Letter from a Missionary of the Episcopal Church South, in Kansas, to a Distinguished Politician." There, the beasts represent abolitionists.  His book collects anti-slavery poems from 1848 to 1886.  See Whittier's letter to Jewett of 12 October 1882.

poppy:  The revisions at the beginning of this sentence are done in pencil and may be in another hand. Though this is not certain, it is possible the poppies are from Celia Thaxter, who made a specialty of cultivating many varieties. See Key to Correspondents.

T Whittier: This penciled note is in another hand.

Frökin: In Norwegian and Swedish, when spelled Fröken, this translates as "Miss" as in Miss Jewett.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

63 Mt Vernon St.

[ Late November 1882 ]*

My dear Friend

    I was glad to get thy letter -- as I always am. And I thank thee for thy kind invitation. I am not sure that I can stay in Boston much longer, as I have some matters that pressingly require my attention in Amesbury; but I shall see you both* soon. I took cold in the rough weather of this week, and am not quite as well as I could wish.

[ Page 2 ]

I am glad Sarah Jewett is coming back. She is fresh, natural, lovable -- her rare intellectual gifts combined with a delightful simplicity. She is always a pleasant surprise to one. It pleases me to think of you together.

    I got the pamphlet of  A [ unrecognized letter ] Meyer in reply to Gov Butler* last night & frantically read it, but when I went to take it up this morning it was missing, with all the folks -- Gov C. & wife, Mrs Ellis, & Mrs Freeland & the young president {of}

[ Page 3 ]

Wellesley College* -- to help me I have been looking for it, & turning the house topsy turvy to find, but all is in vain. I hope thee have read it. I saw enough of it to like it last night. I am very sorry for the loss ^loss^ of it, and own my carelessness. I hope it will not trouble thee.

    I am somewhat disappointed by the vote on the Suffrage question.* It should be a lesson to us not to trust to political platforms. A great many republicans declined to vote for it or against it. They thought the leaders of the Suffrage movement, had

[ Page 4 ]

thrown themselves into the hands of Butler & the Democrats. However, it is only one of those set-backs which all reforms must have -- temporary but rather discouraging.

    I trust S.J. will be with thee today.  I do not like to think of thee alone. Ever affectionately thy old friend

John G Whittier

Notes

Late November 1882:  This date is speculative. Huntington Library archivists have tentatively placed this letter in 1884.  However, Whittier's seeming recommendation of Sarah Orne Jewett as a companion to Fields suggests that the letter comes from early in the close friendship between Fields and Jewett, which began in 1881.
    Mentioning Governor Butler indicates that the letter must have been written after Butler was first elected Massachusetts governor in November of 1882.
    This manuscript has a penciled "9" at the top center of page 1, and a penciled "X" appears in the left margin of page 3 at the beginning of the new paragraph.

63 Mt Vernon St: This was the home of former Massachusetts governor, William Claflin.  See Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin in Key to Correspondents.

both: Whittier addresses both Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Butler:  Democrat, Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893) served as Governor of Massachusetts during 1883.  The pamphlet to which Whittier refers has not been identified.

Mrs Ellis, & Mrs Freeland & the young president {of} Wellesley College:  For Emma Ellis, Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin's daughter from her first marriage, see Key to Correspondents.
    Mrs. Freeland remains as yet unknown. She may be related to Mary Bucklin Davenport Claflin, whose mother was Mary Sophia Freeland (1802-1868).
    The young president of Wellesley College is Alice Freeman Palmer (1855-1902), who was president 1881-1887.  She was appointed at the age of 26.

Suffrage question: During the early 1880s, women's suffrage was considered often in various state legislatures as well as in referendums.  Usually, the measure lost.  The specific instance to which Whittier refers is not yet known.
    That Governor Butler supported suffrage in Massachusetts points to a possible 1883 or 1884 date for this letter, as there were votes on the issue in those years by the Massachusetts legislature.  See the New York Times, 14 March, 1884, p. 1.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4667.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

First Day 12th [ 1882 ]*

Dear Annie Fields

    The lost is found; and now I hope thee will venture to trust me once more. I think I was never, however, very reliable and the years, as in the case of Sheridan's grandmother's ghost,* have "improved me the wrong way.{"}

    Do thee not pity Wiggin?*

    I shall have to leave Boston by Thursday; I shall be sorry to go.

[ Page 2 ]

It has been so pleasant to be near you, and to see you occasionally. How shall I thank you for your kindness? With love to Sarah,* ever affectionately thy friend

John G. Whittier

Notes

First Day 12th [1882]: This date is tentative. It is not clear which month Whittier has written -- assuming he means to indicate the month, as is customary with him, rather than the day of the month. Huntington Library archivists have read it as 11 or November and have placed the letter tentatively in 1884. For the month, Whittier may have written 10, 11 or 12. To me, it looks more like 12.
    This letter seems to follow upon another, tentatively dated in 1882, in which Whittier reports losing a pamphlet sent to him by Fields, while he was staying with the William Claflin family (Whittier to Fields of Late November 1882).
    As the notes to this and the late November letter indicate, 1882 is a possible year for this pair of letters.

Sheridan's grandmother's ghost: This allusion remains mysterious.  R. B. Pickard, in his index to Whittier's letters, assumes -- almost certainly correctly -- that Whittier refers to the grandmother of British playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). Indeed, Elizabeth Sheridan is described by biographers as a termagant in life.  However, no source has been located for her appearing as a ghost and for anyone commenting that her transformation had improved her for the worse.
    Whittier refers to this quotation in several letters throughout his life, and he complicates matters by writing of President Andrew Jackson in a letter of October 1833 to Jonathan Law: "I am inclined to think age has 'improved him,' as death did Sheridan's fat friar 'in the wrong way'." (The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, v. 1). No source has yet been located for a fat friar who was made the worse by dying.
    To add more complication, an internet search yields more than one author attributing the quotation to French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière) (1622-1673), for example, Eugene Marion Antrim in The Greatest Things in Religion (1910) p. 22.

Wiggin: Whittier may have written "Wiggins." This reference also is uncertain.  One might expect him to refer to American author and educator Kate Douglas Smith (1856-1923), who married Samuel Bradley Wiggin in 1881, and -- in consequence -- had to give up her career as an educator. However, these events took place in California, and she did not begin publishing fiction until 1883 and did not return to the East until 1888.  Though she eventually became acquainted with Fields and Jewett, there is no evidence that Whittier knew her.
    A more likely possibility is Judge Joseph Furnald Wiggin (1838-1906) of Exeter and Malden, MA. However, no information has yet been discovered to confirm that Whittier refers to him.  See Daniel P. Toomey, Massachusetts Today (1892) p. 420.

Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4655.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

 Wednesday* [ unrecognized word ]

[ 6 December 1882 ]*

Dear Mrs Fields

    The Lion of Lucerne* is looking down upon me -- a reminder of the sacredness of duty -- and that the true man can afford any loss, better than that of honor & fidelity.

    I have read with renewed interest the paper of R. D. Owen.* I had a long talk with him years ago on the subject. He was a very noble and good man: and I was terribly indignant when he was so deceived by the pretended materializer "Katie King". I could never quite believe in "materialization", and

[ Page 2 ]

had reason to know that much of it was fraudulent. It surely argues a fathomless depth of depravity to trifle with the yearning love of those who have lost dear ones, & "long for the touch of any vanished hand."*

    Mrs Thaxter* told me something of your session on Saturday. I shall hope to hear more when I see thee. I have been rather unwell, & greatly anxious about my dear brother* who suffers sadly without hope of relief. Happy are they to whom the Solemn Angel comes

[ Page 3 ]

unannounced & quietly, & who are mercifully spared a long baptism of suffering!

    I  hope the Cambridge star-gazers will not be wholly disappointed this dark, cloudy morning.  I think there are indications of clearing up in season for the Transit.*

    When will our dear Sarah Jewett* be with thee? I wish she would come for thy sake, ---- and mind.

Ever affectionately & gratefully thy frd

John G. Whittier

Notes

6 December 1882:  This date is confirmed by Whittier mentioning the Transit of Venus, which occurred on Wednesday 6 December 1882.
    There are several penciled marks on this manuscript, in addition to the identifying archive number. The date and greeting are crossed out. An "X" appears in the left margin of page 1, next to the line containing R. D. Owen's name. The first sentence of the paragraph on page 2 that begins "Mrs Thaxter told me" is crossed out, and there is a rough "x" in the left margin next to that sentence.  Also on page 2, a short line appears between the final two sentences, before "Happy are they ...", and another "X" appears in the left margin next to that final sentence. Finally, a line is drawn down the 3rd page through all but the final paragraph.

Lion of Lucerne: A stone relief monument in Lucerne, Switzerland, commemorating the Swiss guards of the French royal family, massacred in 1792, during the French Revolution.

R. D. Owen:  Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) was a Scottish immigrant to the United States, who became a politician, notable for his work in establishing the Smithsonian Institution. Like his father, Robert Owen, a textile manufacturer, he was a utopian, who in later life became a spiritualist.  For an account of Owen's experiences of the materializations of "Katie King," see Amy Lehman, Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance (2014), Chapter 13.

"any vanished hand":  Though these words have been quoted and paraphrased repeatedly in both prose and verse, almost certainly Whittier refers to Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Break, Break, Break" (1835, 1842), the penultimate stanza:

And the stately ships go on
    To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
    And the sound of a voice that is still!

Whittier may have written "a vanished hand" or "any vanished hand."  His handwriting in this letter is more than usually hurried.

Mrs Thaxter:  Celia Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

brother:  Whittier's brother, Matthew, died on 7 January 1883.

Transit: A Transit of Venus occurred on Wednesday 6 December 1882.

Sarah Jewett:  Sarah Orne Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4658.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

December 8, [1882] 

My dear Friend:

     I have been writing you letters ever since I came home but the postmen wouldn't carry them because I forgot the ink and paper! One of the reasons that are hurrying me back to Boston is that I wish so much to see you. There are so many things to talk about and when I think that I have only seen you about twenty minutes since last April, I lose my patience entirely.

     I mean to go to Charles St.* week after next in good season for Christmas, and I shall be so glad to be with my dear A. F. again. I must confess that I felt as "stray" as a dropped kitten without her at first, and I miss her every day, but we shall be doing things together before long and I don't doubt that we shall rush out of the front door the minute we catch sight of each other, having caught up the first red-covered book we can find for a guide book, and perhaps we shall make straight for Bunker Hill monument* for I never have climbed to the top [of] it yet as all good New Englanders ought to do.

     I haven't much to tell you, for nothing has happened to me but a bad cold, and I have made up my mind not to have either a cold or the rheumatism again for many years. I have been busy writing, but I don t like very well what I have done -- by the time I get to the last of a story a cloud seems to cover it, and it seems painted in very dull colours. I am going to write as fast as I can after I get to Boston, but I am used to doing my work here, and so, for fear the experiment shouldn't be successful or I should be too much tempted to play I am writing all I can before I start.¹

     It has been so pleasant to be at home again and Mary* and I have such

[pages missing]

 
Cary's Note

1. Despite her dubiety Miss Jewett published ten short stories, three poems, and four essays in the following year, as well as compiling and editing The Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore (1884).

Additional Notes

Charles St.:  The home of Annie Adams Fields, A. F. See Key to Correspondents.

Bunker Hill monument:  A monument in Charlestown, MA that commemorates the first battle of the Americn Revolution in 1775. Jewett whimsically speculates that when she and Fields meet, they will spontaneously become tourists again -- as they were during their previous summer in Europe -- snapping up the first convenient guide book and seeing the sights of the Boston area.

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by Richard Cary, and first published in  "'Yours Always Lovingly': Sarah Orne Jewett to John Greenleaf Whittier,"  Essex Institute Historical Collections 107 (1971): 412-50. This article was reprinted at the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project by permission of the library of the American Antiquarian Society and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. 

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Francis Jackson Garrison

 [ December 1882 ]*

Dear Mr. Garrison

     I enclose this note which has a message for H. M. & Co -- I thought it was best to let the story be reprinted in the little

[ Page 2 ]

paper -- I have been asked for it before, and from other quarters, and they might be right in thinking that it will do some good in reaching that special audience --

Yours sincerely

S. O. Jewett

[ Page 3 ]

Do not take the trouble to return the letter --

Notes

1882:  Richard Cary says that the story Jewett mentions may be "Jack's Merry Christmas," Independent 33 (15 December 1881), 31-32. The "little paper" then would be the Maine Sentinel (Biddeford), where the story was reprinted on 2 January 1883.
    Though plausible, this speculation seems unlikely.  Why would Jewett forward to Houghton Mifflin a note from someone about reprinting a story that appeared in the Independent, which was not a Houghton Mifflin publication?  It would seem more likely that Jewett refers to a story published in Atlantic Monthly and then reprinted.  Two such stories appear in her known bibliography:

    "Going to Shrewsbury" Atlantic, July 1889 and in The Hartford Courant, 31 August 1889;
    "The Queen's Twin" Atlantic February 1899 and in The Outlook (weekly) (67,8: 455-459), 23 February 1901.

However, neither reprint is in what might be considered a little paper with a "special audience." The Courant  was the most read newspaper in Connecticut, and The Outlook, which began with a relatively limited audience, was by 1900, according to Wikipedia, a leading American magazine of news and opinion.
    My hypothesis is that current Jewett bibliography remains incomplete, that Jewett authorized a reprint of one of her Atlantic stories in a publication not yet known, perhaps a paper issued by a fund-raising fair, which would not have been unusual for her.  If that is correct, then this letter cannot be dated.  She could have given this permission anytime between 1882 and 1909.
    However, Cary may have had knowledge he did not share in his notes, and I have nothing more concrete to offer.  Therefore, I have accepted his date with reservations.
   
The manuscript of this letter is held by Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, ME: JEWE.1. Richard Cary included his transcription in Sarah Orne Jewett Letters.
    New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Mr. Richardson

     [9 December 1882]*

My dear Mr. Richardson

        I send you a little story for young people which I think you may use in one of the numbers 'after Christmas' as I suppose the Christmas number itself is quite made up -- It will make something over about three pages of Atlantic print.

        Yours sincerely
            S. O. Jewett

South Berwick, Maine
    9 December --

Notes

1882:  This letter presents puzzles regarding its recipient and date.  Here is some speculation about these puzzles.
    Jewett's short story for young readers, "After Christmas," appeared in The Independent (34:27-8) on December 28, 1882.  I am assuming that this letter refers to that story. However, no record has been discovered of a Mr. Richardson accepting manuscripts at The Independent.  In fact, had Jewett sent this letter to The Independent, it almost certainly would have gone to her old friend, William Hayes Ward; see Key to Correspondents.
    In the letter, Jewett implies that she is sending the manuscript to Atlantic Monthly; however, no record has been discovered of a Mr. Richardson accepting manuscripts at Atlantic.  Furthermore, Atlantic Monthly did not publish fiction for young readers, and by December 9, the "Christmas number" of Atlantic would have been on the news stand for as much as two weeks.  It seems unlikely that Jewett would have considered submitting the story to Atlantic, and if she had, she almost certainly would have sent it to someone she knew well, such as Thomas Bailey Aldrich; see Key to Correspondents. Perhaps her reference to Atlantic is meant to remind a different magazine editor that she often publishes there or merely to indicate how brief it is.
    If, as seems likely, Jewett sent this story out on 9 December of 1882, and it was published a few weeks later, it probably was accepted by Mr. Richardson.  This would indicate that despite the lack of confirmation, Richardson was indeed employed at the Independent.
    But it is possible that Jewett sent the story to another publication and received an immediate rejection and then submitted it to the Independent. During 1881-1883, Jewett published work for younger readers in The Independent (3 items), Harper's Young People (2 items), and one item each in The Congregationalist, Wide Awake, and St. Nicholas.
     During this period, only The Independent and The Congregationalist were weeklies that might yet squeeze her story into a Christmas number, and of these, The Congregationlist was edited by Charles Addison Richardson (1829-1891) during 1856-1891.  See Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Towne Memorial Fund. pp. 33-4. Jewett published a total of 3 pieces there in 1882.
    Of course, little may be concluded from these observations at this point.  A reasonable scenario would show Jewett sending the story to The Congregationalist, which quickly rejected it, allowing her to resubmit to The Independent, which accepted and quickly published it.

The manuscript of this letter is held by Smith College, in the Miscellaneous Manuscript Collection, Mortimer Rare Book Room.  Transcription and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Sarah Orne Jewett

Hotel Winthrop*

12 Mo 10 [ 1882 ]*

My dear friend

    It was good of thee in the midst of thy work to write me. I should have written thee before this, but was looking for thee to come here any day.  My time has been fully

[ Page 2 ]

occupied -- the extreme illness of my brother has kept me all the time anxious, and ^nearly^ all the world has been writing letters to me, & the rest have been calling upon me; and, like Halleck's Fanny,* I was younger once than I am now, and better able to contend with interviewers and other "wild beasts of Ephesus."*  The occasion{-}

[ Page 3 ]

al sight of Annie Fields* and a few other dear friends, is my sole relief.  I shall be glad when that most pleasant face of thine once more is visible in Boston.

    God bless thee ever & ever!  Don't try to write me, for this hurried note is not worth it.

Affec

                        John G. Whittier

Notes

Hotel Winthrop: Richard Cary notes: "The Winthrop Hotel on Bowdoin Street in Boston was a frequent retreat for Mrs. Thaxter when the winters on the Isles of Shoals became too rigorous. Whittier spent the winter of 1882-1883 at the hotel to be near his dying brother."
    Cary also says: Matthew Franklin Whittier (1812-1883), never a robust man, spent his middle years in Portland, [ME,] then took a position in the Boston Custom House. He published a series of caustically humorous anti-slavery letters under a pseudonym. At this time John wrote to Miss Jewett: "My brother has been very ill, but is now somewhat, though I fear not permanently, better. The last of our family, he is a kind, unselfish man, whose way of life has been hard and difficult." (Pickard, II, 676).

12 Mo 10 [1882]: While the letter's transcriber speculates that its date is 1881, Cary's information indicates that 1882 is the more likely year. Whittier uses the Quaker dating system, giving the day and the number of the month.

Halleck's Fanny: Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867) was "an American poet notable for his satires and as one of the Knickerbocker Group."  His longest poem was "Fanny" (1819).  It opens, "Fanny was younger once than she is now / And prettier of course...."

"wild beasts of Ephesus": St. Paul mentions his struggle with these beasts in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:32. Whittier repeats the phrase in his Anti-Slavery Poems, in his satirical "Letter from a Missionary of the Episcopal Church South, in Kansas, to a Distinguished Politician." There, the beasts represent abolitionists.  His book collects anti-slavery poems from 1848 to 1886.
    Probably Whittier is receiving so much attention in part because his 75th birthday, coming on 17 December.

Annie Fields:  Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the South Berwick Public Library, South Berwick, ME.  Transcription by John Richardson.  Annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Dec. 14^th

[ 1882 ]

Dearest:

    You seem so far! & time gallops away & I am half distraught with steady effort & accomplish what I have promised to do. Today came another order from Buffalo, & a telegram for a [ book ? ], from Whitinsville* -- did you ever hear such a name!

    Dear I'm so* tired I dont know what to do! I'm thankful you have put out a hand to my poor Karl -- he seems

[ Page 2 ]

so glad at the prospect of trying -- I fear he is a little dismayed with  his machine but I say nothing -- My poor dear Roland is [ miserably ? ] at [ Kut ? perhaps meaning Kittery Point ] -- I feel so anxious --

    God bless you my darling Annie -- pardon scrawl 'tis only to say I love and think of you [ constantly ? ]

Your C.

Notes

1882: This date is speculative, but the choice is supported by Thaxter's reports on her sons.  Karl, her eldest and disabled son, was at this time developing his invention for enlarging photographs. Her youngest son, Roland, had surgery on a severely injured knee in November of 1882 and, presumably, was recovering at home when he would rather have been completing academic work at Harvard.

Whitinsville: An unincorporated village within the town of Northbridge in Worcester County, south central Massachusetts.  Thaxter was likely hand-illustrating copies of books, usually of her own poetry, that were ordered as Christmas gifts.

so: Thaxter has underlined this word twice.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University MS Am 1743, Box 7 item 321a.  III Letters to Annie Adams Fields. 4 letters from Celia Thaxter.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Anna Laurens Dawes

12 December (1882)¹

My dear Anna

Thank you so much for your letter. It seemed a great while since I had heard from you, but I dare say it was my fault for I was so bad about writing letters before I went away -- and indeed I am afraid I am not much better now!

There are so many things to do nowadays! and I am so busy since I came home -- but I dont find that a lack of thinking about ones friends follows a lack of writing them letters.

I needn't tell you how glad I am to be at home again -- it never seemed pleasanter here in Berwick, but I shall leave it for all that, and go down to Boston soon. I am shut up in the house too much in a country winter and I am so much stronger and better now that I want to keep so --

I had a most lovely summer -- I don’t think I ever can tell anybody how much I enjoyed it -- but strange to say I hadn't a bit of a desire to stay over this winter as most of my friends prophesied.

Mary* is very well and we are enjoying so much these few weeks we are having together. She would send her love if she knew I am sending you a letter. I should think you would enjoy a winter in Pittsfield very much! Shall you not be in Boston by and by? I am always to be heard of at 148 Charles St² -- and I hope I shall see you. I shall make no apologies for this very dull little letter, but I didn't want to wait any longer before sending an answer for your kind welcome home. 

Yours sincerely and affectionately,

Transcriber Notes

¹ The year for this letter would seem to be 1882 when Sarah made her first trip to Europe.

² The Annie Fields's residence which was Sarah's home away from home from this time on.

Additional Notes

Mary:  Mary Rice Jewett.  See Key to Correspondents.

This letter was transcribed and annotated by C. Carroll Hollis.  It appeared in "Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett to Anna Laurens Dawes," Colby Library Quarterly No. 3 (1968): 97-138.  It is in the Henry Laurens Dawes Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Thomas Bailey Aldrich

[ Christmas 1882 ]

My dear Duke*

    Before entering upon my engagement for the holidays in London I took a little vacation and went down into Italy, from whence I brought this little flask.
= It has served to remind me of many a charming feast in that lovely

[ Page 2 ]

country -- and as I cannot bear to see it grow dingy with the smoke of a London winter I send it to you with my dear love and best Christmas wishes.  I wish it were the proper thing to be filled with Amontillado sherry, and that I could claim to be Dolores --*

    I caught a glimpse

[ Page 3 ]

of you late in the summer, as I went down Piccadilly in a hansom -- but although I retraced the horse's steps and ^at^ once, and spoke unkindly to the cabby, I could not find you in the hurrying crowd -- Alas you were with Another.*  But I am

Always your fond and true

S. Martinot.*

Notes

Christmas 1882:  This date is speculative.  If Jewett actually bought the Christmas gift flask in Italy, as she claims, then it would seem probable that she gives it to Aldrich at the holiday after her return from her first trip to Italy, in 1882.  However, she visited Italy again in 1892, 1898, and 1900, and this letter could be from one of those years.

Duke:  Among their close friends, the Aldriches were nicknamed the Duke and Duchess of Ponkapog. See Key to Correspondents.

Dolores:  Jewett alludes to Aldrich's poem, "Amontillado" (c. 1865) in which the speaker drinks Amontillado sherry brought to him by the busy, pretty waitress Dolores, the "Wild-rose of Granada," Spain.  See Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, pp. 253-5.
    This allusion and other clues in the letter confirm what may not be clear upon first reading, that this letter is "fictional," in the following ways:
    Jewett never spent the Christmas holidays in London;
    Her name was not S. Martinot, though this was Aldrich's affectionate nickname for her, after the famous American actress of this name. See Key to Correspondents.
    However, Jewett had traveled to Italy in 1882, so the flask she sends may actually have been purchased at that time.

Another:  In the manuscript, Jewett underlines the A three times.
    Presumably, she refers to Mrs. Aldrich, but it is possible that she also refers to Aldrich's poem.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Baily Aldrich Papers, 119 letters of Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich, 1837-1926. MS Am 1429 (117). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
    At the bottom left of page one, in another hand, is a circled number: 2676.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday evening

[ 26 December 1882 ]

My dear T.L.*

    I am glad you liked the letters for I am so fond of them. Nothing that ever happens afterward could take away the happy memory of these first months -- that year at least when I had so much real pleasure with Miss Preston.* I have always told you that, I think, and I felt it [ more corrected ] than ever the other day when I found the package of her letters -- When I am reading them I am ready

[ Page 2 ]

to say it was I who ought to have been blamed -------

    She used to be so charmingly kind and sympathetic and was always making little plans for us. I have always had a lingering hope that I should be with her some where, sometime or other and we should be friends again, and I would make her tell me what the matter was. [ 3 and a half deleted lines ]  (( I'm not to be silly! ))*

[ Page 3 ]

    -- Darling -- you are not to be worried about me for I shall get on very well, and I really feel much better tonight. I have begun to take heart about the stories too which have seemed very despairing. Pin* to be a good girl now, for never saw anybody so good as T.L. is! It is all on account of the swan quill pen! Pin to borrow the pen for a day or two? (Pin! dont you dare!) Pin is been reading Froude's Essay on Calvinism* -- she readed a page and half and then

[ Page 4 ]

she was moved to think about a story to be called The Harbour Farm.* Doesn't that sound well? Tomorrow, oh please Pin dont [ deleted letters ] have anything the matter with you -- and write that nice new story -- and see if it wont be a good one -- The New Parishioner* was ever so many pages long, nearly a hundred [ in extra small script but he was so stupid that Pin is ] [ in extra large script going to throw him away! ] [ in extra small script He was a bad man but he needn't have been so stupid.]  Miss Lydia Dunn is very good in the story -- Perhaps I will bring the story and we will read it -- [ but corrected or deleted? ] think we can do something with it --

[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]

Good night my darling my darling. I wish I could get hold of you, but Pin to be very good. I went out for a little while and gave away some of my presents and peoples were so pleased. Pin had a beautiful time with her neighbours. Pin to feel even better tomorrow and T.L. not think about her except to love her -- Always your Pinny --


Notes

26 December 1882: Jewett seems to be working with Fields upon a problematic story, "The New Parishioner," which appeared in April 1883.  See the notes below.

T. L.:  Nickname for Annie Fields.  See Key to Correspondents.

Miss Preston:  Harriet Waters Preston. See Key to Correspondents. Paula Blanchard in Sarah Orne Jewett, indicates that the cause of the break between Jewett and her early mentor remains unknown, and that the relationship never was mended (p. 108-9).

silly!)):  The inside parentheses appear to be Jewett's; the outer marks are in pencil and probably in another hand.

Pin:  Pinny Lawson (Pin), one of Jewett's nicknames.

Froude's Essay on Calvinism: "Calvinism: An Address Delivered at St. Andrew’s" (1871) by English historian and biographer of Thomas Carlyle, James Anthony Froude (1818-1894).

The Harbour Farm: Jewett is not known to have published a story of this title, and it is not obvious that any of her published stories from 1883 or 1884 might easily have taken this title.  Perhaps she was beginning to think of her 1885 novel, A Marsh Island.

Parishioner:  Jewett's "A New Parishioner" appeared in Atlantic Monthly (51:475-493) in April 1883.  Lydia Dunn is the protagonist.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194 letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Lillian May Munger

148 Charles St. Boston
26 December [ 1882 ]

Dear Lily

    I cant forgive myself for forgetting to send you this little cravat in time for Christmas but my excuse is that I came to town a few days ago and I have been scurrying [unrecognized word] days at once.  I got the cravat in Rome and I thought it would be becoming to such a fair friend as you.  Besides

[ Page 2 ]

I wished you to have a bit of my small gleaning out of so great a harvest{.}

    I have been hoping that I should hear from you to write soon for I wish to know how the school gets on and how you get on.  I wish I could see you!

    In a hurry yours lovingly

S.O.J.

Notes

1882:  This date seems likely, as Jewett says she has recently been in Rome.  Her first trip, with Annie Adams Fields, was in the spring and summer of 1882.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Small Library, University of Virginia, Special Collections MSS 6218, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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Celia Thaxter to Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Adams Fields

[ 26 December 1882 ]*

Dear Flower & owl:*

    So sorry I missed you yesterday! And thanks for the dear tulip in the paint water! & all the flowers  -- & everything -- & this dear thing I am writing on is the preciousest, [ delightfulest corrected ] charmingest, usefulest [ heavenliest corrected ] thing ever was! & I want to sleep with it nights, I love it so!

    Hope to see you soon -- Was at Iolanth yester. aft.  { -- } when are we going together, owl? -- When? when? - Say! Queek, Quack, [ Quay ? ]!

Your
 
[ signed with a stick drawing of a sandpiper ]

Notes

1882: The date comes from the cancellation of this letter, addressed to Mrs James T. Fields & Miss S. Jewett, 148 Charles St. Boston Mass.
    The MS consists of a single sheet, with the letter on one side.  It was folded, and then addressed, stamped and cancelled on the outside.

owl: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself.  Pinny and Owl are Jewett; Flower is Fields; Sandpiper is Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

Iolanthe: Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri (1882) is a comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert.  After premiering in London, a touring production opened in Boston in December 1882, the first performance at the new Bijou Theater.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department, Celia Thaxter correspondence with Annie Fields, 1869-1893,
MS C.1.38 Box 2 Folder 3 (191-209). https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p284b
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Horace Howard Furness to Sarah Orne Jewett

[ Letterhead ]

Willingford,

Delaware County,

Pennsylvania

[ End letterhead ]

[ 27 December 1882 ]*

    Dear Miss Jewett,

        Thanks deep and abiding for this copy of Fitzgerald's 'Readings fr in Crabbe.'* It is exceedingly kind in you to send it to me. But when did you ever promise it? Can it be really so? I

[ Page 2 ]

[ I repeated ] have utterly and absolutely forgotten it. And now terror strikes my soul that I must have promised you something at the same time.  Did I? I adjure you to tell me! If you refuse, my peace in this world is gone, and there is naught before me

[ Page 3 ]

[ me repeated ] but slavering idiocy or a suicide's grave.

    The value of this little book has a three-fold blazon: it comes from you; it is Fitzgerald's work; and long years ago, before Omar's fame was spread, I pleaded for half an hour with old Lippincott* to publish it. For some reason, Fitzgerald was [ anxious ?] to publish some ^a^ book in

[ Page 4 ]

[ in repeated ] America, and especially this selection from Crabbe. I think it is probable that at that time no English publisher would assume the whole expense of such a venture. At any rate Lippincott would not, and there the thing remained!

    May every day of the coming year be filled for you with 'fair thoughts and happy hours!'*

    And thus, dear Miss Jewett, I am

cordially and gratefully yours

Horace Howard Furnefs

27 December

Notes

1882:  This choice of a date is supported by the publication that year of Fitzgerald's Readings in Crabbe.  See note below.

Crabbe: British poet, Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), is best remembered as the translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859). Fitzgerald's last book was Readings in Crabbe (1882), concerning the British poet, physician and clergyman, George Crabbe (1754-1832). Wikipedia.

Lippincott:  Joshua Ballinger Lippincott (1813-1886) was the founder of J. B. Lippincott & Co., a Philadelphia publishing firm.  Wikipedia.

happy hours:  See British playwright William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice III,iv.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
     Furness, Horace Howard, 1833-1912 (71).
     This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

Thomas Bailey Aldrich to Sarah Orne Jewett

[ Begin letterhead ]

    EDITORIAL OFFICE OF

The Atlantic Monthly,

        BOSTON.

[ End letterhead ]

[ Date added to the right of the letterhead ]

Dec 30 ' ' , 1882.

Dear Miss Sadie:*

    [ Here corrected ] is the cheque for "A New Parishioner."

    I quite feel as if I am making you a Christmas present.

Ever yours,

T. B. Aldrilch.

Notes

Sadie:  Aldrich uses his affectionate nickname, "Sadie Martinot."  See Key to Correspondents.

A New Parishioner: Jewett's story appeared in Atlantic Monthly in April 1883.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett. bMS Am 1743 (4).
    This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England,  Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

---

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

[ Monday ? ] morning

[ 1882-1883 ]*

My dear friend

    In the brief but delightful visit of thyself & dear Sarah Jewett* yesterday, I did not have time to explain about the "Sparhawk* problem!". Dr. S. was a descendant on his father's side of Sir Wm Pepperell, & Sir Wm Sparhawk; on his mother's of Col [ Humphrey's so written ] Washington's friend & Secretary. He [ practiced corrected ] for 25 or 30 years in Amesbury. -- -- one of the purest [ heart ? ], most Christ-like of men. He had a large practice, but

[ Page 2 ]

his peculiar religious vision made it impossible for him to accumulate property. He had the love of everybody. I think I told Sarah of his two old aunts & a cousin, tall erect, graceful old women -- whom he supported, -- learned, skilled in embroidery and half the modern languages but otherwise utterly incapable. His wife was a Scotch lady daughter of Dr. Campbell a famous physician of the aristocratic class, near Edinburgh. He died some eight or ten years ago. The people of Amesbury & Salisbury erected a beautiful monument of granite to his memory, with the inscription" "The beloved physician"{.} 

[ Page 3 ]

He left his daughters Lucy & Fanny and an adopted daughter whose father was his cousin Col Sparhawk of Kittery.  All are well educated. Lucy is capable in household matters though not very strong. Fanny graduated at  [Ipswich ? ] at the head of the school; she taught school for a time in Newburyport, but I think was not quite efficient in discipline though her scholarly qualifications were excellent. Dr She is a thoroughly good & conscientious girl. She engaged herself for a year as a governess, in a family near Boston, and I obtained for her a place in the Exeter N.H. Female Seminary,* but she thought she could not accept it because her year was not yet out -- and so lost the chance! -- she then tried authorship but thus far without success. Though she occasionally gets something from the "Cottage Hearth". Dr Bowditch* & myself

[ Page 4 ]

have done all in our power for the family. They have a house in [ Newbury ? ] but heavily mortgaged, the rent of which pays the taxes & interest on the mortgage leaves little or nothing for them. The house they occupy is also mortgaged{.} Jenny the adopted daughter I think has some [ schooling ? ] in painting, &c. and their boarder -- the invalid -- I spoke of pays $6 or $7. per week.

    As Dr B. has mentioned the case to thee, I have made this explanation of it. If thee know or hear of anything which Fanny could do, -- as a teacher, or in a library, it would be a great relief to all of us. But I am half ashamed of myself for saying a word to thee about the matter. Thee have already got all the forlorn & incapable of Boston on thy shoulders, and why should I add another to thy burdens? If thee happen to meet Dr Bowditch

[ Missing page or pages ]

Notes

1882-1883:  Huntington Library archivists have speculated an 1882 date for this letter, and that seems likely to be close. Whittier probably did not make this appeal for help before Fields and Jewett traveled to Europe in the spring and summer of 1882, mindful of Fields's grieving her husband's 1881 death. Whittier places Dr. Sparhawk's 1874 death "eight or ten years ago," indicating that he writes in 1884 or earlier.  Whittier notes that at the time of this letter, Dr. Sparhawk's daughter, Frances, had not yet established herself as an author, though she had published. Her first novel, A Lazy Man's Work, appeared in 1881, but her publishing career did not blossom until 1884, as more of her work began to appear in periodicals and books. Her later work included Whittier, the Poet and the Man (1892).

Sarah Jewett: See Key to Correspondents.

Sparhawk:  Dr. Thomas Sparhawk (1806-1874) was much loved in Amesbury, his gravestone as Whittier reports erected by the community. His wife was Elizabeth Campbell Sparhawk (1817-1867). She may have been the daughter of the Scottish surgeon, John Campbell (1784-1867), who fits Whittier's description well, but she is not listed among his children at Find a Grave.  See "Materials for a Genealogy of the Sparhawk Family in New England" (pp. 79-83).
    Their surviving daughters were Lucy Sparhawk (1841-1893) and the author Frances Campbell Sparhawk (1847-1930).  See also Wikipedia.
    Their adopted daughter, Jenny, was Eunice Jane Sparhawk (1848-1915). Her father was Colonel George Sparhawk, who died in Kittery in 1857, with one surviving child, Eunice Jane.  See "Materials for a Genealogy of the Sparhawk Family in New England," p. 78.
    In his will, Whittier left $500 each to Lucy and Jenny.
    The aunts and cousin whom Sparhawk supported have not yet been identified.
    Whittier traces Sparhawk's ancestry to Sir William Pepperell (1696-1759), an American colonial merchant and soldier, whose daughter married into the Sparhawk family, and to David Humphreys (1752-1818), American Revolutionary War colonel who was General George Washington's aide de camp.

Dr. Bowditch:  Dr. Henry I. Bowditch (1808-1892), Massachusetts physician and abolitionist.

Female Seminary:  Exeter, NH was home to the Robinson Female Seminary, established in 1867.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4669.  Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
 

---

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Langley*

[ 1882-3 ]*

Dear Mifs Langley:

        I think you will find Mrs Castier's 10 Clarges St. Piccadilly -- a most comfortable lodging house. We liked it very much, and so have some of our friends and I should be glad if you would say you are recommended by Mrs Fields & me -- When we were in London for a day or two & wished to go to a hotel we thought the

[ Page 2 ]

Royal Hotel -- Blackfriars an excellent place. It is a foreign favored abiding place of foreigners but we liked it none the less. The prices were moderate and it is near Waterloo station if I remember right; at any rate we went from there to the continent with great ease. I send you a thousand good wishes for your journey -- yrs sincerely

S. O. Jewett

Notes

Langley:  Identifying Annie Langley is problematic.  It seems probable that she was Annie Williams Langley Ciocca (1847-1931). Her brother was the American astronomer, physicist, inventor and aviation pioneer, Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906). The Baltimore Sun of 9 March 1906 reports on the filing of his will for probate, noting that Anne W. Ciocca was to share with his brother, John, and two others, the "residue" of his property after specific bequests were made. Her family resided in the Boston area, and she seems to have lived most of her life there.  She is buried in Boston, where she shares her father's marker.

1882-3:  Boyle's Court and Country Guide for 1869, p. 63, lists Mrs. Castier at 10 Clarges Street, Piccadilly, W. London.  Jewett and Fields stayed there in October 1882, during their first trip to Europe. Presumably this letter was written fairly soon after their return from this trip, but of course, this is not at all certain.

The manuscript of this letter is held in the Langley family papers, Special Collections and Archives, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor. Sarah Orne Jewett to [Annie] Langley, Letter.

---

Edited by Terry Heller, Coe College.

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