Jewett Texts

148 Charles Street

Saturday, April 28, [1883]

My dear Friend:

Here it is, almost May Day! and all the aches and pains that "neurology" knows how to produce ought to be over by that time. I have thought of you a great many times, and wondered how you were getting on. Last night I dreamed that I went to a charity meeting with A. F. and there was a great row there, and in attempting to take her part I fell over a wall and hurt my arm abominably. In fact it waked me up it ached so, but it was no benevolent almsgiver who brought me to such distress; I had simply connected a familiar subject of thought with the familiar pain!¹ However, T. L.² was greatly amused with the dream. The particulars of the battle were very edifying.

I have been writing again by fits and starts and this time the story is called "The Hare and the Tortoise.”³It is a love story with its scene laid in Boston, and the Hare and the Tortoise are two lovers, and in this fable it is the Hare that wins the race. I was glad you liked the "Landless Farmer.”⁴ I think you will find the second part better when you see it in the magazine than it was on the uncorrected proof slips. Mrs. Fields is sending you the Jane Carlyle books⁵ which we have enjoyed so much! I see them now, put out for Patrick⁶to "do up" with his usual precision.

We went to Manchester by the Sea⁷ Thursday, to see about opening the house on Monday when we go down again. It was a hard day* for poor T. L. but we made the best of it, and had a great many pleasures after all. The frogs had thawed out -- they were talking in their sleep at any rate, and the barberry bushes were covered with dry fruit on top, where the improvident people had not thought it worthwhile to harvest. The sun shone through the berries with marvellous effect* and we had a famous drive back to Beverly, where we took the half past four train instead of waiting at Manchester an hour or two. We were in an excellent buggy with its top put back and the sun kept us very warm, and we gathered some pussy willows almost grown into cats, if one judged by their fur. The sea was as blue as it could be and furthermore we had had a picnic at the back of the house on the hilltop where we were sheltered from the wind. T. L. pointed out the Danvers road to me with great satisfaction and expectation of our travelling over it by and by. I must say goodbye for here comes T. L. upstairs having finished her day's housekeeping and now we are going out to do some errands together. She sends her dear love to you and so do I.

Yours most affectionately,

Sarah

Notes

¹ Annie Fields [A.F.] was a founder and leading spirit of the Associated Charities of Boston. She wrote How To Help the Poor (Boston, 1883) as a guidebook to humane and personalized philanthropy. While Jewett was not averse to accompanying Mrs. Fields on her errands of mercy, her enthusiasm was not equivalent.

² 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.

³ One of Miss Jewett's infrequent Boston stories (Atlantic Monthly, in [August1883], 187-199; uncollected) with an O'Henryesque ending. "Boston is like meeting one's grandmother in costume at a fancy ball," she says, with some provincial smugness.

⁴ "A Landless Farmer," Atlantic Monthly, LI (May, June 1883), 627-637, 759-769, in which Jerry Jenkins is shunted into a King Lear position by his ingrate daughters. Whittier had written: "I found the 'Landless Farmer' true as a sun-picture to the life and atmosphere of a farming neighborhood and the story of poor old Uncle Jerry full of genuine pathos." (Cary, "Whittier Letters," 13.)

⁵ James Anthony Froude, editor, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1883), 2 vols. The packet may also have contained Thomas Carlyle's Reminiscences, edited by Froude (New York, 1881), about which Miss Jewett had written: "I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences -- the Jane Welsh Carlyle [chapter], as you may suppose." (Fields, Letters, p. 17.) Copies of both books are in Miss Jewett's library.

⁶ Patrick Lynch, Mrs. Fields's man of all work.

⁷ Miss Jewett spent part of every summer at the Fields's "Gambrel Cottage" on the Massachusetts coast. In A Little Book of Friends (Boston, 1916) Harriet Prescott Spofford describes the "wonderful outlook of beauty set in the midst of flaming flowers, three sides overlooking the wide shield of the sea, but the fourth side so precipitous that the broad piazza there is only a turret chamber above the tops of the deep woods and orchards below, with the birds flying under it, and looking far over the winding river, ripening meadow, and stretching sea again." (p. 19.)

Editor's Notes

hard day: It is likely Jewett refers to this being the second anniversary of the death of James T. Fields on 24 April 1881.

sun shone through the berries with marvellous effect: Jewett uses this image in her story, "Farmer Finch," which appeared in two parts in Atlantic Monthly, May and June 1883.

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

Kittery Point. May 1^st

(83

Dearest Annie:

Your letter was a comfort & a joy -- A thousand thanks, as ever. I wish I could see you & dear Pin.* It is such a beautiful 1^st day of May, the sea pale turquoise blue & calm & smiling, the grass green on the bare slopes, the buds thickening on the trees, the birds singing, the frogs [ rippling ? ] & hylas piping sweet -- And a simmering of work going on all over the farm, Roland* busy setting out Persian lilac & purple beech & wild sweet briar, & pine

[ Page 2 ]

& spruce trees & all sorts of things round the house -- thank heaven he is on his feet! & Karl busy with his laths doing all kinds of jobs, & John wrestling with oxen & plough, & in front of the kitchen door a gang of men blasting a foundation for a kind of woodhouse to be built of stone, & general business going on every where. I am working hard to get Mrs Hearsts* book off my hands every

[ Page 3 ]

minute I can get, so please pardon the short scrawl -- You dear, dear, dear Annie! I love you so dearly{.} You are so sweet to me. Do write soon again & kiss Pinny for me & thank her over & over for her kind letter -- I hope you got your two books -- Thank you -- I am always saying it when I turn to you -- For now, goodbye

Your faithful C

Notes

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

Roland: Karl, John and Roland are Thaxter's three sons.

Mrs Hearsts: Mrs. Hearst has not yet been identified. It appears that she has asked Thaxter to illustrate a book for her, probably one her own books, such as Among the Isles of Shoals (1878). See Norma Mandel, Beyond the Garden Gate, pp. 132-8.

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/qb98p300h
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Danvers

5 Mo. 5 1883*

My dear friend

I have just rcd thy welcome letter. The volumes of Mrs Carlyle's letters* came duly, & I have been reading them with no common interest. What a strange sad revelation! What a tone of desperation in these letters, thinly disguised by the common phrases of "Dearest," and "O my dear husband." There is no sincerity in these professions. They did

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not love each other so much as they loved and pitied themselves. Carlyle loved nobody, & nothing and I do not find that Mrs. C. was much different {.} Neither of them seems to have had any faith in God or immortality. But how bright & witty, and "canny" some of these letters are! What expletives "more forcible than pious"* she uses! I wonder whether she & Carlyle didn't swear at each other sometimes. What ^can^ these two be doing in the new life? --

Very slowly the Spring comes this year. [ I corrected ] think it will not come at all

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until Summer blazes down upon us. The birds are here however, robins, blue birds, & song-sparrows. We have had great town meetings of crows in our pines, and the handsome blue & white night-herons have made their appearance. But the winter has been hard on our lawn -- patches of grass have been killed by the ice, -- which gives it an unpromising look. The fruit trees, though very backward, are looking well & the peaches will soon be in blossom.

I suppose you will go to Manchester soon. Sarah* told me of your drive there. You would need furnace fires there now with the bitter wind blowing over sea.

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I am sorry exceedingly for Sarah's rheumatic trouble. She must not write until she is better.

I shall have to go to Amesbury soon to get ready for our Quaker Quarterly Meeting, though I hope to be in Boston next week when I shall see you if you are still in town. Give a great deal of love to Sarah Jewett, and take a great deal to thyself from thy affectionate friend

John G Whittier

Notes

1883: This manuscript includes a number of penciled marks: The numeral 9 appears at the top center of page 1. Before the first sentence of the letter appears an "x". It is possible that several parts of the letter were very lightly underlined. These marks have not been included in this transcription.

Mrs Carlyle's letters: In April 1883, Fields and Jewett sent Whittier Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1883), 2 vols., edited by James Anthony Froude.
In his notes, Pickard says that Whittier later revised his judgment of Jane Carlyle, saying that she was '"cut out' for a very noble woman."

forcible than pious: An internet search indicates that this phrase has been in common usage since the 19th century, but leaves its origin unidentified.

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 71-4777. New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
This letter has been transcribed previously by Pickard, Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier. v. 3.

Annie Adams Fields to Eben Norton Horsford

May 7^th 1883.

[ Begin letterhead ]

148. Charles Street,
Boston.

[ End letterhead ]

Dear Professor Horsford;

I have written you more than one little letter lately in my mind which has not found its way to paper, but now that I may thank you for your note of yesterday at the same time I must [ fulfil so written ] my wish to tell you of some of the good things your generous gift to me early in the winter* has accomplished{.}

First, however let me say that it is always a pleasure

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to find the characteristic things which I know so well remembered and [ recalled ? ] and I should not have seen the [ unrecognized word ] save for you.

As for the money I think I may have written you how much I wanted it just when it came for employing a messenger for two weeks to

[ relieve ? ] our agent ---- 5.00
Lent to a lame man to buy a stove -- 15.00
which he is paying slowly back.

For the Herald, (to get employment) 2.00

To send a man & wife to relatives in Australia -- He was a [ Frenchman ? ] & he could not get work here 15.00

[ Page 3 ]

For having a young girl sent to 4.00
be taught housework -- The money was not for the teaching but to make up a little sum for the mother in place of the girl's [ miserable ? ] work at her former employment.

Milk for a consumptive boy -- 2.00

To women for help in drinking cases -- 2.00

~~For~~ ^Towards^ sending a family away 2.00

-----
$50.00

_______________________

You will be sorry to hear that Sarah Jewett* goes to Berwick next week.

Will it not be possible for you and Mrs Horsford and your dear daughters to come to tea here Sunday afternoon at half past six o'clock? It would give us both

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sincere pleasure if you can find it possible to come.

Believe me

Sincerely yours

Annie Fields.

Notes

winter: See Fields to Horsford of 9 January 1883. Fields refers to her work for the Associated Charities of Boston.

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

The manuscript of the letter is held by the Fales Library and Special Collections, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Sylvester Manor Archive 1649-1996, MSS.208, IV: Horsford Family, Box 59: Folder 35. Fields, Annie Adams: Connecticut, Maine & Massachusetts. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Shoals. May 8^th (83

My dearest:

We came out yesterday, Oscar* ran the Pinafore into Brave boat harbor* & brought me. Karl not yet. It looks so beautifully here -- & all the houses so fresh & pretty in their olive green gowns & red roofs. I am only going to stay a week & go back for Karl. I hope there will be a chance to send [ to the mail so written ] -- but I know not. Life is uncertain --

10^th Yesterday, dear Annie, I got my little garden planted. They gave me a man to help me & we did it all before 12 o clock, spading & manuring & raking & laying out of [ lot ? ] & planting seeds -- I put in a quart of sweet peas & a quart of nasturtiums & every thing else "according"{. }

The boys laugh at me for putting in so many seeds, but experience has taught me that only about half come up & half of those live. The wild cucumbers are a pleasure, so numerous & so strong, & when I think of the screen of airy green all draped with that honey sweet white lace of blossom, I feel so grateful to you, dear, who gave me the first seeds. I have put a Michaelmas daisy in the middle of each center bed, in each half of the garden -- Little [ Tanna ? ] & I lugged all the things out of the parlor in the morning & got the tacks loosened in the carpet & in the afternoon, Lucy & Ella came up, took the carpet up & cleaned all the paint, windows & pictures & scrubbed the floor & then Cedric & Pip* put down the new carpet & replaced the stove & it is as fresh as a flower. Today we mean to put back all the things

& shut it up & leave it. The house is so pretty & so much improved, tho' I do have a long flight of steps to descend to get down to the [ garden corrected ]. It is all charming but oh Annie, I am awfully sad. Somehow I cannot be happy in it as of old. I feel as if I ought to be at the farm, the feeling grows every year, tho' the moment I get there I feel so depressed that I had rather be dead. Yet I am afraid it will end in my staying there altogether. Because it seems more possible to manage with K. * there, than before. But I don't know --

The soft rain is coming down on my dear little garden. The weather is so sweet! You are ahead of me this year, I wonder if your seeds will be up this year first! Cedric has made his little wife's

garden so pretty. Every thing is "flying," Lucy says, "as if it had wings," so much business going on, gangs of men working in all directions.

The Warder* cottage fronts mine, on the hill, it does look "beautifully. They have put electric bells all over all the cottages -- Oscar says you have but to press a knob & you have anything you want, no matter what it is, how rare & strange & remote -- He is so funny about it. I have painted another panel for him since I came -- I expect to go back to the farm on Saturday & be there a week or ten days. Do write to me there, you dearest. Give my love to the sweet owl.* I have put her owl inkstand on my writing desk, & freshened the desk with a piece of new olive green felting which I nailed on all round with small brass nails = it looks so very pretty!

I hope there will be a chance to send to the P. O. today, but know not -- However will get all my letters ready -- Goodbye dear, for now --

O Annie, I did not get to see your sister after all, I was so hurried. Will you make my excuses to her, will you say that I did not & could not make calls on any body -- I couldn't find the time & didn't pretend to -- But I was just as grateful to her for her remembrance & kindness. Do tell [ her blotted ], Annie dear, & make her feel how it is.

Ever & ever & ever

Your most loving

C.

Notes

Oscar: Thaxter's brother, Oscar Laighton. She also mentions her other brother, Cedric Laighton, and her oldest, disabled son, Karl / K. See Key to Correspondents.

Brave boat harbor: Now a conservation area on Gerrish Island in southern Maine, north of Portsmouth, NH.
The Pinafore was the Laighton family's steam tug.

Tanna ... Lucy & Ella ... Pip: The transcription of "Tanna" is uncertain. One might expect to see "Hanna," but the first letter does not appear to be an "H." None of these people has yet been identified.

Warder: This transcription is uncertain. Possibly, the cottage owner was the family of banker George Aston Warder (1816-1881) of Philadelphia, PA. In his memoir, Ninety Years at the Isles of Shoals, Oscar Laighton recalls a "George Warder," as among those who spent time on Appledore Island.

owl: Thaxter is using an intimate nickname shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Pinny & Owl are 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 3 (191-209) https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p3065
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Amesbury 5 Mo. 10 1883*

My dear Friend

I scarcely need to bid thee "Good morning" for it is unmistakably good here & I hope it is also at Charles Street. Spring is here at last, just in season to welcome Summer. I am sorry to find that the hard winter has destroyed some handsome spruces which I planted eight years ago, and which had grown to be fine trees. Though rather late for me, I shall

[ Page 2 ]

plant other trees in their places, for I remember the advice of the old Laird of Dombiedike to his son Jock: "When ye ha'e nothing better to do, ye can be aye sticking in a tree: it'll be growin' when ye are sleeping."* There is an ash tree growing here that my mother planted with her own hands at [ three corrected ] score & ten. What agnostic folly to think that tree has outlived her who planted it!

I have read the letters of Jane Carlyle* over again, and find that my first judgment

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of them was too severe. She was "cut out" for a very noble woman. Her wit and humor are simply marvelous. If she had married a man she really loved she would have been a happier & better woman. There is no excuse for Carlyle's shaking his fist in the face of the Divine Providence that had given ^him^ such a woman.

I wonder whether our Sarah Jewett* is with thee or at S. Berwick. I hope thee are not quite alone. Do thee read "The Wizard's Son"* in the [ Living Age ? ] ? It strikes me as the most wonderful story of many years. It is [ wild ? ] enough

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to satisfy our friend Celia Thaxter.*

    I enclose a bit of verse* which perhaps thee have not seen.

    I read the article on Emerson in the Lecture Room* with great satisfaction. I see it is noticed by all the papers.

    With grateful affection

John G. Whittier

Notes

1883: The Huntington Archive reads Whittier's difficult handwriting to date this letter from 18 May 1883. This may be correct, but to me, he seems to have written "10," so I have altered the date. J. B. Pickard included portions of this letter in his The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, taking them directly from S. T. Pickard's Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier (see notes below) and retaining the date assigned in the original transcription: 19 May 1888. As the notes below indicate, this date clearly is mistaken.
    This manuscript contains several pencil marks: the numeral "6" at the top center of page 1, an "x" in the left margin of page 1 next to the line "which had grown to be", and another "x" to the left of the page 2 line "planted with her own." To the left of the penultimate paragraph -- "I read the article" -- appears another light pencil mark, and this paragraph also seems to have a light vertical pencil line through it.

sleeping: From Scottish author, Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), chapter 8 of The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818). Whittier has slightly altered the passage.

Jane Carlyle: In April 1883, Fields and Jewett sent Whittier James Anthony Froude, editor, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1883), 2 vols. See Whittier's letter to Fields of 5 May 1883.

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

Wizard's Son:  Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was the popular Scottish author of The Wizard's Son (1884). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9).
    The novel also was serialized in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March, 1884. This presumably is where Jewett, Fields and Whittier read it.
    Whittier's remark that the story is wild enough for Celia Thaxter references the novel's central problem, the sinister ghost the protagonist inherits with his estate. At this time, Thaxter was deeply devoted to Spiritualism and its practices of communion with the dead.

Celia Thaxter: See Key to Correspondents.

bit of verse: With this letter in the Huntington archive is a newspaper clipping of Whittier's "What the Traveller Said at Sunset."

The shadows grow and deepen round me;
    I feel the dew-fall in the air;
The muézzin of the darkening thicket
    I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.

The evening wind is sad with farewells,
    And loving hands unclasp from mine;
Alone I go to meet the darkness
    Across an awful boundary-line.

As from the lighted hearths behind me
    I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strangeness?
    What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?

What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
    What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me
    Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?

I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
    I dread the myriad-voicéd strain;
Give me the unforgotten faces,
    And let my lost ones speak again.

He will not chide my mortal yearning
    Who is our Brother and our Friend,
In whose full life, divine and human,
    The heavenly and the earthly blend.

Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
    The sense of spiritual strength renewed,
The reverence for the pure and holy,
    The dear delight of doing good.

No fitting ear is mine to listen
    An endless anthem's rise and fall;
No curious eye is mine to measure
    The pearl gate and the jasper wall.

For love must needs be more than knowledge;
    What matter if I never know
Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy,
    Or warmer Sirius white as snow!

Forgive my human words, O Father!
    I go Thy larger truth to prove;
Thy mercy shall transcend my longing;
    I seek but love, and Thou art Love!

I go to find my lost and mourned for
    Safe in Thy sheltered goodness still,
And all that hope and faith foreshadow
    Made perfect in Thy holy will!

See John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography (1900) by Francis Henry Underwood, pp. 404-5.

Whittier has deleted the "ed" in "sheltered" and written in "ing", changing the word to "sheltering." This is how the line appears in his Complete Works (1894), pp. 463-4, and in other reprintings. The clipping is from The Independent, probably of 17 May 1883.

Emerson in the Lecture Room: Annie Fields's essay "Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room," appeared in Atlantic Monthly in June 1883. Ralph Waldo Emerson died on 27 April 1882. 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 71-4695. New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Parts of this letter were previously transcribed by Samuel T. Pickard, appearing in the 2nd volume of his Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier (p. 732). John B. Pickard then included the same text in The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, V. 3, #1440.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

[ May 1883 ]*

I am so struck with [ unrecognized words ] passion of A Mary Robinson in the Bronte book {--} "uncertainty of close that marks most early work" {--} it has given me a great lesson: No words can say how I like that little book. I hoard it like a miser and hate to finish it altogether{.}

Notes

May 1883: This fragment appears on the bottom half of a folded sheet. The text is penciled in green, and the handwriting is quite rough. These details may lead one to suspect that Fields has copied this passage from a Jewett letter, for while the style and ideas seem likely to be Jewett's, the handwriting may not be hers.
Jewett refers to Agnes Mary Robinson's (1857-1944) biography, Emily Brontë (1883). The speculative date of this fragment is based upon the publication date of the Robinson book and upon Fields having loaned a copy to Celia Thaxter in May of 1883. See Thaxter to Fields of 19 May.
Jewett has modified her quotation from Robinson; the original reads: "Had the poem ended here it would have been perfect, but it and many more of these lyrics have the uncertainty of close that usually marks early work" (p. 174).

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.

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Kittery Point

May 19^th (83

My dearest Annie:

    I got home last night tired enough & found Pinny & Mary* had been here [ while corrected ] I was away! Now wasn't that too too bad! I felt so sorry & disappointed; as you can imagine. I wrote to Pinny & begged her to try it again, for I expect to be here another week, & I hope, oh I hope she will, the dear thing!

    In Portsmouth I met my poor cousin Albert* who is yet staggering under the loss of his glorious boy a year ago this month. And I told him what experience I had had & what I believe, & it was like the elixir of life to him -- oh he was so grateful! He has hardly [ begun ? ] to take any interest in life yet: for a month or more he could not hold a pen -- he looks twenty years older instead of one -- I have not seen him since his beautiful Arthur disappeared from his sight.

    You sweet Annie, what a dear lovely little time I had with you! I am so glad of that little glimpse -- it is such a pleasure to think of you so sweet & beautiful -- I am awfully busy this [ morning ? ] but had to stop & scratch a line just to say how dear you are & send my love -- I read the Brontë book* all the way down: it is all you say -- Do send me a line -- I will write presently when I'm not in such a house hold drive.

Ever your lovingest

CT.

Notes

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

cousin Albert: Albert Laighton (1829-1887) was the son of Captain John Laighton, who was brother to Thaxter's father, Mark Laighton. Albert's only son was Austin Arthur (1875-1882). Presumably, Thaxter has told him about her current Spiritualist beliefs about life after death and the possibilities of communicating with the dead. See Norma Mandel, Beyond the Garden Gate, pp. 125-6, and Terry Heller, "Communing with the Dead: Celia Thaxter, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Adams Fields." SOJTP 2020.

Brontë book: Agnes Mary Robinson's (1857-1944) biography, Emily Brontë (1883).

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/qb98p3197
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Jessie McDermott

[ 23 May 1883 ]

Dear Miss M^cDermott

I have looked at the picture which you drew for my little story in the June Wide Awake* with so much pleasure that I wish to thank you. I think it is charmingly done, and the doleful little girl in the chair is so

[ Page 2 ]

like the Katy whom I 'made up' -- that it seems quite wonderful.

Yours is really a most careful and satisfactory piece of work -- but I wish I could say the same of my sketch which somehow missed being read in the proof, and which ought to have

[ Page 3 ]

been revised by its guilty writer -- However! -- and I will do my part better next time. ----

Yours sincerely and with many thanks.

Sarah O. Jewett

South-Berwick Maine

    23 May 1883

Notes

Wide Awake: Jewett's "Katy's Birthday" appeared in Wide Awake, XVII (June 1883), 36-40, and was collected in Katy's Birthday by Sarah O. Jewett with Other Stories by Famous Authors (Boston, 1883).
    Richard Cary notes just one error in the story: "... on page 40 the word in was printed instead of and."

The manuscript of this letter is held by Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, ME: JEWE.1. An envelope associated with this letter is addressed to McDermott C.O. D. Lothrop & Co. in Boston. It was forwarded to Morris Union Station, New York, C.O.Rev. Edwin Johnson. A readable cancellation on the back is dated in Boston on 24 May 1883.
    Richard Cary included his transcription in Sarah Orne Jewett Letters. New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Alexander Wilson Drake

South-Berwick

26 May 1883

Dear Mr. Drake

I dont know one word about the Boon Island legend except what Mrs. Celia Thaxter* has 'put down' in her poem. I am sure she can tell you and will tell you. Will not you write her that I said so?!

As for my own verses, I dont remember anything

[ Page 2 ]

except Gosport Church* which would be of any use* to you -- There was a story published long ago in my youth in Merry's Museum called The Orchard's Grandmother{.}* I never could tell [ why corrected ] I did not print it in Playdays for it was one of the best things I ever did: partly "made up" but having for its foundation

[ Page 3 ]

the history of that old apple tree* which was the ancestor of most of the orchards hereabout. It stood on the main-road from Berwick to York and probably you know it well -- and can tell more about it than I --

-- I am truly grieved to hear of Mrs. Drake's illness, it must have been a long sorrowful winter

[ Page 4 ]

to you both -- I hoped that I should see you -- but the month flew by, it seems to me, and so many pleasant things were crowded out -- I have done a good deal of writing and have been much better than usual, though I had a horrid time with rheumatism while the snow was going off -- Thank you so much for your kind letter -- and I am yours always sincerely

Sarah O. Jewett

Notes

Celia Thaxter: See Key to Correspondents. Thaxter's poem, "The Watch of Boon Island," first appeared in Atlantic Monthly (March 1872) and was collected in Jewett's posthumous collection, Poems of Celia Thaxter (1896).

any use: That this letter seems to concern the possible re-publication of a Jewett work for young readers would suggest that she is responding to Mr. Drake about a project related to St. Nicholas. If this scenario holds, then this may be correspondence leading to the publication of "Perseverence," a poem that appeared in St. Nicholas 10 (September 1883), with an illustration by Rose Mueller. The poem was reprinted in Mary Mapes Dodge, Baby World: Stories, Rhymes, and Pictures for Little Folks, New York: Century, 1884, pp. 258-9, (first two stanzas), and in Verses 1916 as "A Four-Leaved Clover."
See Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn, Ruth Anne Thompson, St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children's Magazine Editor, 1873-1905 (2004), pp. 55-7.

Gosport church: Jewett's "Gosport" poem almost certainly is "Star Island," which first appeared in Harper's Magazine 63 (September 1881).

The Orchard's Grandmother ... Playdays: "The Orchard's Grandmother" appeared in Merry's Museum 59 (May 1871). Jewett's collection of fiction for children, Playdays, appeared in 1878.

old apple tree: In Ancient City of Gorgeana and Modern Town of York (1874), George Alexander Emery tells the story of the old apple tree said to have been brought from England to York in about 1629:

"The apple-tree flourishes well, and bears bountifully in this town; so much so, that Cider-Hill has long been a name applied to a section in the northerly portion of the town. Here is still standing an apple-tree which is said to have been brought from England, in a little tub or box, by one of the early settlers, more than two hundred and forty years ago. It has borne fruit up to the present time (1874); but the trunk is a mere upright hollow log, and only one limb retaining any vitality, it is not likely to survive many years longer" (p. 89).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Celia Thaxter

[ Late May 1883 ]

Both the Pintoes have been to Portsmouth this afternoon and were caught in a shower so they only did an errand or two and went to the Havens* for an hour and came home again. Mary and I drove down in the big carriage with the General and John,*and it was a very good thing to do for I have been writing though it was humble prose -- all the sweetbriar bushes were in bloom and they

[ Page 2 ]

made me think of you -- I have great hopes of this present story.* It acts as if it were going to be a long one though I meant it to be a dozen pages -- I sent for the Emily Brontë book and I must finish the last half of it before I go to bed this night -- How fine it is! (and* amazingly better than a Mary F. R's* story which has charming bits but no construction -- It is conventional in its characters and dull though something about it makes you finish it and think

[ Page 3 ]

of the people afterward -- though you dont wish for another word -- Good night dear -- Was there any need of my sending back the copy of the poem for I wish I had it again -- Miss Lawson was a behaving of herself all for nothing -- if you please ladies. If there is a nice copy safe in these [ friends ? ] hands she might be lent this mightn't she? Love to dear Lady Lodge --

Your own P. L.

[ Page 4 ]

I know you two have a fire tonight, and Mistress Marygold sits in the blue chair. Did she speak yet of the Roman netting? and has she noticed slightly that there was a dog, and a yellow beautiful* handkerchief on the blue chair, or new curtains -- or anything! or brass candlesticks and sich ... I hope "B'r Tarrykin Thaxter"* aint saying nothing to make [ them ? ] all unhappy about poor Karl's* [ disappointments ?] -- Poor dear Sandpiper!

Notes

Late May 1883: This date is based upon the information that at this time, Jewett, Thaxter and Fields were reading Mary Robinson's new biography of Emily Brontë. See notes below.
As the information from the Houghton Library indicates, this letter has been identified as to Louise I. Guiney and Mary Greenwood Lodge. See Key to Correspondents. A note with the manuscript asserts that these were the recipients. However, that is virtually impossible. Lodge died in 1889, and though Jewett was acquainted with Guiney through Annie Fields before 1889, Jewett's earliest known letter to Guiney is dated in 1891, and that letter lacks many features of this one, especially the nicknames (Pinny Lawson for Jewett, Marigold for Lodge, Sandpiper for Thaxter) that were used within this small group of intimate friends, and not with Guiney.

Havens: Probably this is the family of Edith Bell Haven Doe. Her parents lived in Portsmouth, NH. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary ... the General and John: Mary Rice Jewett and John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents. Presumably, the General is their horse. This leaves the opening reference to the two Pintoes unexplained. Perhaps it is connected in some way with Jewett's nickname, Pinny. Perhaps there were two pinto horses to their carriage, though only one horse is named in the letter. Perhaps the Jewett sisters wore spotted clothing.

story: Jewett's longest story to appear later in 1883 was "An Only Son," in the November Atlantic Monthly.

(and: It is not clear that the open parenthesis was written by Jewett. It lacks a closing.

Brontë book: Jewett refers to Agnes Mary Frances Robinson's (1857-1944) biography, Emily Brontë (1883). The speculative date of this letter is based upon the publication date of the Robinson book and upon Fields having loaned a copy to Celia Thaxter in May of 1883. See Thaxter to Fields of 19 May. Robinson, who published under several names, wrote fiction as well as biography. Her novel, Arden, also appeared in 1883.

beautiful: Jewett has underlined this word 3 times.

Karl's: Karl Thaxter was Celia Thaxter's disabled eldest son. See Key to Correspondents. At this time, he was working on various inventions, many of which were unsuccessful.
Presumably "B'r Tarrykin Thaxter" is another member of the Thaxter household at Kittery, perhaps one of Thaxter's brothers, Cedric and Oscar, or one of her other two sons, John and Roland.

The manuscript of the letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Box: 6 Identifier: MS Am 1743, (259), Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence II. Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett. Louise Imogen, 1861-1920, recipient 1 letter; [n.d.]. Transcription and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Wednesday evening

[ May 1883 ]*

Wednesday evening

Dear darling I do miss you dreadfully, but Pinny* is going to be good (though you forgot to tell her to be!) It seems so strange and lonely to be without you after all this dear time we have been together. ~~but~~ I daresay I shall get into my old tracks after a day or two = it has been chilly and I have felt the change in the air a good deal, but I am going to try gardening to morrow if the weather

[ Page 2 ]

is right. I have been driving all afternoon with Mary* and we stayed ever so long down in the woods by the river where it is sheltered from the wind and had a beautiful time. It was low tide and the salt grass was very fragrant on one side to match the pines on the other and one pee wee chirped a lonesome note in

[ Page 3 ]

the bushes as [ if corrected ] she were named Pinny and had left a Fuffy* in some far Boston -- -- (I haven't even unpacked my boxes yet, except to hunt for the plums)* but there is no great hurry.

-- Your dearest note has come and I was so* glad to get it and Sandpiper's* was a dear one too -- I mean to go down with Mary very soon. Wasn't it funny about the sparrows

[ Page 4 ]

with their crops full?

-- I have been looking over the Atlantic and liking it very much -- only I think it was an outrage to have filled so much space in three numbers with Daisy Miller's Dramatization --* I dont see how Mr. James could bear to waste his time over it -- Oh, dear Fuff, the cheque for your article will not come until the first day of June, so dont be looking for it in vain

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

before that time. Did you ever remember the little candle sticks you bought in Paris for the house in Manchester? I am

[ Up the right margin and then across the top margin of page 2 ]

using mine -- and it is so nice. Dont you think the Emerson article looks well? I was thinking about

[ Up the right margin and then across the top margin of page 13]

there being any trouble about your doing it, but I think there couldn't be, for they could use it in a book if

[ Up the right margin and then across the top margin of page 4 ]

they like just as well as ever. [ deleted words ] I should never have a fear of it -- Pin always said so -- Dear love good night and God bless you.

Your own Pin.

Notes

1883: The date 1882 is penciled in the upper right of page 1 in another hand. However, that is not possible, because the letter references events of 1883. See notes below.

Pinny: Pinny Lawson (Pinny / Pin) was an affectionate nickname for Jewett, used by her and Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Fuffy: Fuffy/Fuff, an affectionate nickname for Fields, used by Jewett and Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

plums): The parenthesis marks appear to have been added in pencil by another hand.

so: Jewett has underlined this word twice.

Sandpiper's: A nickname among the inner circle of Jewett and Fields for Celia Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

Daisy Miller's Dramatization: Daisy Miller: A Comedy in Three Acts by Henry James appeared in Atlantic Monthly in April, May and June of 1883.

Emerson article: Annie Fields's memoir, "Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room," appeared in Atlantic Monthly, June 1883, pp. 818-32. This appears to be the same article Jewett first refers to earlier in the letter.

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 John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

May 27, [1883]

My dear Friend:

I was more than glad to get your letter for I had been wishing to hear from you and wishing to write to you, but I have found so many things to do since "I came home" that you have no need to fear that I write too much. If you please, gardening is taking up a great deal of my time, and besides that I have too long neglected my self-imposed duties as inspector of the York and Barvick¹ roads and I have had no end of driving to attend to. Who do you suppose came down from Boston on Saturday and spent Sunday with me? Dear A. F.,* for I was moved by a sudden impulse Saturday morning and sent off a telegram, and afterward thought it would be no use for I manufactured no end of reasons why she could not come. But presently came the answer and it was "Thank you, yes!" at which I was ready to fly with joy. She looked so tired and so white when she came, but I really think the change and a good drive through the woods yesterday did her a great deal of good and sent her home feeling better today. It is cruel to let her stay alone, and I never mean to be away when I can help it, but this is one of the times when I cannot and indeed it is very pleasant to be here, as much as I miss her. Your letter came just after she did so we both enjoyed it, and I expect a great deal of good luck from the four-leaved clovers. I sought diligently for one to retaliate with, but though I am usually fortunate, there was not one to be seen.

I have not seen the story you speak of though the Littells²are in a nice brown heap together waiting to be read one evening very soon. I must tell you how much I have been enjoying your Dr. Singletary.³ The description of him reminds me so much of my father that I read it again and again, and it is all very beautiful. Those two volumes are such a storehouse of good things.

When is the yearly meeting of Friends at Portland?⁴ I am not going to be disagreeable and to extort a hindering and constraining promise from you, but I do wish to know the time so that I may hide in ambush and lie in wait for you as you go and come! Unless you must say that it will be impossible, and you had better not!

Goodbye. I have not told you how much I like the poem in the Independent⁵or a great deal else, for that matter.

Yours always lovingly,

Sarah

Notes

¹ "One curious thing is the pronunciation of the name of the town: Berwick by the elder people has always been called Barvik, after the fashion of Danes and Northmen; never Berrik, as the word has so long been pronounced in modern England." (Sarah Orne Jewett, "Looking back on Girlhood," Youth's Companion, LXV [January 7, 1892], 5.) See also Miss Jewett's "The Old Town of Berwick," New England Magazine, x (July 1894).

² An eclectic monthly published in Boston, comprising poems, essays, and stories collected chiefly from British periodicals.*

³ Whittier's "My Summer With Dr. Singletary" was first published in the National Era in 1851-1852 and collected in Literary Recreations and Miscellanies (1854). It was reprinted in The Prose Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston, 1865), 2 vols., reissued in 1882, a copy of the last in Miss Jewett's library. Singletary is a congenial, beloved country doctor as was Miss Jewett's father.

⁴ The meeting that year ran from June 8 through June 13. Whittier did attend "but as is his custom, took no part in the proceedings." (Portland Transcript, June 13, 1883, p. 87.)

⁵ "What the Traveller Said at Sunset," Independent, xxxv (May 17, 1883), 609, collected in The Bay of Seven Islands, and Other Poems (1883).

Editor's Notes

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

periodicals: In his letter to Fields of 10 May 1882, Whittier had recommended The Wizard's Son (1884) by popular Scottish author Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9).
The novel also was serialized in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March, 1884. This presumably is where Jewett, Fields and Whittier read it.

Ellen Francis Mason to Sarah Orne Jewett

Paris

May 28

[ 1883 ]*

Dear Sarah,

Only a line to enclose my photograph, and to thank you for understanding about Socrates.* I am so grieved to find that you are not

[ Page 2 ]

better. It seems hard that when one has such gifts one should be denied the power of using them, but who can say what greater gift we may not unconsciously be using!

We are impatiently awaiting the moment for sailing. I do not know now

[ Page 3 ]

how I could possibly have [ waited corrected from waiting ] longer, as we at first intended. At present we are plunged in the whirl of Paris shopping, and most distracting it is -- painful indeed, as I cannot write you more than this little word just to send my love & my picture. We shall be

[ Page 4 ]

sure to meet this summer.

Yrs afft

Ellen F. Mason

I send some lines w^ch I have copied for you, thinking you w^ld like them. They were written for a friend of ours -- a most [ saintly ? ] person -- Fanny Alexander --*

Notes

1883: Dating this letter depends upon having correctly dated Mason to Jewett of 25 March 1883. Clearly this letter follows upon that one.

Socrates: See Mason to Jewett of 25 March 1883. There Mason discusses the recent publication of A Day in Athens with Socrates; translations from the Protagoras and the Republic of Plato (1883).

Fanny Alexander: Frances / Fanny "Francesca" Alexander (1837-1917) was an American illustrator, author, and translator.
    https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/4892

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
     Mason, Ellen Francis, 1846-1930. 4 letters; [1900 & n.d.]. bMS Am 1743 (148).
     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 97, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
    Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

John Greenleaf Whittier to Annie Adams Fields

Oak Knoll 5th Mo, 29 [ 1883 ]*

My dear friend,

Thy welcome letter came last night. I am afraid that, under the circumstances, it cost thee something to write it. Much as I prize a word from thee, I value the writer so much

[ Page 2 ]

more that it would pain me to think thy kind heart prompted thee to write, when, even with a friend, silence seems best. I can well understand thy feeling as regards moving from the city [ home or house ? ] to Manchester,* but I trust it will prove the right thing

[ Page 3 ]

after all. The dear Lord who has so greatly blest thee in the past will not leave thee nor forsake thee, there; and I trust thee will be able to call thy chamber looking over the sea to the sunrise, like that of the Pilgrim, by the blessed name of Peace!*

I am not to lose thy visit to Oak Knoll. I [ will ? ] go to N.H. until early in July, & return

[ Page 4 ]

by the middle of August{.} I shall be only too glad to see {thee} & Sarah if she is with thee ~~there~~ here. Did n't you both promise to run up to Lake Asquam while I am there?

My cousin Gertrude Cartland* will be there & I should like thee {to} know her. The [ extract ? ] from the new [ writer greeted ? ] by thee, hints indeed at the great secret of peace & happiness. I am reading with ever fresh interest the installment of "The Wizard's Son" in Littell. Shall I send the Jane

[ Up the left margin of page 4 ]

Carlyle books* to Boston or Manchester? The Lord bless thee dearest friend, & give thee His peace which is better than ours. Affectly

John G Whittier

Notes

1883: The Huntington Archive assigned this year to this letter. Almost certainly this is correct, as Whittier reports reading Margaret Oliphant's The Wizard's Son, which was serialized in the U.S. during the spring of 1883. See notes below.
    Penciled marks on this manuscript include an archive number at the bottom left of page 1, and an "x" in the left margin of page 3, next to the line "looking over the sea."

Manchester: On 24 April 1883, Fields marked the second anniversary of her husband's death. See Key to Correspondents. As she had traveled in Europe with Jewett in the summer of 1882, it has been 2 years since Fields summered at the home in Manchester-by-the-Sea that had been the couple's retreat from Boston.

blessed name of Peace: In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 1, Christian stops for a night in a shelter provided by the Lord of the Hill and sleeps in a bedchamber called Peace (p. 131).

Gertrude Cartland: Richard Cary says that Joseph Cartland (1810-1898) and Whittier's cousin Gertrude Cartland (1822-1911) accompanied Whittier on his summer vacations in Maine and New Hampshire for five decades, and Whittier lived in their home at Newburyport, Massachusetts most of his last fifteen winters.

Wizard's Son:  Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was the popular Scottish author of The Wizard's Son (1884). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9).
    The novel also was serialized in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March, 1884.

Jane Carlyle books: James Anthony Froude, editor, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1883), 2 vols. Richard Cary notes that the "packet may also have contained Thomas Carlyle's Reminiscences, edited by Froude (New York, 1881)."

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields collection: mss FI 71-4696. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday noon

[ 1883 - 1886 ]*

Dear darling Fuffs -- *

This little note came from dear C.T.* this morning and I will send it right to you -- Do tell me what she says -- I am going over to Exeter this afternoon to see

[ Page 2 ]

my grandfather and perhaps stay until evening -- not over night -- Poor little Fuff being lonely at Nahant! -- but it shall be ever so long before you shall be alone again -- -- I was perfectly

[ Page 3 ]

delighted you could go to the Houghtons* and I am sure they were -- it was a sweet kindness of T.L. --

I had a distracted little note from Cora* this morning saying that she was called back to town { -- } her mother was dangerous

[ Page 4 ]

ill again -- Kiss dear Rogery* on the top of his smooth head for me -- and Kiss Miss Fuffy Fields in the looking glass and play it was Pin ! Day after tomorrow I shall have you !!

[ Manuscript breaks off. No signature ]

Notes

1883 - 1886: This letter almost certainly was composed no earlier than 1883, after Jewett and Fields returned from their first trip to Europe but before January of 1887, when Jewett's grandfather, Dr. William Perry, died. I have placed it in 1883, only because that is the earliest probable composition date.

Fuffs: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. On page three, Jewett uses another of her nicknames for Fields, T.L. See Key to Correspondents.

C.T.: Celia Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

Houghtons: Henry Oscar Houghton. See Key to Correspondents.

Cora: Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

Rogery: Probably, this is Jewett's dog, Roger, staying with Fields at this time. See "Sarah Orne Jewett's Dog" (1889) for a portrait of Roger. Roger came to the Jewett household in 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.

Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett

Thursday Evening - 9 ^o'clk

[ Early June 1883 ]*

Dear Sarah:

Aldrich and Lilian* have just gone -- he staying later than she for [ Bugbee ?]* came and called her home about the house -- He said there never was anything so stupid as the last Harper* -- it was trash from beginning to end -- Neither did he refer to anything else except your dear story* which he thinks the best thing you have ever done and says very wisely that you ought to gather yourself now for a story in at least six numbers wh. could make a book.

It might be very popular and a first rate thing for you --

[ Page 2 ]

He was very kind and sweet and I dare say it is much better for me than if he took any more notice* of what I write or do -- I hear alas! through Mr. Beal* a rumor that Mr. Fairchild* is not successful financially. How hard it will be for her with that large band of children already accustomed to luxury -- and -- her own relations to society?* She does not care for luxury herself but under existing circumstances it will be very hard if he does not

[ Page 3 ]

retrieve himself. How much better it would have been to content themselves under the safe wing of S.D.W. and Co --

I write away on my poor little Charity book and I saw Mr. Garrison* today about the [ form ? ]. It is about finished but I dread the days when I have not even that --

I have resigned on the Authors "Committee" and Mifs [ Graves ? ]* has returned to the country -- There was no money to pay her and they expected the work to be done for nothing -- so they may get it finished as they can --

[ Page 4 ]

    Your "Wide Awake" came tonight dear full of pretty things -- your story* especially. [ Many thanks ? ] -- also the letter{.} I will send the autograph of E.S.P.*

[ Farquhar corrected ] Bros.*

            19 Market St.

is the address --

    I* will write to Cupples for us both perhaps and say we can't. Maybe it will do as well --

Your

A.F.

Notes

Early June 1883: This date is supported by two items mentioned in the text. Fields's book How to Help the Poor was in print by September 1883. Jewett's only 1883 story in Wide Awake appeared in the June issue.
This letter appears to have been written in pencil.
Several times in this letter, Fields writes "a" for "and." I have changed these to "and" without comment.

Aldrich and Lilian: Thomas Bailey and Lilian Woodman Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents.

Bugbee: While this transcription is difficult, Bugbee is mentioned in one other known, but undated letter from Jewett to Lilian Aldrich. Probably this is the author James McKellar Bugbee (1837-1913), who, according to Ferris Greenslet's biography of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, was an early and lifelong friend of Aldrich.

Harper: Aldrich probably speaks of the June 1883 issue of a rival to Atlantic Monthly. Jewett published two poems in Harper's in 1883. Fields published four poems there in 1882, and another in September 1883. The reasons for Aldrich's negative view are not yet known.

your dear story: If the dating of this letter is correct, Aldrich probably refers to Jewett's "A Landless Farmer," a longer story that appeared in Atlantic Monthly, where Aldrich was editor, in two installments. 18 months later, Jewett's A Marsh Island (1885) began with the first of six parts in Atlantic.

notice: Someone has penciled a line in the left margin next to this sentence.

Mr. Beal: Fields's brother-in-law, James Henry Beal. See Annie Adams Fields in Key to Correspondents.

Mr. Fairchild: For Charles Fairchild and his family, see Sally Fairchild in Key to Correspondents. Fairchild had worked for S. D. Warren & Co., a paper mill, until 1880. The company was owned by Samuel Dennis Warren. For information about his decision to leave, see The Mount Vernon Street Warrens (1913). At the time of this letter, the Fairchilds had at least seven children.

society: This sentence contains a number of marks that look like intentional dashes, so I have included them despite their oddity. The sentence appears to end with a question mark, but this is not certain.

Charity book ... Mr. Garrison: Fields's How to Help the Poor appeared in 1883. Francis Jackson Garrison supervised manufacturing orders at Houghton Mifflin. See Key to Correspondents.

Authors "Committee": No information about this committee or Miss Graves has yet been located.

your story: Jewett's only story in Wide Awake in 1883 was "Katy's Birthday," in the June issue.

E.S.P.: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. See Key to Correspondents.

Farquhar Bros: R. & J. Farquhar Company of Boston, MA sold seeds and gardening supplies by mail order.

I: This word is underlined twice.

Cupples: This may be Cupples, Upham and Co. a 19th-century Boston publisher.

The manuscript of the letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection MWWC0196_02_00_005_01. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Monday [ 4 written over 3 ] th June

[ 1883 ]*

My dearest Fuffy*

It is so good to get your letter and as for thy friend* it is very beautiful. I do wish he would tell me when the yearly meeting of Friends at Portland is! I wrote him again to find out, only telling him that I wished to do something else the other week. I daresay I shall hear tomorrow -- This has been

[ Page 2 ]

a writing day -- and I am going to stop for awhile, for it is no use going [on written over something ] until I have had a run-off and can start on a new track. I must say that nothing is so delightful as the garden. (If the Manchester seeds that I planted have come up as well as these here, you must have a great plantation! (I dont believe a single nasturtium out of the two ounces missed fire -- Mary* gets )(

[ Manuscript breaks off -- no signature. ]

[ up the left margin of page 1]

I found a four leaved clover to send thy friend.

Notes

1883: Between the time Jewett and Fields adopted the "Fuffy" nickname and the death of Whittier in 1892, 4 June fell on Monday in 1883 and 1888. In a letter to J. G. Whittier of 27 May 1883, Jewett asks Whittier about the date of the "yearly meeting of the Friends at Portland," as she reports doing in this letter. Therefore 1883 seems the more likely date for this fragment.
Parenthesis marks in this manuscript were penciled by Fields.

Fuffy: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Fields has deleted "Fuffy."

thy friend: Fields has inserted after "friend": "(Whittier", meaning John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. 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 Annie Adams Fields

[ June 5, 1883 ]*

[ I shall be with you in pencil, in another hand, at the top center ]

be with you tomorrow -- your dear birthday.* How I am looking forward to Thursday evening! -- I don't care whether there is starlight or a fog -- Yes dear, I will bring the last sketch* and give it its last touches if you think I had better spend any more time on it -- I am tired of writing things -- I want now to paint things and drive things -- and kiss things! -- and yet I have been thinking all day what a lovely sketch it would be

[ Page 2 ]

to tell the story of the day we went to Morwenstow -- with bits of Lorna Doone & the Vicar* intertwined with the narrative! --*

    I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences -- the Jane Welsh Carlyle* as you may suppose. How could people have made such a fuss about it! It seems to grow more and more simple and beautiful and human; and Carlyle is like a "great stone face"* on a mountain top.   -- good night, and God bless you dear love. Yours, always Pin*

Notes

1883: This date is added in pencil, top right of page 1. Probably it is correct or at least close. Internal evidence indicates the letter was composed after Jewett and Fields returned from their 1882 trip to Europe.

birthday: Annie Adams Fields was born on 6 June 1834.

last sketch: Jewett published at least eight stories and essays between August and December of 1883.

Morwenstow -- with bits of Lorna Doone & the Vicar: Wikipedia says: "Morwenstow is the most northerly parish in Cornwall…. Morwenstow is the one-time home of the eccentric vicar and poet Robert Stephen Hawker (1803–1875), the writer of Cornwall's anthem Trelawny." Jewett recounts her visit to this village in her letter of 2 July 1882, writing her sister Mary about her travels with Mrs. Fields in England.
    "Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor is a novel by English author Richard Doddridge Blackmore [1825-1900], published in 1869."
    The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) is a novel by the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774). Whether Jewett refers to the novel as well as to Vicar Hawker is uncertain.
    Jewett and Fields visited Morwenstow at the beginning of July 1882.

narrative!: Whether Jewett has placed an exclamation point here is uncertain. The mark is ambiguous.

Carlyle's Reminiscences -- the Jane Welsh Carlyle: It appears Jewett refers to James Anthony Froude, editor, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1883), 2 vols. The book received negative commentary because of its frank portrayal of the Carlyles' troubled marriage.

"great stone face": Jewett compares Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) to the Old Man of the Mountain, also called the Great Stone Face, "a series of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, United States, that appeared to be the jagged profile of a face when viewed from the north." This formation collapsed in 2003.

Pin: Pinny Lawson was an affectionate nickname for Jewett, used by her and Annie Fields.

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 Transcription
The following transcription of the above letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), p. 17.

[ 1883 ]

I shall be with you tomorrow. your dear birthday. How I am looking forward to Thursday evening. I don't care whether there is starlight or a fog. Yes, dear, I will bring the last sketch and give it its last touches if you think I had better spend any more time on it. I am tired of writing things. I want now to paint things and drive things, and kiss things, and yet I have been thinking all day what a lovely sketch it would be to tell the story of the day we went to Morwenstow, with bits of "Lorna Doone" and "The Vicar" intertwined with the narrative.

I have been reading Carlyle's Reminiscences -- the Jane Welsh Carlyle, as you may suppose . How could people have made such a fuss about it. It seems to grow more and more simple and beautiful and human, and Carlyle is like a "great stone face" on a mountain top. Good night, and God bless you, dear love.

Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett

[ June 1883 ]*

My darling -- all on this rainy Thursday instead of tomorrow are the twins and Mrs Whitman and Alice and Mary* to be here at lunch. How I wish for you!

Your little note came in last night with a letter from Georgina Hogarth* enclosing one for you wh. I send with this.

It was so strange and good that you would have felt as you did about the latter lines in the first half of

[ Page 2 ]

Chrysalides!* I too had my suspicions in that direction -- There was something much larger there, and something which I do not seem to find at all satisfactorily in the lines was in my mind to say further, so I believe I shall cut the passage quite out. Whatever can be spared in a poem certainly, should be omitted{.} But wasn't it interesting

[ Page 3 ]

that ^you and^ I had thought it together.

A note from Mifs [ Unrecognized name] says that Mr. Whittier* has already gone to the mountains. I wish I knew his address -- for now is the time to write him.

Ever and ever yours

A.F.

Notes

1883: This date is based upon Fields reporting discussion of her poem, "Chrysalides," presumably before its publication in September 1883.

twins and Mrs Whitman and Alice and Mary: The twins probably were the sisters, but not twins: Helen Olcott Choate Bell and Miriam Foster Choate Pratt. The others are Sarah Wyman Whitman and, probably, Alice Greenwood Howe and Mary Greenwood Lodge. Key to Correspondents.

Georgina Hogarth: Georgina Hogarth, (1827-1917), "the sister-in-law, housekeeper, and adviser of English novelist Charles Dickens and the editor of two volumes of his collected letters after his death." Wikipedia.

Chrysalides: Fields's poem "Chrysalides" appeared in Atlantic Monthly in September 1883. Fields collected the poem virtually unchanged in The Singing Shepherd (1895).

Whittier: John Greenleaf Whittier. Key to Correspondents.

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence, 100 letters from Annie Adams Fields, bMS Am 1743.1 Box 1, Item 33.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Thursday afternoon

[ Summer 1883 - 1886 ]*

Dearest Fuff*

I thought you were in Boston yesterday! I am afraid you were very hot, for "it" was high above ninety here and only excelled in discomfort by the celebrated Saturday -- But this morning there was a delicious [ north corrected, possibly from east ] wind with a touch of east in it and I have been in the garden picking currants

[ Page 2 ]

all the morning long and I had a beautiful time! -- Few persons know that it is very pretty to sit on the ground under a tall currant bush and see the colours of it against the blue sky. ( No Pinny* not to get cold; she mostly was throned on a little box! )(( Mary* has gone down to York to see Hattie Denny* (Poor Uncle William*

[ Page 3 ]

insists again that he wishes to go down -- and I told Mary that now was her chance to have a day and that he could report and probably that would be the last of the plan. He wishes to hire a house & take his Hannah & John & Mary) ( ---- and horses! It is something to talk about at all events.) (I do not hear from Mifs Mitchell*

[ Page 4 ]

but she promised to write me as soon as she knew anything to write. Dear Fuff I send you ~~the~~ "a five", as Mrs. Perkings* says, with many thanks ---- I have got a new book of charming essays by R. L. Stevenson{.}* Mrs. Whitman* spoke of an essay on Villon in it -- when we were talking of that [ deleted letters ] wise one in the Review.*

I will bring it when I come.

your own S.O.J.)

[ Up the left margin of page 1 ]

Dear Fuff!

Notes

Summer 1883 - 1886: The precise date of this letter is unknown, but it must have been composed no earlier than the summer of 1883, and while Jewett's Uncle William -- who died in August 1887 -- remained in good enough health to contemplate a move to York.
    Her reference to Familiar Studies of Men and Books as a new book, would seem to place the date closer to 1883.
    Though I have placed the letter in 1883, it may well be from 1-3 years later.
    Parenthesis marks in this manuscript were penciled by Fields.

Fuff: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Pinny: Pinny Lawson (Pin) was an affectionate nickname for Jewett, used by her and Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Hattie Denny: This may be Hattie Denny, sister of Augusta Maria Denny Tyler. See Key to Correspondents.

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

Hannah & John: Hannah Driscoll and John Tucker. See Key to Correspondents.

Mifs Mitchell: This person has not yet been identified. Among Fields's acquaintances was the American astronomer at Vassar College, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889).

Mrs. Perkings: Mrs. Perkings is Catherine (Mrs. Richard) Perkins, Fields's next-door neighbor at 146 Charles Street. An anonymous researcher has provided this information about the family.
    Richard Perkins (ca. 1805–6 Dec 1886). In the 1860 census, he and Catherine, his wife, and his brother, Abijah Crane Perkins (23 December 1802-10 August 1884), already lived next door to Annie and James T. Fields. The men were retired merchants at that time. Richard and Catherine P. Dow (ca. 1828 -29 April 1893) married in Boston on 2 June 1857.
    Richard and Abijah's parents were William and Nabby Butler Crane Perkins. Catherine's father was Jones Dow of Lowell, MA.
    In a journal entry of 22 September 1866, Fields describes him as a successful businessman possessed of a "dull kindliness."
    Mrs. Perkings is mentioned in a letter to Fields of November/December 1886, as a country woman despite her urban residence.
    What she means by "a five" is uncertain, but she may refer to a five dollar bill.

R. L. Stevenson: Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). His essay "François Villon, Student, Poet, Housebreaker" (1877) was collected in Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882).
    François Villon (1431- c. 1463) was a French poet.

Mrs. Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Key to Correspondents.

wise one in the Review: Perhaps the more likely Stevenson essay is "The Morality of the Profession of Letters," Fortnightly Review ns 157 (April 1881). Though it was published too early to be current at the probable time of this letter, Whitman still may have spoken of it, and the Jewett circle is known to have read the Fortnightly.
    Stevenson published two other likely essays in The Contemporary Review that almost certainly appeared too late for the probable date of this letter:
    "On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature," Contemporary Review 47 (April 1885);
    "The Day After Tomorrow," The Contemporary Review 51 (April 1887).
    See Robert Louis Stevenson.org.

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

Thursday afternoon

[ June 1883 ]*

This is a lazy loitering Pinny Lawson who came over to the old house directly after dinner to write as fast as she could, but she got hold of the box of her dear T.L's* letters and has been reading one more and one more until a great piece of the afternoon is gone. Oh my dear darling I had forgotten that we loved each other so much a year ago -- for it all seems so ~~new~~ new* to me every day -- There is so much for us to remember already -- But a

[ Page 2 ]

year ago last winter seems a great way off for we have lived so much since.

= I have had a hard time of worry and hard work since you went away on Monday. I wish I could be idle all the rest of June, that is not feel forced to do things. But I suppose it cannot be and the only thing possible in a busy life is to rest in ones work since one cannot rest from it. I think a good deal about the long

[ Page 3 ]

story* but it has not really taken hold of me yet. I do get so impatient with myself dear Fuffy. I am always straying off on wrong roads and I am so wicked about things. This is one of the times when I think despairingly about my faults and see little chance of their ever being mended. -- But Fuffy to have patience with Pin and please to love her! --

(I have been reading Under the Olive* a good deal in this last day or two and I cant begin to tell you how beautiful

[ Page 4 ]

it is to me -- and how helpful.

I long to hear you read from it again. And when I think it was my dear little Fuffy who wrote it, it seems quite amazing -- It is like remembering that I have dared to talk nonsense and hug and play generally with something that turned itself into a whole world full of thoughts and sights and beautiful things -- Fuffy and this poet are a funny pair to live in the same skin you know, ladies! Oh Pinny to go to work! An idle and thriftless Pinny to whom the rest of the Lawsons are industrious.)*

[ No signature ]

Notes

June 1883: The date June 1882 is penciled in the upper right of page 1 in another hand. However, this cannot be correct, as Jewett and Fields were together in Europe in that month. Jewett dating their friendship from about 18 months earlier suggests that 1883 is the correct composition date.

Pinny Lawson ... T.L.'s: These are nicknames Jewett and Fields gave to each other. Jewett announces the invention of these names in a letter to John Greenleaf Whittier of 9 September 1882, though Celia Thaxter letters indicate that the "Pinny" nickname was in use in the spring of 1882. Later in the letter, Jewett uses another of her nicknames for Fields: Fuffy. See Key to Correspondents.

new: Both the deleted word and its apparent substitute are blotted.

industrious.): The parenthesis that begins on p. 3 and ends here is penciled by another hand.

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

Thursday night [ June 1883 ]

My dear Lilian

It was a very great pleasure to get your little letter tonight, for I have been thinking about you so much and wishing that I could see you. I have thought every morning that I would write you before the day was done, but I am growing very bad

[ Page 2 ]

about letters! ---- I wish that I knew when I could go to Lynn, but I am sure that it cannot be for two or three weeks yet. There are a good many reasons for being here just now, and I know that I shall have to go away by and by when the very hot weather comes,

[ Page 3 ]

so I am making the most of this delightful June ^in Berwick^ -- have been gardening and writing and doing all sorts of things and we have been giving our minds and hearts to various visitors -- two young cousins of mine are here just now chattering like magpies up-stairs ---- I keep thinking about Manchester you may be sure, and of that beautiful

[ Page 4 ]

hilltop -- where poor Mrs. Fields* is lonelier and sadder than anybody can guess. I shall go back there by and by, and then I shall be sure to see you. You and his Grace* are going there soon, aren't you? I think that is something she cares a great deal about, and she wrote me in such joy because his Grace liked the poem.* She sent it to me in a letter and I was going to tell you about it -- it was

[ Page 5 ]

so lovely -- and then I found you knew ----

It was a most dear Duchess who got the spoon! and I love it already. Only today I was thinking about the lost one -- -- I wish I could see you instead of trying to write a letter to you, but we will have a blessed long gossip one day before

[ Page 6 ]

long. Do give my love to Mrs. Aldrich,* and to all the household. Has Tal* dared to grow any more? and how is the Dearest love? Tell Charley I miss having him for an opposite neighbor.

Yours affectionately

Miss Martinot*

(Now of the Bijou T.C.)*

[ Up the left margin of page 1 ]

If you ever go to McCarthy's* will you get me one of those china trays with the little fences round them that we bought at Leonards? He must have some left!

Notes

June 1883: This speculative date is supported by a little evidence. Jewett's reference to Fields's loneliness suggests that she writes relatively soon after the death of James T. Fields in April 1881. Other letters indicate that Jewett did spend most of June 1883 in South Berwick or visiting nearby. The apparent reference to Sadie Martinot performing in Boston corresponds with her early July 1883 appearances at the Bijou (see below).
One problem with this date is that Martinot probably appeared several more times in Boston during the later 1880s, as well as at the Bijou Theatre in New York.

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

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

the poem: If this letter is from June 1883, then Jewett may refer to Fields's poem, "The Folding," which appeared in Harper's Magazine in June 1883 and was collected in The Singing Shepherd (1895).

Mrs. Aldrich: Thomas Bailey Aldrich's mother was Sarah Abba/Abra Bailey (1814-1896); she married Elias Taft Aldrich (1807-1850).

Tal: The Aldriches' had twins born in 1868: Charles and Talbot.

Miss Martinot: Sadie Martinot was a Jewett nickname with the Aldriches, presumably after the American actress and singer, Sarah/Sadie Martinot. See Key to Correspondents.

Bijou T.C.: The transcription of the initials is uncertain; perhaps she means Theatre Company? Or perhaps it should read O.C. for Opera Company. There was a Bijou theater in Boston after 1882 and in New York after 1878.
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.

McCarthy's ... Leonards: J. C. McCarthy was a department store at the corner of Tremont and West Streets, Boston. Leonards is more difficult to identify. There was a Leonard's Gallery in Boston in the 1880s, which appears to have specialized in fine art, but may have sold craft items as well. More likely, Leonard's was a store not in Boston, but nearer another location, such as the area of Beverly and Manchester-by-Sea, where the Aldriches and Annie Fields spent their summers.

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: 2665. The same note appears at the bottom left of page 5.

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Kittery Point, June 9^th

[ 1883 ]*

Dearest & dearest:

I promised to come over here for a day or two when the boat should begin, but finding it did not propose to start on its usual daily trips till the 18^th, I rushed over yesterday & am hoping to go back to Shoals tomorrow, Sunday. The steam tug Clara [ Bateman ? ]* came out yesterday a.m. at 3 o'clock if you please, towing the floating wharf to its place of mooring, so I returned to Ports. with her at six oclock -- & came over the ferry at 8 oclock to Kittery Point. Found my farmer boy* had gone to Boston, the rest of the family in statu quo. & glad on the whole to see me. It is no less than divinely beautiful here too, all blossoms & fragrance & deeps of green grass & fresh leaves, lilacs just coming on -- think how much later than ^with^ you.

But to me there is nothing like the Shoals -- I watch the sky anxiously lest fog or storm prevent the Pinafore from coming into Brave boat harbor* for me tomorrow. I am sure the weather is going to do some thing untoward. Yesterday & today have been so heavenly beautiful -- and I am dying to get back to my little garden & to Karl, whom I did not like to leave even for one night -- All this before I begin to thank you for your dear letter & the Wizard's Son!* I am so grateful dear, for both. Let me know how much I [ owe corrected ] you in filthy lucre, please -- I think I can get the other Nos. as they come along, in Ports. It is immensely interesting. I brought it with me & read in the various steam tugs on my way yesterday.

[ manuscript breaks off. No signature. ]

Notes

1883: June 9 fell on Saturday in 1883. And see notes below.

Clara Bateman: Though this transcription is uncertain, there was a steam tug Clara Bateman operating out of Portsmouth, NH in the 1880s.

farmer boy: Thaxter refers to her middle son, John. See Key to Correspondents.
Later in the letter, she mentions her disabled oldest son, Karl.

Brave boat harbor: Now a conservation area on Gerrish Island in southern Maine, north of Portsmouth, NH.
The Pinafore was the Laighton family's steam tug.

Wizard's Son: A serialized novel by Scottish author Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897), The Wizard's Son (1884). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9). The serial also appeared in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March 1884, where Whittier, Fields, Jewett and Thaxter read it. A central problem of the novel is the protagonist's dealings with a sinister ghost he inherited with his estate.

Pinny: Thaxter is using intimate nicknames shared among Jewett, Fields and herself. Pinny is Jewett; Flower is Fields; Sandpiper is Thaxter. 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 3 (191-209) https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p323t
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Shoals. 17^th June

(83

Dearest & dearest:

I am beginning to be anxious, it is so long since my last letter to you went, & I have heard no word in reply. Pray heaven all is well with you! I sent to Charles St. but I am sure you were at Manchester, & perhaps you did not get my letter at all. I was so much obliged for the Littells & found the story so interesting, as truly thy friend* said it was. Most exceptionally so. O Annie yesterday Mr. Albee sailed over from Newcastle with Edmund Clarence Stedman,* if you please -- he took up your book from the center table & did nothing but rave about you & Theocritus,* or little

[ Page 2 ]

else, while he was here, & as for your picture it quite took away his breath, & I only wish I could remember half the things he said about it & you. But with all he said & if he had talked all day, he wouldn't have said enough.

18^th Monday. Today the Appledore* begins her trips & the house opens. I shall be so glad of a daily mail, O no tongue can tell how glad to be able to send letters & receive them.

I am rushing this [ morning ? ] with "last things" before my quiet is invaded. Aunty Reed* comes tomorrow. O I hope the boat will bring me a line from you! How is your dear garden? Mine is triumphant -- weeds all out, peas all stuck, vines trained & every thing

[ Page 3 ]

transplanted that was to be transplanted. I have devoted one whole bed to coreopsis coronata: it is the most beautiful flower! How grows your yellow Venidium? Flat as a mat to the ground! Don't fear, it will send up long slender stalks all clothed in shining yellow bloom & keep sending them up till the frost. Write, write to your ever loving

CT.

Julia* has a little girl born 17^th June{.}

Notes

thy friend. John Greenleaf Whittier. See Key to Correspondents. Whittier in a letter of 10 May 1883 had recommended that Fields read a serialized novel by Scottish author Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897), The Wizard's Son (1884). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9). The serial also appeared in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March 1884, Whittier, Fields, Jewett and Thaxter read it.

Mr. Albee ...Edmund Clarence Stedman: For Stedman, see Key to Correspondents.
John Albee (1833-1915) was an American poet and friend of Stedman, both of whom had homes in Newcastle, NH.
Fields would have appreciated the praise of Stedman, a well-known author and editor. That he mentions the third-century B.C. Greek poet, Theocritus, indicates that Stedman speaks of Fields as a poet and of her 1881 collection, Under the Olive.

The Appledore: In Ninety years at the Isles of Shoals, Oscar Laighton says that the Laightons commissioned the building of the steamer Appledore to carry passengers between Portsmouth, NH and the Isles of the Shoals during the summer season, thereby increasing custom at their hotel. In addition to this steamer, the Laightons also used a steam tugboat, the Pinafore, for transporting supplies and family members throughout the year.

Aunty Reed: This person has not yet been identified, though she is known to have been a philanthropist, a resident of Montpelier, VT, and a close friend of Thaxter.

Julia: Thaxter's brother, Cedric Laighton, is married to Julia Stowell. Their daughter was Ruth. 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 3 (191-209) https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/qb98p381q
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Thursday night

[ 21 June 1883 ]*

My dearest Fuffy

I have just come home from Exeter where we had a most successful occasion. I shall tell you all about it -- sometime, but you will easily imagine it all for yourself --the old classmates having such a beautiful time together and Mother and [ nice ? ]

[ Page 2 ]

aunt Marys* finding very greyheaded beaux and reminding each other of old times -- Today there was a grand dinner in such a big tent! -- Pinny to go, and to be set in a pretty situation on account of the virtue of her forbears and Mr. Bancroft* presided nobly and Ben Butler* made a truly eloquent speech, the best he could do, and Pres.

[ Page 3 ]

Eliot followed in one that went on, most eloquently also -- from where B.B. left off, and though the Governor was greatly applauded Prest Eliot was applauded three times as much. ( * Mr. Geo. S. Hale* made a very fine speech -- one of the very best and that is saying a great deal, and there was such a clapping and

[ Page 4 ]

stamping as never was. Dr. Peabody also was good and great, and Pinny had a most uncommon good ^time^ particularly when her dear grandpapa was speaked about and was clapped and racketted at as much as anyone. Such a noise about him! and he sat there looking so pleased and bright, but as if he were a visitor from the other world of his own day and generation,

[ Page 4 ]

and was a solitary being among the great crowd of two thousand -- two thousand! I don't know how many more, for they gathered and gathered after the dinner was over and the speeches began. [ this not capitalized ] morning she went to see dear old Prof. Packard who was her fathers friend and she went to see her Aunt Helen who had come from Portland with Uncle John,* and in fact she ran about town a good deal. She wore her little Paris dress with the lace yesterday & today until the dinner, when she appeared in

[ Page 6 ]

the white one with the bonnet and ^the little red silk shawl, and^ was considered by her mother to be a very black Pinny, but we will hope a comely Pinny as well.

( -- I wish* I had you here dearest Fuff -- for when we got home (Mary & I) we heard that Carrie was not very well, so Mary went right up there to stay, as Mr. Eastman is still in Exeter.* I hope to

[ Page 7 ]

get Carrie off to the sea before very long -- at least I am trying hard to achieve it -- I am in the midst of high society life for there is to be a big wedding in church! here this ^next^ week and Pinny a front seat! It is one of the Burleighs,* but Fuff doesnt know her -- Oh Fuffy, there is no Wizard's Son* this week either, what shall we do? ----- Dear dear little girl -- I wish you did

[ Page 8 ]

feel like the Italian class -- there will be Pinny to teach again next time we go -- ladies, and Fuffy should think of it. And you need not go every week -- & perhaps -- but I will not tease you because you know best, my darling.

How is Roger?* I suppose he is all right and makes big mud tracks on the clean floor -- and is just the same as ever, but I like to know -- )* I look

[ Page 9 ]

forward always to having you again and being with you -- it is so lovely, and I shut my eyes and look all about -- at the rock* and down into the orchard and out to sea. And I want to hear somebody say yes, when I say Fuf-fy! which doesn't happen now. -- And Pin just said it out loud to see, because she is alone too -- you know. ( -- Mrs. John Phillips was staying with Aunt Mary Bell* and was very nice. I saw a good deal

[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 9 ]

of her -- How nice about Sandpiper!* Good night darling -- from Pin.)

Notes

21 June 1883: This date is confirmed by the notes below, particularly those regarding the centennial celebration of Phillips Exeter Academy.

Fuffy: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

Aunt Marys: Aunt Mary Bell is mentioned later in this letter. The other probably is Mary Olivia Gilman Long. See Key to Correspondents.

Pinny: Nickname for Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

( : This deleted parenthesis mark was almost certainly penciled in by Annie Fields.

Mr. Bancroft ... Ben Butler ... Pres. Eliot ... the Governor ... Mr. Geo. S. Hale ... Dr. Peabody: Established by John Phillips (1719-1795) in 1781, the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH graduated its first class in 1783. A centennial celebration took place on June 20-21, 1883.
    The speakers on the first evening, Wednesday, included: New Hampshire governor, Benjamin F. Prescott (1833-1895) and the Principal of Phillips Academy at Andover, MA, Cecil F. P. Bancroft. On Thursday afternoon, the speakers included: the historian and statesman George Bancroft (1800-1891), the retired president of Harvard University, Rev. Andrew Preston Peabody (1811-1893), Massachusetts governor, Benjamin F. Butler (1818-1893), the current president of Harvard University, Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), and the philanthropist George Silsbee Hale (1825-1897). Hale would be well-known to Fields, who worked with him at the Associated Charities of Boston.
    Academy founder, John Phillips married into the Gilman side of Jewett's family.

old Prof. Packard ... Aunt Helen ... with Uncle John: Professor Alpheus S. Packard, (1798-1884), an academy alumnus, delivered one of the Wednesday evening addresses at the centennial celebration.
    For Helen Williams Gilman and John Taylor Gilman see Key to Correspondents.

wish: The parenthesis mark at the beginning of this paragraph almost certainly was penciled in by Annie Fields.

Mary ... Carrie .. Mr Eastman: Mary Rice Jewett, Caroline Jewett Eastman and Edwin Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.

one of the Burleighs: Jewett was acquainted with the prominent Burleigh family of South Berwick. Matilda Burleigh was the widow of a mill owner and Maine congressman, John Holmes Burleigh (1822-1877). See Wikipedia.
    Their daughter was Sarah Elizabeth Burleigh (1863-1937), who married James Thomas Davidson (1856-1901) on July 3, 1883.

Wizard's Son:  Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was the popular Scottish author of The Wizard's Son (1884). The novel was serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1882 through March 1884 (v. 47-9).
    The novel also was serialized in the United States in Littell's Living Age, 158-160 April 1883 - March, 1884. This presumably is where Jewett, Fields and Whittier read it.

Roger: Probably Jewett's dog, which seems to have stayed for a while with Fields.

know: The parenthesis mark here looks to have been penciled in by Fields, as do those in the remaining portion of the letter.

-- at the rock: It is not clear whether this dash was written by Jewett or by Fields.

Mrs. John Phillips: Probably this is the wife of John Charles Phillips (1838-1885), who was descended from the founder of the Phillips Exeter Academy. She was Anna T. Tucker Phillips (1849-1925).

Sandpiper: Celia Thaxter. 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 Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

[ 22 June 1883 ]*

Messrs Houghton Mifflin & Co.

Please send me by Goodwin's Express 32 Court Square [ two corrected ] copies of Deephaven, Country By-Ways and Old Friends & New.* And will you please send for me to Mrs. Rice* 35 Union Park Boston a copy

[ Page 2 ]

of From Ponkapog to Pesth and ^of^ The Life of Emily Bronte which Roberts lately published.

----

-- Please send another copy [ deleted word ] of the latter book to me in my parcel -- charging all to me.

Yours very truly

Sarah O. Jewett

South Berwick
22 June

Notes

1883: In the upper left in blue ink a Houghton Mifflin date stamp, June 23 1883. On the upper right, in another hand in blue ink: initials that may be TBU, and "Sarah O. Jewett." Jewett dates her letter at the end.

Deephaven, Country By-Ways and Old Friends & New: Jewett has underlined only part of each title, but I have assumed she meant to convey that the whole of each is underlined. These were Jewett's first three books for adult readers, published respectively in 1877, 1881, and 1879.

Mrs Rice: Cora Lee Rice. See Key to Correspondents.

From Ponkapog to Pesth ... The Life of Emily Bronte: Thomas Bailey Adrich's From Ponkapog to Pesth (1883); see Key to Correspondents. And A. Mary F. Robinson, Emily Brontë (1883).

The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944, Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 68 letters from; 1870-1907 and [n.d.]. MS Am 1925 (962). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields

Wednesday night

[ 27 June 1883 ]*

Dear Fuff*

I never knew [ any ] thing so beautiful! but [ of ] course the linnet* loves [it. I ] knew he would; but for [ you ] I was more delighted than you were when I got your letter and his. The dear linnet [ how ] he must have been looking [ more ] and more inscrutably satisfied all the time he was reading it, and have begun the letter

[ Page 2 ]

'incidental' -- And if you had heard him go on about Theocritus* that evening when I did, you would have lost all hope of ever doing the like again -- Oh My dear little Fuff I am so glad about it. Didn't I always say you would have more lovely things to say! Not to be a keeping-still Fuff: but I know one thing -- that Pintoe* bursted its dear self with pride -- it hoped you would excuse it, but it could not contain even one of Pin's feets when she was so proud.

[ breaks off; no signature ]

Notes

July 1883: 1883 appears in pencil in the upper right of page 1. While the letter contains no confirming information, there is a fairly strong implication that Fields has submitted her first poem to Atlantic to be accepted after the death of James T. Fields in April 1881. See notes below.
     Jewett and Fields began using the Fuff and Pinny Lawson nicknames in the spring of 1882.
    This manuscript has two pieces torn away from the right side. Italics words in brackets are guesses about the content of the missing parts.

Fuff: A Jewett nickname for Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.

linnet: The Linnet is a nickname close friends gave to then Atlantic editor, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents.

Theocritus: Theocritus (c. 308 - c. 240 BC), Greek originator of pastoral poetry. Annie Fields's poem, "Theocritus" appeared in Under the Olive (1881).
    If the date of the letter is correct, then Fields's "Theocritus" cannot be the poem that it appears Fields has just shown to Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Further, if the date is correct, then this would likely be the first new poem that Fields published in Atlantic after her husband's death in April 1881. The occasion of Aldrich's enthusiastic acceptance of the poem would be a milestone as Jewett implies. Almost certainly, then, Jewett speaks of "Chrysalides," which appeared in September.
    See Fields to Jewett of June 1883 and Fields to Aldrich of 4 July 1883.

Pintoe: Presumably a play upon Pinny Lawson (Pin), one of Jewett's nicknames. 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 John Greenleaf Whittier

South Berwick

Thursday evening

[28 June 1883] *

Dear Friend:

Your letter has just reached me here, and I can only say that I still hope to reach Holderness¹and that A. F.* will go too. I shall have to stay here for the present as my mother and sister will both be away but the very first chance I can get, I shall try again to make the little visit at the Asquam House to which I have so long been looking forward. It was well that we did not start in the great heat of last week perhaps, but I was much disappointed. I went over to Manchester hoping to start next morning.

It seems to be a great sorrow to our dear friend to stay at Manchester, and neither can she bear to be away, though she seemed to care very much to see you. I stay with her every minute that I can get, but of course at this time of the year I often ought to be here. She is better contented while I am staying with her, but every letter almost makes my heart ache with the story of her miserable loneliness whether she tells it or I only "read between the lines." I am dreadfully troubled sometimes, for in spite of everything it seems as if it were harder and harder for her just to be alive. And there are still so many things to please her and comfort her. The only thing is to keep as close to her as we can and love her all we can. I do truly love her, but I pity her as I would pity a little child that has been run over and hurt, and yet has to get up and keep on its way.

But I must not write only of this sadness. I wish to tell you how glad I am that you are feeling better at Holderness, and that tomorrow morning early Mary* and I are to start for Portsmouth and the Shoals where we are going to spend the night with the Sandpiper.* Saturday night Mary is going on to my aunt's summer place at Little Boar's Head² where she will spend a week or two. Mother is going to Wells on Monday and I am going to write as fast as I can and keep house for myself, though perhaps I shall have Mrs. Rice* here for a day or two. I shall send your note to Annie Fields so she will read it too, and you will see us coming one of these days.

Yours lovingly,

Sarah

Notes

¹ A summer resort village in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Whittier was staying at a new hotel on the peak of Shepard Hill which afforded a magnificent view of the several lakes in its vicinity. The scene inspired his poems "The Hill-Top" and "Storm on Lake Asquam." On July 10 Whittier sent Miss Jewett directions on how to come "two ways," by steamer or by railroad. (Cary, "More Whittier Letters," p. 133.)

² Site of many beautiful summer residences in southeastern New Hampshire. Miss Jewett's maternal family was native to this area.

Editor's Notes

28 June 1883: Richard Cary dated this letter 5 July 1883, which indeed was a Thursday, but Jewett has dated another letter to Lilian Woodman Aldrich from Manchester by the Sea on 5 July. Given the travel plans Jewett describes in this letter, it seems likely she composed it on the Thursday before 5 July.

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

Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.

Sandpiper: Celia Thaxter. See Key to Correspondents.

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

Celia Thaxter to Annie Adams Fields

Dear Annie, I think, I am afraid I sent you the wrong coreopsis -- they are mixed in my garden bed, & until they blossom I cannot be sure which is which -- They are all handsome, but the one I wished to send you is wonderful. In a day or two they will be out, & then I can tell --

How are you, dearest, I wonder, this stormy day? I hoped to see the Paines & Rose* today, but tis so stormy -- I'm sure they wont come -- I am dreading Aunty Reed's* departure on Saturday -- it has been such a comfort to have her here. If Mary* is with you do give my love to her. There are but few people here as yet -- don't expect them till after 4th July -- Poor Julia wont be able to come down till the 20^th = the little Ruth* flourishes. Cedric does nothing but laugh at her, she is so comical, he says.

I have a wonderful letter from Miss Rotch* which I am going to send you presently when I have shown it to Rose.

Aunty Reed has been reading Jane Carlyle* aloud to me while I painted. It is very interesting yet I must confess I did get tired of so many bedbugs & headaches & blue pills & castor oil & sleepless nights & barking dogs -- I think half of it & the bed bugs & bowel complaints would have been better unprinted -- once, twice, or thrice, one could ^have^ patience, but the reiteration, forever & a day! It is such a pity that everything in a person's life should be dragged through the middle of the king's highway; don't you think, dearest?

29^th My birthday* -- so old! 48 -- To think of having lived nearly half a century! It isn't five oclock in the [ morng so written ] -- I have just been down stairs in the big bakery watching the bakers, for they made such wondrous rolls & bread sticks I had to go & see how they did it. O my, such larks, & I am put up to so many tricks! Head baker has worked in the principal confectioners & hotels in Boston & is

all accomplished & what he did with the snow-white, almost aerial, sensitive mass of dough, was perfectly amazing -- And the bakers looked so remarkably picturesque & handsome & innocent, in differently-shaped caps of absolutely snow white linen, indeed the whole costume white like the flour they used -- I feel so learned!

The delicate little rolls he made were so astonishing I had to go & investigate -- I have never seen any thing equal to them here or abroad --

You ask after Mrs De.Normandie* -- I send her letter, dear, in reply to your question. Is it not beautiful to see how the poor child has emerged! I am truly most grateful & thankful --

The boot black, shod with silence, just stole past me up the stairs, to gather up the shoes at sleepers' doors -- that shows how early it is! I am waiting over here at the hotel for the early six o'clock breakfast to be ready, & scratching my notes fast as I can.

Your blessed note came last night -- I am so glad when I see them coming! How lovely to have Mary with you! I sent Mrs Osgood* her pimpernel, thanks to you, for I never dreamed such a place as Bar Mills existed -- She wrote me a pleasant note & said that she had had such a lovely time with you.

There -- my stylographic refuses to write another word -- the ink is out! I am ashamed to send such a dim, illegible scrawl, but its all right if the heart's pure The photo of which Emily speaks is the one Notman* took last winter -- she seems to "like the looks on't" --

Do write to me every time you can, you beautiful sweet dear -- Karl thanks you for your kind words & so do I -- He bears his trouble so well -- & is already at work on more inventions -- O I wish & I wish you were nearer!

Julia ... Ruth: Thaxter's brother, Cedric Laighton, was married to Julia Stowell. Their daughter was Ruth. See Thaxter in Key to Correspondents.

I have a wonderful letter from Miss Rotch: This line seems written in pencil, unlike most of the rest of the letter, but later Thaxter says that what looks like pencil is actually her stylographic pen, a kind of early fountain pen.
Miss Rotch may be Joanna Rotch (1826-1911) of Milton, MA., who shared Thaxter's interest in Spiritualism, or she may be Annie Lawrence Rotch (1857-1950), who married Rose Lamb's brother, Horace, in 1890.

Jane Carlyle: Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle; Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle, Edited by James Anthony Froude. (1883). See Scottsh author and wife of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866).

birthday: This paragraph and the rest of the letter, until the final two paragraphs are written in what looks like pencil, but is apparently stylographic pen.

Mrs De Normandie: For many years, 47 State Street Portsmouth, NH was the winter residence of Oscar Laighton, his sister Celia and her son Karl Thaxter. Laighton purchased the house from Emily. F. de Normandie (1836-1916) in April 1887. Her husband was a Unitarian minister, James de Normandie (1836-1924). See Men of Progress p. 360.

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

Notman: The Scottish-born Canadian photographer William Notman (1826-1891), based in Montreal, maintained studios in the Boston area in the 1880s.

I meant to have told you yesterday that I reached here all right, and that I feel a great deal better and richer for the journey. I find myself remembering that beautiful view of the lakes and the mountain slopes, and thinking of them over and over again. I think it did Mrs. Fields a great deal of good too. We had a most lovely drive in the early morning and the sail on Winnipesaukee was most marvellously beautiful. The sky over the Italian Lakes themselves never was a more delicate colour.¹ Yesterday morning I drove to York and brought Mrs. Rice* and her little boy back with me, and I enjoyed that very much, both the drive and my company for the country is as green as England. I saw the Longfellows² who were glad to hear about you. They are going abroad this autumn to study in Oxford, and next summer are going to make Mrs. Ole Bull* a visit in Norway.

Do give my love to your dear cousins³ and Mrs. Caldwell⁴ for I enjoyed seeing them so much, and shall look forward to seeing them again.

¹ Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields responded to Whittier's appeal, came and stayed about a week. He wrote to both in this same vein: "The place was, I think, never so beautiful. . . . Such a sunset the Lord never before painted" (Pickard, Life and Letters, II, 688); and even more telepathically to Miss Jewett on July 20, "The day was beautiful -- the sunset would have been the despair of a painter. I think I never before saw such a picture of God." (Cary, "More Whittier Letters," p. 133.)

² Probably William Pitt Preble Longfellow (1836-1913), son of the poet's brother Stephen, who married Emily Daniell of Boston in 1870. An engineer and architect, he studied and traveled abroad extensively. He was the first editor of the American Architect and a trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

³ Joseph Cartland (1810-1898) and Gertrude Cartland (1822-1911), who accompanied Whittier on his summer vacations in Maine and New Hampshire for five decades, and in whose home at Newburyport, Massachusetts, he lived most of his last fifteen winters.

⁴ Adelaide Caldwell, wife of Whittier's nephew Lewis, was noted for her sparkling personality at family gatherings.

Mrs. Ole Bull: Sara Chapman Thorp Bull (1850-1911) the widow of famed Norwegian violinist Ole Bull (1810-1880); she lived near the Horsfords at 168 Brattle Street in Cambridge. She sometimes summered at her husband's home in Norway.

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.

Esoteric Buddhism: Alfred Percy Sinnett (1849-1921) Esoteric Buddhism (Houghton Mifflin 1883).

Mrs Eichberg: Julius Eichberg (1824-1893) was a German-born composer, musical director and educator in Boston. His wife was author, Sophie Mertens (d. 1927).
Thaxter has corrected "Insbruck," and she may have spelled it "Innsbruck," but this is not clear.

Willie Beal: William Fields Beal (1870-1939) is Fields's nephew, son of her sister, Louisa Jane Adams, who married James Henry Beal.
Mentioned later in this letter is Field's sister, author and translator, Sarah Holland Adams. See Key to Correspondents.

Esoteric Buddhism: Alfred Percy Sinnett (1849-1921) Esoteric Buddhism (Houghton Mifflin 1883).

Tangled webs: The proverb, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," appears in Sir Walter Scott's 1808 narrative poem, Marmion (p. 345).

Mina Berntsen ... Aunty Reed: Mina Berntsen, Edwin and Thora Ingebertsen are among several Norwegian immigrants who settled in the Isles of the Shoals. Mina, for a number of years, was employed by the Laightons. She is mentioned often in Letters of Celia Thaxter (1895). See Norma Mandel, Beyond the Garden Gate, pp. 80-3.
Aunty Reed has not yet been identified, though she is known to have been a philanthropist, a resident of Montpelier, VT, and a close friend of Thaxter.

my head: Thaxter refers to an injury she sustained in July 1883. A "rubber," would be called a massage or physical therapist today, assuming that the person had some training for the work.

I was so glad to get your letter, and it was so good of you to tell me that you liked the Dunluce poem.¹ I did not see the proof of it or I should have proved myself a better workman, for some things stare me in the face in a very distressing way. I always find that my first-instinctive word is so much better than any I can think of afterward! But it did me no end of good to think you liked it, and I wish we could whisk through the air and go through Dunluce Castle together -- though not on such a windy day as the one when I was there before; we had to go across a narrow bit of wall that was the only bridge across the deep ravine. When I think of that amazing ruin I almost feel capable of writing a robber or a huntsman story that would put my dead friend Mayne Reid² to his trumps.

I was "moved" up from Manchester with my dog Roger two weeks ago tomorrow and our last days there were very pleasant ones, for we (A. F.* and I) drove or walked a great deal. One day we went to Coffin's Beach* which I had never seen before, and we took a last look at Essex which I have quite fallen in love with. It is all afloat when the tide is in, like a little Venice, and the shipwrights' hammers knock at the timbers all day long, as if all the ghosts of departed shipbuilders from all along shore were chiming in with the real ones. I have been thinking a good deal about a longish story to be called A Marsh Island³ and I have had beautiful times going to Essex to see about it. I haven't made the first scratch at a sheet of paper yet, but it is well begun.

We hoped you would be coming in some day at breakfast time but I shall be sure to see you when I go to town again. I don't think it will [be] a great while first -- for Master Roger* is so homesick and he and the other big dog squabble so that there is no living with them. They have been "only children" too long! Ann (the old cook)⁴ says that Roger is "like a mon from our place that wint away over into Scotland for six weeks and when he come back he didn't know his mother's cat, nor what she was at all annyway!" He seemed to be quite bewildered and strange, poor Roggy!

Mary* sends her love to you, and so do I. I have read Miss Phelps's book⁵ and I think most of it is very beautiful and though the sillinesses of it hurt one a little, there's ever so much to be thankful for, and I know it will do good and make vague things real to many people. Goodbye.

¹ "Dunluce Castle," Harper's, LXVII (November 1883), 924; collected in Verses (1916). On October 20 Whittier had written to praise Miss Jewett's "admirable little poem." (Cary, "Whittier Letters," p. 15.) In these six quatrains she delineates the ruined domain of the first Marquis of Antrim which she noted on her visit to Dunluce on the northernmost coast of Ireland.

² Thomas Mayne Reid (1818-1883), Irish-born son of a Presbyterian minister, came to the United States at twenty in search of adventure. After a varied career as storekeeper, Negro overseer, schoolmaster, actor, and journalist, he began to turn out volumes of thrilling exploits for adults and for boys.

³ A Marsh Island was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, January-June 1885, and published later that year in book form. Essex County is the northeastern coastal corner of Massachusetts from Saugus to Newburyport, extending inland to Lawrence and Haverhill. The section Miss Jewett particularly liked was dominated by the tidewater which formed a web of creeks and channels through miles of salt marsh. See Cary, S. O. J. Letters, pp. 56-57.

⁴ Ann Rogers was one of the several immigrant Irish servants who lived in the Jewett household during Sarah's lifetime.

⁵ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps [Ward], Beyond the Gates (Boston, 1883). In this story of a woman who thinks she dies and goes to heaven, Miss Phelps tried to recapture the popular favor she won with The Gates Ajar (1868).

Editor's Notes

Coffin's Beach: Wikipedia notes: "Wingaersheek Beach is a 0.6-mile ... long beach located on the Annisquam River in West Gloucester, Massachusetts.... The beach was alternatively called Coffins Beach for Peter Coffin whose farm was located alongside this beach."

Master Roger: For Jewett's sketch of her Irish setter, see her letter to Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham of August 29, 1886.

Thank you so much for sending me your new book.¹ I sat down to read it at once and I thought I knew most of it, so I would look for the new poems, but I found they were all new -- and more beautiful and true than any words of mine can say. I cannot thank you enough for the books which have grown dearer and more helpful to me year by year -- as I have grown older.

I have just seen an empty cover of my new book², which will be going to you before long, with everything finished outside and in. I hope I shall tell you by and by that I have finished a longer story, but I don't dare to make any promises! Did I tell you that I fell in love with Essex? I thought I should embark on a long bit of gossip* about that neighbourhood, but it doesn't seem to have bones enough yet, for a story.

I hope to see and hear Matthew Arnold³ and so I may go to town next week for a day and night. I hear that "The Sandpiper"* has gone back to her winter perch. I like to think of you at Amesbury. Somehow it seems a great deal nearer than Danvers, and I can almost say good morning.⁴ I have just come in from a drive over the windy hills to Dover, and it is pleasant to see the farms, and meet the barrels of apples riding out. I should think the shiny outdoors things would hate to spend their latter days in country cellars -- such as were not bound for John Wentworth's cider mill!⁵

¹ The Bay of Seven Islands, and Other Poems was issued in October 1883. Of the twenty-two poems it contains, seventeen were previously published. Miss Jewett may mean that they were all new to her.

² The Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore is dated 1884 but was copyrighted and issued in 1883. Dedicated "To A.F.," it is a collection of eight short stories mostly from the Atlantic Monthly.

³ During his lecture tour of the United States, October 1883-March 1884, Matthew Arnold stayed for some time at Mrs. Fields's house in Boston. Miss Jewett fondly remembered him sitting at the fireside reading his "The Scholar Gipsy." Although Whittier held Arnold's writings in high esteem and "would like exceedingly to meet" him, he thought it little likely that he could get into town on time. However, Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields prevailed on him to the extent that Whittier had lunch on Thanksgiving Day or shortly thereupon with the British celebrity. See Cary, "Whittier Letters," p. 15.

⁴ Amesbury, Massachusetts, is approximately thirty-five miles due south of South Berwick, Maine; Danvers, Massachusetts, some twenty-five miles farther south.

⁵ The area between Dover, New Hampshire, and South Berwick, Maine -- a distance of some seven miles -- might well be called Wentworth country. The famous Wentworth Manor is in Salmon Falls nearby, and numerous descendants of the Wentworth clan made their homes in the vicinity. The family was prominent for its governors, divines, philanthropists, Indian fighters, and tavern hosts.

Editor's Notes

long bit of gossip: Probably Jewett is thinking about her novel, A Marsh Island (1885), which is set in Essex. However, her next novel was A Country Doctor (1884).