Sarah Orne Jewett Letters of 1902
Sarah Orne Jewett to Isaac Rockwood Webber
[ Postal card cancelled January 4, 1902 ]*
[ Address side ]
Mess'rsEstes &^C. E.^ Lauriat Co.
301 Washington Street
Boston
Mr Webber*
[ Message side ]
Please send the Correspondance: 6 vols of George Sand -- and the Histoire de la Dentelle on your last Catalogue (Fine old French Books) to me at 148 Charles Street
S. O. Jewett
Notes
1902: The day is not easily readable in this cancellation; for example it may read JAN 14.
C. E. Lauriat: Charles Emelius Lauriat, Jr. (1842-1920) and Dana Estes (1840-1909) were Boston publishers and booksellers. Lauriat was a survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania (1 May 1915) and published a narrative of the event. See Lauriat's 1872-1922 by George H. Sargent (1922) and Who's Who in America (1903).
Mr Webber: Isaac Rockwood Webber ( - 1940), is listed as Vice-President beginning in 1873 in Lauriat's 1872-1922 by George H. Sargent (1922).
George Sand: The Correspondance (1812-1876) of French author Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, known as George Sand, was published in French in 1882. Jewett's spelling confirms that she wants to purchase the French language edition. WorldCat does not list an English translation before 1902.
Histoire de la Dentelle: Histoire de la Dentelle (1843) is by François Fertiault (1814-1915), a French author of fiction, poetry and essays. It was originally published anonymously, as "Par M. de ***." Encyclopedia Britannica explains that this was a "brief and rather fanciful" history of lace (1911, v. 16, p. 47).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Small Library, University of Virginia, Special Collections MSS 6218, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Catherine Ann Janvier to Sarah Orne Jewett
New York
160 West 48 [ th ? ] Street
7 [ th ? ] January 1902
My dear Mifs Jewett
How good, how very good of you to send us your book! It went over to England and now has just come to us here, so you must please excuse the long delay in acknowledging it.
We often talk of you and wish we could see you. Will you not be in New York this
[ Page 2 ]
Winter? I hope so and you must let us know before you come to that we may meet in some comfortable way.
We came over rather unexpectedly{,} arriving the 22 December, and shall spend the winter in this country as far as we know.
With our warm regards
[ Page 3 ]Note
and our best wishes for the new year I am yours very sincerely
Catherine A. Janvier
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Miller Library, Special Collections, Colby College, Waterville, ME: JEWE.1. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ January 1902 ? ]*
Dearest, it is a little hard, but Friday afternoon looks very doubtful, owing to the appointment of Friday evening for [ an ? ] Arts & Crafts [ event ? ] which I have been begging them to have & all [ at once ? ], when I wasnt at the meeting they decided to have it Thurs. The 19th is made all right
[ Page 2 ]
by a [ postponement ? ] at Radcliffe --- & I not only go but go blessed. But I fear for Friday.
We shall speak of these things I hope on Monday at association Hall (You & A.F.* duly received your cards I trust for the archaeological meeting at 4.30 ? Miss Boyd is very attractive & has much [ experience ? ] in Crete.Love from
Sw_*
Notes
January 1902: Almost certainly this date is correct, as indicated in the notes below regarding the lecture tour of Harriet Boyd during this month.
Arts & Crafts event: Probably Whitman refers to the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, organized in 1897.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Miss Boyd: American archaeologist, Harriet Boyd Hawes (1871-1945), who pioneered work on the island of Crete. She taught language and archaeology at Smith College from 1901 to 1905. In March 1906, she married Charles Henry Hawes, a British anthropologist and archaeologist, who later worked at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1902, she lectured around the United States on her work in Crete.
It appears that Whitman, Fields and Jewett planned to attend Miss Boyd's lecture at Association Hall, then at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston Streets in Boston.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich
21st January
1902
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear Lilian
To think that the weeks fly away so! I waited to go to town after I wrote you and when I was there I waited until I could go to see Mrs. Richardson* and then I waited to get home again for a quite time when I could write a longer letter, and here I am with your dear little Christmas present still thankless and your dear little granddaughter* almost a month old! Well! I knew that Mrs. Fields* would
[ 2 ]
write for both of us in the first place, and that you would not doubt my thanks or my great rejoicing at your own pleasure.
Mrs. Richardson told me that the smaller Lilian had shown excellent determination as to the employment of her own thumb -- and I seemed to detect signs of inherited energy! I should love to see the dear little thing -- please give my special love to her father and mother. I can hardly think of Charlie's pleasure when he takes a good look at her! ^What would the two great grandmothers have said!^ Most of my
[ 3 ]
my days in Boston this time were spent in my winter visit to "my Mrs. Cabot" who had her eightieth birthday* while I was there, and seemed younger at heart than ever. She is busy reading all day and at night we took to backgammon for [ deleted word ] ^knitting^ work. The chief value of my being there is just my being there! -- so that I dont go out very much if I can help it and last year I was drowned in my story writing* and could really think of little else, but this year we had a dear good time together. A.F. and I met nearly every day, and I spent a day or two with her before I came home. Mrs Leonowens grand daughter who plays*
[ 4 ]
quite beautifully was staying with her, but she has just gone now, and Mary* and I are going on Thursday or Friday to make a good visit to 148.* I think that one dear friend has been very well so far this winter, and you do not know how happy she has been at all the good news from you{,} especially to hear of Charlie's getting on so well. I had a nice visit to Mrs. Richardson and I shall go again. She seemed very cheerful as she did last year when I saw her. And I was glad to see Miss Vauchel* again. It is so sad to see those poor hands -- but lovely to see such patience {--} it is bringing a lesson to us who
[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]
can go about the world [ deleted word ] while she sits so still! I long to know what T.B.* is doing and with what pipes he is comfortably wintering! I hope that the big Russian holder made its journey safely. What is he reading I wonder that dear boy! We miss so much his [ unrecognized word -- first ? ]
[ Up the left margin of page 2 ]
word of a new book. I have been reading with the greatest delight the letters of Lady
[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 3 ]
Louisa Stuart to Miss Clinton,* a most delightful book. Good bye with love to all from
"Sadie"*
[Top left margin page 4 ]
Mary sends you her love.
Notes
Mrs. Richardson ... Seawoods: According to George Carey's "The Rise and Fall of Elmore," The William Richardsons at Seawoods and the Aldriches at the Crags were neighbors during summers at Tenants Harbor, ME. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Later referred to as A.F.
your dear little granddaughter: Charles F. Aldrich and Maria Louisa Richards had a daughter. Lilian, born on 31 December 1901.
"my Mrs. Cabot" who had her eightieth birthday: Susan Burley Howes Cabot. See Key to Correspondents. Her birthday was January 13, 1822
drowned in my story writing: In the previous winter, Jewett was at work on The Tory Lover, which was appearing serially in Atlantic Monthly, beginning in November.
Mrs Leonowens grand daughter who plays: Anna Harriette Leonowens. See Key to Correspondents.
Her daughter was Avis Annie Connebeare Leonowens Fryshe, who was the mother of four daughters. The oldest, Anna Harriette Fryshe (b. 1881), of Montreal, Québec, became a piano performer and educator.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
148: The address of Annie Adams Fields on Charles St., Boston.
Miss Vauchel: There is reason to believe this is Lucy Voshell, a Boston private nurse, who cared for Annie Fields, among others. But this is not certain.
T.B.: Thomas Bailey Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents.
letters of Lady Louisa Stuart to Miss Clinton: Wikipedia says that Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851) was a British writer, mainly of memoirs and letters, most of which remain unpublished. "Between 1895 and 1898, Mrs Godfrey Clark edited and published three volumes of Stuart's work called Gleanings from an Old Portfolio (Correspondence of Lady Louisa Stuart), and the Hon. James A. Home followed these with Lady Louisa Stuart: Selections from her Manuscripts (New York & London: Harper Brothers, 1899) and with two volumes of Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart to Miss Louisa Clinton, published in Edinburgh in 1901 and 1903."
"Sadie": This nickname in full, with the Aldriches, would have been Sadie Martinot, after the actress of that name. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Bailey 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: 2763.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 25 January 1902 ]*
Dearest, I am expecting you know to take you to the [ Concert corrected ] of a Saturday! and thought to square up the train of the escapade where [ Monsieur ? ] [ unrecognized word ] was occupying the floor.
So no more till then.
Sw__
Notes
25 January 1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 25 January 1901 and addressed to Jewett at 148 Charles Street, Boston.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Alice Meynell to Annie Adams Fields
Addrefs: C/O [ unrecognized word ] Tobin*
Taylor and California Streets
San Francisco
Glendefsary
Santa Barbara
February 18.
[ 1902 ]
My dear Mrs Fields.
As I have at last decided on the plans of all my days acrofs the continent. I lose no more time in asking you whether you will renew your most kind and gracious invitation to me to visit you m Boston,
[ Page 2 ]
for the end of March.
I could be in Boston at any time from the 23rd of March to the first of April, and I should love to spend a few of those days with you.
You will, I trust, tell me frankly if for
[ Page 3 ]
any reason it should not be convenient to receive me then; also whether or not you would he able to extend the invitation to Mifs Tobin, who is with me. She would of course go to the hotel if you were not able to do this; and so would I if there were
[ Page 4 ]
any difficulties in the way of my staying with you.
In regard to the Club where a lecture was proposed, I could attend there on one of the afternoons of the last week in March, as it would suit them best.
With very happy anticipations of the pleasure of seeing you at last.
I am
Dear Mrs. Fields
Most sincerely yours
Alice Meynell
Notes
Tobin: American poet, Agnes Tobin (1864-1939), who accompanied Meynell on her 1901-1902 American lecture tour. One would expect the unrecognized word to be "Agnes" or "Miss," but it appears to be neither.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 47: mss FI 3316, Folder 1. Archival notes on the manuscript have not been reproduced. This letter was previously transcribed by Damian Atkinson for The Selected Letters of Alice Meynell (2013). New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett and Carrie Jewett Eastman
Saturday morning
[February 1902]
Dear Mary and Carrie.
I meant to get another letter written yesterday but we went out early in a cab to do some errands and then the day flew right away. I got part of a letter written to Carrie, but there wasnt much in it so I shall begin over again. I went to see Mrs. Whitman* in the course of the errands and had to talk about so many things that A.F.* thought I never was coming after expecting to stay only a minute -- Dorothy Ward* came over after luncheon and
[ Page 2 ]
is the same nice English girl I remembered grown much older somehow in two years and a half so that I forget half the time that she isn't as old as we are! Mrs. Fields had asked a good many young people to some music at five o'clock. Sally Norton* came & played and Miss O'Brion* (more beautiful than ever!) and Mr. Whitney and a young girl* to sing whom we had heard about, and it was all very pleasant. Ellen Mason* was here and we had a nice time in a corner. After every
[ Page 3 ]
body else had gone we kept Sally Norton and her sister Margaret* to dinner and had a very gay little time. . I wore my velvet dress with the high waist and almost found it too warm -- it was such a springlike day. I have been troubled with my knee -- it comes on to ache but in a way that makes you think it will have a sharp time and then got as well as ever. at any rate I cant do anything that I know of. A. F. looked rather wilted with a cold yesterday
[ Page 4 ]
but isn't any the worse today. Her count of mice has got up to 18 which she wishes to have mentioned, and her bulbs are all in pods to bloom but nothing like Carries. -- I got this nice [letter corrected] from Georgie* which I send you. And Cora's* telegram I answered with a special delivery letter making bold to say you would be glad to have her come so. What a nice time Carrie must have had and given. I wish I were there to hear of it. I wonder if Auntie could
[ Page 5*
[Fragment from before 1900, but placed with the above fragment in the HNE collection.]
is a lil' scrat.* I was so much obliged by Sister Carrie's letter -- it afforded me many welcome crumbs of information{.} I was so glad you passed the day in Exeter and with such plesant results to all. What a good time you must all have had with Hattie.* I shall try to see her but not today it being a Saturday -- I wish you were here. Next Saturday Mr. Warner* is coming and he always draws friends like flies to a nice piece of sugar. I believe he is going to stay two or three days. He wrote so
[ Page 6 ]
funny saying that somebody else had asked him and that could be done, so you may believe that the desired invitation was promptly sent! Here's Haggerty* so good by with much love from Sarah.
Notes
Mrs. Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Key to Correspondents.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Dorothy Ward: Dorothy Ward paid a long visit to Jewett and Fields in February of 1902. See Mrs. Humphry Ward in Key to Correspondents.
Sally Norton: Sara Norton. Her sister Margaret also was present on this occasion. See Key to Correspondents.
Miss O'Brion: Mary Eliza O'Brion (1859-1930 -- unconfirmed life dates), Boston-based concert pianist, private teacher, and instructor at Wellesley College. Her name appears regularly on programs as a piano soloist and accompanist with various groups and orchestras.
Mr. Whitney and a young girl: Mr. Whitney is very likely Myron W. Whitney (1836-1910), a Boston-based operatic bass. At the time of this letter, he was retired from the stage. The young girl singer who joined him remains unknown.
Ellen Mason: See Key to Correspondents.
Georgie: Georgina Halliburton. See Key to Correspondents.
Cora: Cora Clark Rice. See Key to Correspondents.
Page 5: The apparent lack of continuity here suggests that a page or more may be missing from the letter, but almost certainly what follows is part of a different letter. The reference below to Charles Dudley Warner dates this fragment from before his death in 1900, while the reference to a visit by Dorothy Ward above dates that fragment to 1902.
Auntie could ... lil' scrat: The identity of Auntie is unknown. Without more context, what Jewett means by "scrat" is uncertain. Dictionaries associate the word with "scratch," suggesting that she refers to something painful or irritating or to a devil as in "old scratch."
Hattie: The identity of Hattie is uncertain. She may be Hattie Denny, sister of Augusta Maria Denny Tyler. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Warner: Charles Dudley Warner. See Key to Correspondents.
Haggerty: This seems to be a worker at Fields's house.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Historic New England in the Jewett Family Papers MS014.02.01. Transcription and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
[ 25 February 1902 ]
Dear Friend
Do you mind the summers day when we sat on those rocks reading the story of the boy of Egremond* and how Theodore leapt over and back again having no hound in the Leashe to pull him in to his doom{?} I thought you would like to have the photo. It is very good as you will see so set it on a table where you sit { -- } really and truly I many a time leaped across in the days of my youth but when I was over in 1891 we went there on a jaunt and my mother said now my lad let me see thee jump over.* But I said no I dare not run the risk with a debt on the new church of fifty thousand dollars so I backed own. The Church was burnt a month after we got home but there was no debt the day we left to come to New York and the Church was restored. We are all well as I trust you are. Son Robins* marriage to his dear sweetheart will take place I think in the summer at Billerica{,} the country summer home of her family{,} but the time is not set. We are very much at home in the new apartment. Dear me
[ Page 2 ]
when will you and Sarah* just drop in casually for tarts{?} I am not sure of them after four months. Mr Roberts* has started a business in Sea Cliff on the Sound and Bertha will leave us at the end of June or perhaps before. Then Gertrude bless her will take the house into her care. Do make an excuse to come. Mrs Eastman* and the younger children are in Arizona picking oranges from the trees. As you ride along think of that and then see the mounds of snow in our streets. She is quite recovered the dear daughter of her malady in the tubes but the physician said she must not face our winter and I do not blame them.
I keep busy and a stiff upper lip when there is need of one.* I wish something could compel me to come to Boston{,} something pleasant I mean for I long to see you.* With love all round
Same as ever yours
Robert Collyer
201 West 55th st.
New York Feb 25 I guess
1902
Notes
over: Collyer omits many periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Egremond: A familiar version of this story is "The Boy of Egremond." by British poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Less familiar is a poem of the same title by British poet Samuel Rogers (1763-1855).
Theodore probably is Sarah Orne Jewett's nephew, Theodore Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.
Robins: Collyer's son, Robin Staples (1862-1928), married Gertrude Savage. See Key to Correspondents. Here, Collyer refers to another Robin/Robert, the son of his daughter Emma Hosmer. This Robert married Naomi Elspeth Wylie (1880-1942) in October 1906. See Hosmer Genealogy.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Roberts: John E. Roberts married Collyer's niece, Bertha, who, for a number of his later years, was Collyer's housekeeper.
Mrs. Eastman: Collyer's daughter, Harriet. See Collyer in Key to Correspondents.
one: Here and after "you" in the next sentence, Collyer has placed these asterisks, but circled. From the second of these, he has drawn a line to a note in the lower left margin that probably reads:
SOJ.
("Dear boy!" says A.F.)
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Robert Underwood Johnson
148 Charles St Boston
Feby -- 27th 1902
Dear Mr. Johnson:
I hope I thanked you for your kind note of introduction to Mifs Sedgwick* whom we find a very pleasing little lady. I have only been able to see her once but we hope to do so again very soon{.}
With best wishes to you both from Mifs Jewett & myself
believe me
most [ truly ? ] yours
Annie Fields
Notes
Sedgwick: Probably this was British-American author Anne Douglas Sedgwick (1873-1936).
Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
This manuscript is held by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. MS Johnson, RU Recip. Fields, Annie, 7 ALS, 1 APCS to Robert Underwood Johnson. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward to Annie Adams Fields
Feb 28. 1902.
[ Begin letterhead ]
STOCKS,
TRING.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear Mrs Fields
How very kind of you & Mifs Jewett* to write to me about my Dorothy!* It gave me so much pleasure to have yourkindmost graceful & friendly words -- how she will have enjoyed staying with you! Will you please tell my dear Mifs Jewett that I shall be writing to her next
[ Page 2 ]
mail, & that I am [ penetrated ? ] with remorse for not having yet written to her about her book. Will she forgive me? The burden of writing on this lame hand of mine during the past year has been almost [ unbearable ? ] -- what with a play, a novel,* & a rapid growth of these Invalid Schools all over England which has entailed a great deal of writing, & some speaking which last takes it out
[ Page 3 ]
of me a good deal.
How I wish I could fly across & drop into your drawing room one evening in the firelight! How much there would be to talk about!
Dear Mrs Fields, I must stop & go to bed, for my hand is stiff with long writing. But I do think most affectionately of you & Mifs Jewett & beg you to believe me always
Your attached friend
Mary A. Ward
Notes
Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. Jewett's "new book" in 1902 was The Tory Lover (1901).
Dorothy: Dorothy Ward was deeply involved with her mother's charity work, including establishing schools for invalid children. She visited Fields and Jewett in Boston in the spring of 1902. See Mrs. Humphry Ward in Key to Correspondents.
novel: Probably Ward has been writing her next novel, Lady Rose's Daughter (1902), which began serialization in Harper's Magazine in May 1902.
Her first play to be published was an adaptation of Eleanor (1903). According to Janet Penrose Trevelyan in The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward (1923), getting the play produced in 1902 was a difficult struggle, and it did not fare well when it opened in October.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda: mss FI 5637, Box 64, Ward, Mary Augusta (Arnold), 14 pieces. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
George Emery Littlefield to Mrs. Katharine B. Lewis
[ Begin letterhead, handwritten date information in blue ]
GEORGE E. LITTLEFIELD.
Dealer in
Old, Rare & [ Curios so spelled ] Books, Genealogies, &c.
American Histories a Specialty.
67 Cornhill
Boston, Mass., Mar. 1 1902
[ End Letterhead ]
Mrs K. B. Lewis
Dear Madam
Miss S. O. Jewett spoke to me about your History of Gorham, Me.* If you will allow me a [ twentyfive so spelled ] per cent discount, I will take ten copies now and will probably sell quite a number more.
[ unrecognized mark ]
Geo. E. Littlefield*
Notes
With this letter is an envelope addressed to Mrs. Katharine B. Lewis in South Berwick, ME., canceled on 1 or 2 March 1902. Penciled across the top: RE: SARAH ORNE JEWETT. Printed on the left front of the envelope:
GEORGE E. LITTLEFIELD.
Dealer in
Old, Rare & Curious Books,
Town Histories, Genealogies,
Biographies, Travels,
Books relating to Indians,
Historical Pamphlets,
and
Scarce Americana.
67 Cornhill, - - - Boston.
History of Gorham, Me.: Hugh Davis McLellan (1805-1878), a merchant and politician from Gorham, Maine, was the author of The History of Gorham, Maine, compiled and edited by his daughter, Katharine B. Lewis (1836-1913). Katharine McLellan married South Berwick pastor, George Lothrop Lewis. See Key to Correspondents.
Littlefield: George Emery Littlefield (1844-1915).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence Box 3 Folder 218. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
201 West 55th Street
New York
[ End letterhead ]
March 2d -- 1902
Dear Friends
Woe is me because like Sternes starling "I can't get out."* Last year I failed to go to the Chapin Home* to their yearly festival and promised to go this year if I lived. It is understood that the old inmates are not reconciled if I miss. I go on one Sunday to hold a service and then to this festival to tell them yarns and tomorrow I must go. Then on Sunday it is my preach and the elder folk of my ministry lot on my being in good fettle as we say in Yorkshire. So here I am a prisoner. Please give me a chance after Easter { -- } how glad I shall be never mind about who is to sing or read or no'thn. Mr Savage* is to be in Boston one Sunday in that month but if you say come we can steer clear of that week easily i e I can and will find out what week he comes on. I shall not be able to come to the May meetings. It is the Jubilee of our mother Churchtherein Chicago. The Western Conference meets to jubilate and I have promised to preach the sermon and attend the Conference from the seventh of May
[ Page 2 ]to the end { -- } shall return by way of Ithaca for I am due at Cornell on the 24th where I have preached these twenty one years. Last year I asked the President Schurman* to let me resign on account of age and long service and he said come until you are eighty and then we will talk it over so there I am again.
Deacon Mary* has me down for the tiny Chapel on August 24th. I wish you uns would pick out a sermon. Bless us here I am talking as if I was a mere youth { -- } all this time ahead.
I have been vastly refreshed reading once more the Life of Sydney Smith.* I finished last night at ten of the clock. "what a man he be [ surely ? ]."
In love always yours
Robert Collyer
Notes
out: Collyer refers to Anglo-Irish author Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). In A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Sterne recounts trying to free a caged starling that repeats "I can't get out!"
Collyer omits many periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Chapin Home: Probably Collyer refers to the Chapin Home for the Aging, now located in Jamaica, NY.
Mr Savage: American Unitarian minister, Minot Judson Savage (1841-1918).
Western Conference: The Western Unitarian Conference.
President Schurman: Jacob Gould Schurman (1854-1942) was President of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (1892-1920).
Deacon Mary: This person has not yet been identified.
Life of Sydney Smith: Sydney Smith (1771-1845) was a British author and cleric. Collyer had a choice of "lives" he could have read, including Stuart J. Reid, A Sketch of the Life and Times of Sydney Smith (1884).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Alice Meynell to Annie Adams Fields
[ 6 March 1902 ]*
[ Glendefsary ]
Santa Barbara
March 6.
My dear Mrs. Fields
Thank you for your most kind letter. I hope to arrive accordingly on March 23rd and it would give me very great pleasure to stay until the morning of the first of April{.}
Thank you also for
[ Page 2 ]
your kindnefs in offering a room to Mifs Tobin.* She however was suddenly called to Paris, and I am taking the homeward journey alone.
In anticipation of the pleasure of seeing you
I am
Dear Mrs. Fields
Very sincerely yours
Alice Meynell
Notes
1902: In 1902, Meynell made a lecture tour of the United States, staying a Glendessary in Santa Barbara, CA, during the late winter. Glendessary was the home of American banker, poet and editor, Robert Cameron Rogers (1862-1912). See Obituary of Yale Graduates 1911-12, p. 256.
Tobin: American poet, Agnes Tobin (1864-1939), who accompanied Meynell on her 1901-1902 American lecture tour.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 47: mss FI 3315, Folder 1. Archivist notations on this letter have not been transcribed. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ March 1902 ]*
Dearest. I am writing to Sally Norton to see if she will bring Dorothy Ward* for luncheon on Saturday, and if she does could I ask a dear dear trio at 148* to join forces? please say yes to
_Sw_
and if you see the children at [ Mrs Seusses ? ], you might speak of it!
Notes
March 1902: This date is supported by other correspondence from the spring of 1902 that mentions Dorothy Ward visiting in Boston.
This letter apparently consists of a folded page, leaving a blank side outward on which Whitman addressed it to Jewett at 148 Charles Street.
Sally Norton ... Dorothy Ward: See Sarah Norton and Mrs. Humphry Ward, mother of Dorothy Ward, in Key to Correspondents.
trio at 148: Jewett and Fields would be two of the residents at Fields's home, 148 Charles Street. The third person may be Alice Meynell, who was Annie Fields's guest in March of 1902; see Sarah Orne Jewett to Louise Chandler Morton, 19 March. See Key to Correspondents.
[ Mrs Seusses ? ]: The transcription is uncertain, the person not yet identified
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Augusta Ward to Sarah Orne Jewett
March 9,
1902.
[ Begin letterhead ]
25, GROSVENOR PLACE. S.W.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear Mifs Jewett --
You kind & [ constant ? ] friend! -- how dear it was of you to write to me about my Dorothy, and just the things that I liked to hear. And now she has been staying with you, & you have been so good to her, & she has felt something of the austere charm & freshness of
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your winter country, & has ^been^ delighting in the old house you have described in your book. I do thank you so much, & I would like to write you a long, long letter, for which this morning* as it seldom happens, I have a quiet inviting hour. But alack -- my hand is really troubling me, -- and I get nervous & alarmed about it, with the Harper story* only half finished & no possibility where
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literary work is concerned of dictating. It is an old weakness as you [ deletion ] know, but it has been rather worse of late, and I have been getting depressed. Do you ever suffer from it? It is partly I think the long weekly letters to Dorothy and [ Arnold ? ]* in addition to the book that have been putting an extra strain upon it and making the nerves in the arm so irritable. I want to write to you about "A Tory Lover"* --
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full of all your charm and distinction! -- and to chat to you about my own new story, but I mustn't! -- for chapter XII has got to be finished, my little secretary is away at the settlement,* & my arm is already stiff & painful. Will you believe dear Mifs Jewett in all the loving & grateful things I would say this morning & can't? I do hope it may not be long before you and I and
[ Cross written in the upper left quarter of page 1 ]
Mrs Fields* meet again. Do come to England & Stocks this summer{.}
Your ever affectionate
Mary A. Ward
Notes
Dorothy: Dorothy Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
morning: Ward sometimes seems to write "g" for "ing." I render these as "ing."
Harper story: At this time, Ward was working on Lady Rose's Daughter (1903).
Arnold: If this transcription is correct, then this would be Ward's son.
Tory Lover: Jewett's The Tory Lover was published in 1901.
settlement: The Passmore Edwards Settlement (now Mary Ward House), founded by Mary Augusta Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Ward, Mary Augusta (Arnold) 1851-1920. 7 letters; 1893-1904 & [n.d.]. bMS Am 1743 (228).
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.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Rice Jewett
[ 11-12 March 1902 ]
Tuesday night
Dear Mary
I wish that you had stayed over and gone to Sylvia Emerson’s* tonight. We have just come home after such a pleasant evening! Happily it occurred to me that she might have somebody else there and so we went clad as for the feast of last night and ^found^ Sylvia’s sister Ladd and "Will Ladd" and Mrs. Charley Wentworth,* and I did have such a nice funny gossip with the last named too about Portsmouth subjects,* and they were really very nice
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and furnished with every agreeable particular from a story about Mr. Frank Hayes and his [ lady corrected ] mother and a beautiful silver pitcher, to the description of George Haven’s bringing down a house-party and driving through the streets in barouches [ so corrected ] that they met the pompes funébres of cousin Eliza Haven! If [ one corrected ] eye had not gone to sleep already I should be obliged to write these details in full . . . . . Mrs. Wentworth, is very pleasant not bawling like Maria and she touched my heart by the affection with which she spoke of "cousin Lizzie Goodwin"* at Old
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Fields . . I do wish you had been there if only to have speaked with Mr. Ladd about Will Shackford.* He "sets a great deal by him" but was so alive to peculiarities! Mr. Emerson and Sylvia were both in excellent spirits though I dont think she looked well -- They were sorry that you couldn’t stay & come.
Thank Becca* for her nice letter tonight tonight -- she was very kind to write. And I was glad to hear about Timmy* and the little piece of sun; they are all round the house for Timmy now.
Neither A. F.*
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nor I went out this afternoon though I might have gone and she had laid all plans but she read in her room and I read in mine on the little bed, but missing a sister. I suppose that I must go to Georgina's* tea tomorrow, for her sake and Mrs. Haven’s. Mrs. Wentworth said that Miss R was a very kind-hearted nice girl who knew [ but corrected ] little of the world or of the people of it -- and she was afraid that George Haven would hardly make her happy -- the money was of [ course corrected ] a great temptation, &c.
No more at present -- I heard that all the baggage people had gone out on strike and I hope you were not bothered?
[ Page 5 ]
Continued! Wednesday morning
Please remember the little straw case for money: the one with the purple stripe, and it is in the front of my top drawer. ---
A nice satisfactory letter from Mrs. Meynell* this morning & the friend has been called to Paris so that she wont come too ^on the 23rd^ which is nice -- perhaps if I had seen her I should now be lamenting! I am going out rather early today, to get a photograph of the Shaw monument* to send Madame de Beaulaincourt* by the hand of S. W*. and "something for" Thérèse.*
I have just offered me to Mrs. Cabot* for luncheon
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and was accepted by Katy with acclaim as Mrs. Cabot was going to be all alone. |
There is a black and white Kitty, Mary, who has been first in my [ deleted word ] ^lap^ and is now sitting in the [ middle corrected ] of my desk bolt upright and I have to write as I can. The end of her tail is almost in the big inkbottle.
I must write to Laura Richards* now which I forgot yesterday so good bye with much love from
Sarah
Notes
11-12 March 1902: An envelope associated with this letter is addressed to Mifs Jewett at South Berwick, ME, cancelled in Boston on 12 March 1902, which fell on a Wednesday in 1902. This date is further supported by the indication that Alice Meynell is traveling in the U.S. and is expected for a visit.
Sylvia Emerson’s: Sylvia Hathaway Watson Emerson. See Key to Correspondents.
Sylvia’s sister Ladd ... and "Will Ladd"...Mrs. Charley Wentworth: According to A Sedgwick Genealogy, Sylvia Emerson's younger sister, Anna Russell Watson (1843-1909) married William Jones Ladd (1844-1923). See also The Ladd Family, pp. 240-1.
Identifying the Wentworths is difficult without knowing to which generation Jewett refers and because the name is so common in New England. It seems likely that Jewett refers to people who are local to South Berwick and known familiarly. Perhaps she refers to the following family. Charles K. Wentworth (1836-1906) was a native of South Berwick, ME. His wife was Ellen Maria Plumer (1841-1924), who may be the Maria mentioned later in the letter. Their son Charles H. Wentworth (1866-1924), also of South Berwick, married Florence Ethel Stevens (1876-1956), who may be the Mrs. Charley Wentworth Jewett mentions here. See also Harrie B. Coe, Main Biographies (2002) v. 1, p. 22.
gossip ... about Portsmouth: Sorting out the people and topics of the gossip Jewett enjoys from Mrs. Wentworth is challenging.
Identifying Frank Hayes and his mother is a shot in the dark. A local contemporary of that name was Frank Lincoln Hayes (1865-1927), a prominent businessman in painting and decoration of Dover, NH. His mother was Amanda Susan Hall Hayes (1828-1900). See also The Granite Monthly v. 28-9 p. 230. Note that at the time of this letter, his mother would be deceased.
Later in the letter, Jewett mentions Georgina Halliburton (See Key to Correspondents), who is half-sibling to the Boston gynecologist, Dr. George Haven (1861-1903), who would seem likely to be the George Haven to whom Jewett refers here. His family is from Portsmouth, NH. Possibly, the funeral incident took place in 1897, the year Dr. Haven's cousin, Eliza Appleton Haven (1824 - 11 March 1897) died in Portsmouth. She was the daughter of his aunt, Eliza Wentworth Haven Haven (1794-1833).
Also later in the letter, Jewett returns to Mrs. Wentworth's gossip. There she mentions going to Georgina Halliburton's tea for the sake of Mrs. Haven. One would expect this to be Georgina's mother, but Susan Haven, widow of James Halliburton, died in 1898. Another possibility is Fanny Tuttle Arnot Haven (1837-1919), second spouse of Dr. George Haven's cousin, George Griswold Haven, Sr. (1837-1908).
Jewett also reports that a George Haven has recently married a Miss R. Dr. George Haven seems not to have married. George Griswold Haven, Jr. (1860-1923) resided in New York City and married Elizabeth Ingersoll in 1889. It is possible that this is the Mrs. Haven Jewett expects to meet at Halliburton's.
The sale of the Haven mansion in Portsmouth led to a law suit against Dr. George Haven over portraits in the mansion, settled in March 1902, at the time of this letter. This may have been the occasion for some of Mrs. Wentworth's gossip.
"cousin Lizzie Goodwin": It seems likely, but not certain, that this is Sophia Elizabeth Hayes Goodwin. Her family relationship to Mrs. Wentworth is not yet known. See Key to Correspondents.
Will Shackford: This is probably William Gardner Shackford (1840-1907), then of Portsmouth. He was a steamship captain, recognized in 1891 for saving his passengers and crew when struck by a sudden Atlantic storm.
Becca: Rebecca Young. See Key to Correspondents.
Timmy: A Jewett dog.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
baggage people had gone out on strike: Jewett's remark suggests that this was a local strike that would have affected Mary Jewett's return to South Berwick after a stay in Boston. No information about such a strike has yet been discovered.
Mrs. Meynell: Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents. The "friend" Jewett mentions probably was American poet, Agnes Tobin (1864-1939), who accompanied Meynell on her 1901-1902 American lecture tour.
Shaw monument: The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial is a bronze relief by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), memorializing Colonel Robert Gould Shaw leading an African American regiment during the American Civil War. It was unveiled on 31 May 1897.
Madame de Beaulaincourt: French Wikipedia says that Sophie de Castellane, Marquise de Contades, then Beaulaincourt, Countess Marles (1818-1904) was a writer and kept a salon. Her father was Esprit Victor Elisabeth Boniface de Castellane, Comte de Castellane (1788-1862), a French military officer and ultimately a Marshal of France. Madame Blanc included an account of the Marquise in an essay that Sarah Orne Jewett helped to translate, "Conversation in France," Century 48:4 (Aug 1894): 626-634.
Jewett and Fields met Madame de Beaulaincourt in France in 1898.
S. W.: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Key to Correspondents.
Thérèse: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Cabot: Susan Burley Cabot. See Key to Correspondents.
Laura Richards: Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection: Jewett Correspondence MWWC0196_02_00_069_01.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Lilian and Thomas Bailey Aldrich
148 Charles St. Boston
March 14th 1902
Dear friends;
Alas! I see no chance of getting away further than South Berwick whither I am going for three days next week. Sarah* finds that Mary needs her more and more; that is to say, Mary stays in town a good deal with us and when she returns for long winter stretches alone at S.B -- it is less easy for [ her corrected ] to get on of course than when mother and sister* were there to help and keep house for -- The result is that Sarah does not find it easy to make long
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flights. She has been here in [ town corrected ] quite regularly this winter but she can run back for a night or two whenever she is needed ----- but you will understand all this without further explanation.
I have really wished for mountain air, and to see you all with your new treasure. The time is near at hand when you will be coming to Milton, and I shall be going to Manchester. Perhaps you will come to me for a few days
[ Page 3 ]
during the summer! Please do. But in order to see the baby I must wing a flight to Milton. Do not come with your invalid however until the east winds cease blowing which are now beginning.
Sarah went to the opera last night with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe* -- Pretty well for 84! Sarah thought her rather tired as she might well have been because it was very late and very [ warm ? ].
Next week -- the last week of this month
[ Page 4 ]
Mrs Meynell* of London comes to us for two days. This will keep us pretty busy -- In April therefore I do mean to get away -- this is too late for the mountains where I fancy you already among melting drifts. Do not stay when the snow dampness sets in. Have you ever thought of Charleston? I have sometimes thought that would be delightful in the spring but your doctor would [ know corrected]. We have had a bad "strike" here, but our wise governor* has put an end to it I am thankful to say. We have been carrying our own bundles and keeping up our kitchen fires with furnace coal etc.
[ Up the left margin and then right margin of p. 1 ]
Goodby with love from both and a kiss to the baby
from your Annie Fields.
Notes
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett, and her sister, Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
mother and sister: The Jewetts' mother died in 1891; their youngest sister, Carrie Jewett Eastman, died in 1897. By 1902, their nephew, Theodore Eastman, was beginning medical school at Harvard.
new treasure: It seems likely that Fields refers to the Aldrich's new residence at Lake Saranac in the Adirondack Mountains. However, this new home marks the occasion of the swift decline from tuberculosis of the Aldrich's son, Charles Frost Aldrich (1868-1904), who died on 6 March.
Charles married Maria Louisa Richards in 1900, and their daughter, Lilian, was born on 31 December 1901. Presumably, she is the "new treasure."
Howe: Julia Ward Howe. See Key to Correspondents.
Boston's spring opera season was rich. According to the Boston Daily Globe of 2 March 1902, p. 30, in early March 1902, New York's Metropolitan Opera brought a repertory of eight works to the Boston Theater. On Thursday 13 March, they performed Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Mrs Meynell: Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents.
"strike" ... governor: While there was a major coal miners strike later in 1902, Fields refers to a teamsters strike in March of 1902 in Boston. Governor of Massachusetts was Winthrop Murray Crane (1853-1920) negotiated the end of the strike, as reported in various newspapers on 14 March, with teamsters returning to work on 16 March, though meetings continued for at least another week. See the Boston Daily Globe of 20 March 1902, p. 1.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Thomas Bailey Aldrich Papers, MS Am 1429, Box 6, Items 1446-1538. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr
March 14th
[ 1902 ]*
148 Charles St.
Dear Mrs. Dorr:
Will you give me the pleasure of seeing you at dinner Tuesday the 25th at half past seven o'clock [ to meet ? ]
Mrs Meynell of London, whose name is perhaps familiar to you through the high praise both Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Coventry Patmore* ^have^ accorded to her literary work.
I was most sorry to be unwell the day of your meeting in behalf of "high philosophy" ----
Yours, Annie Fields
Notes
1902: This date is confirmed by Fields's noting that Alice Meynell will be at the proposed dinner on 25 March. Meynell presented a lecture tour in the United States in 1901-2 and stayed with Fields near the end of March 1902.
Meynell ... Patmore: Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) was an English author and art critic.
Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823-1896) was an English poet and critic.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA: Annie Fields Letters, 1882-1911, MS 58.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Frances Parker Parkman
Wednesday 19th March
[ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Frances
I have thought of you many times today. I hope that you haven't worried too much about the storm for perhaps that big ship has got beyond the region of it already and then big ships dont mind storms as the old Atlas* used to, for instance! It is
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hard for me to take it in that our dear friend has really left these shores, though I had a great sense of her going all day yesterday. I thought from her last note that she already felt the detachment that will really let her rest. So many times she has had to go under a greater sense of protest & wondering if it were not better not to go, that as soon as she
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has really landed and drawn a long breath, she will be a happy gainer. But one does not leave one place for the next for at least a day or two, and I suppose if she thinks at all (I hope she has been sound asleep this whole day!) she will think of things she didn't do & didn't remember . . I hope that you will tell me about her getting off, when I see you. And
[ Page 4 ]
now you must rest all you can, Frances dear, and give yourself a little treat everyday of doing something you wish to do -- or doing nothing if that feels more comfy! You have taken so much care of her and for her. I shall not try to write any more about it, but I hope to see you very soon: Mrs. Fields* and I are coming up on Friday afternoon or next morning. Am I right in thinking that the address is Brown & Shipley?* If not do send me a postcard.
yours [ lovingly ? ] S.O.J.
Notes
1902: Penciled at the top of page one: [ 1903 ]. However, Jewett was not able to visit Annie Fields or to travel with her in March of 1903 as a result of her September 1902 carriage accident. 19 March fell on a Wednesday in 1902, which was during a very busy week for Jewett and Fields, as two British friends were visiting the area: Dorothy Ward and Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents.
In this letter, Jewett sometimes shortens "and" in various ways, some of which appear only as "a" with a long tail. I have rendered these as "and."
Atlas: Presumably Jewett refers to a passenger ship, but to which one is not known.
Nor is it certain which mutual friend of Parkman and Jewett sailed to Europe in March of 1902, though it seems very likely that this was Sarah Wyman Whitman, who traveled to France and England in the spring of 1902.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Brown & Shipley: Brown, Shipley & Co. was a private London bank that handled mail for American travelers in Europe.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 17 letters to Frances Parkman; [190-]-1907. Parkman family, Edward Twisleton, and Sarah Wyman Whitman additional papers, 1763-1917 (inclusive) 1850-1907 (bulk). MS Am 1408 (214-230). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Louise Chandler Moulton
Wednesday
[ March 19, 1902 ]
Dear Mrs. Moulton
I find that it is not possible for me to say yes [two marks, possibly a dash?] on Saturday I must be in Cambridge instead of in town, before I return here to see some friends who are coming, and it looks like a busy end to a delightful but very busy week! With Easter coming,* both Mrs. Fields* and I are full of small affairs. -- If it were not for my
[ Page 2 ]
Cambridge Engagement (which had slipped from my mind when we spoke together yesterday) I could hardly promise to go out to luncheon{.}* Mrs. Fields and Mrs Meynell* look forward to being your guests -- at the Brunswick* and at one o'clock.
Please to pardon this hurried note and believe me
Yours most sincerely
Sarah O. Jewett
148 Charles Street
Notes
1902: As the notes below indicate, Alice Meynell visited Boston in March of 1902. It is likely that this letter was composed the week before Meynell's lecture, and, therefore, on Wednesday 19 March.
Easter: In 1902, the Christian holiday of Easter fell on 30 March.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
luncheon: Jewett's double negative is difficult to interpret.
Mrs. Meynell: Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents. The British poet Alice Meynell visited Annie Fields in Boston in the March of 1902, giving a lecture shortly before 26 March.
the Brunswick: Almost certainly this was the Brunswick Hotel on Copley Square in Boston.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Library of Congress in the Louise Chandler Moulton papers, 1852-1908. MSS33787. This transcription of from a microfilm copy of the manuscript, on Reel 8 of Microfilm 18,869-15N-15P. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz to Annie Adams Fields
March 20th [ 1902 ]*
Thursday
[ Begin deleted letterhead ]
Quincy Street,
Cambridge.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear friend
I cannot resist the temptation to answer your card by a note. Your tempting invitation finds me at Hamilton* which at this season means deep in country life, for only the village people remain here through the winter --
My grandson Rodolphe* and his wife have gone to England
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as Rodolphe makes one in the polo games with our cousins across the sea this spring -- They will be gone for two or three months and I am here to look after their two dear little girls during their absence.
I am so sorry not to come for your afternoon with Mrs Meynell --* I see that she is to be with the College Club* also, -- both which pleasant occasions I shall miss to my very great
[ Page 3 ]
regret -- I have a sense of rest here which is very refreshing, -- and not lonely since I have the companionship of the dear children who are most obedient and affectionate{.}[ Page 4 ]
They are just at the age when story books are their delight and that is such a delightful occupation both for reader & listener. When [ unrecognized word ] reading to them I am reading to myself and to have undisturbed time for books is a great luxury. Our lives for the most part are too busy -- Here it is a
great pleasure to look out on the pine woods so close about us, -- on the bits of water bordered by trees, on the low hills and the open meadows, -- there is no fine scenery but a rolling country with pasture land and well wooded -- it is very restful and pleasant --
Farewell dear friend, -- My love to you & Sarah*
Yours always & always
Elizabeth C. Agassiz
Notes
1902: Alice Meynell toured the U.S. in 1902, meeting Fields and Jewett in March.
Hamilton: Hamilton, MA, is about 30 miles northeast of Boston, MA.
Rodolphe: Rodolphe Louis Agassiz (1871-1933), son of Alexander Emmanuel Rodolphe Agassiz (1835-1910). Alexander was the son of Louis Agassiz and his first wife.
The younger Rodolphe's wife was Maria Dallas Scott (1871-1942). Their twin daughters were Maria (1896-1920) and Anna (1896-1973).
A businessman, Rodolphe also was a noted polo champion, participating in the 1902 International Polo Cup competition.
Find a Grave and Wikipedia.
Mrs. Meynell: Alice Meynell. See Key to Correspondents.
College Club: Boston's Association of Collegiate Alumnae (founded in 1882) was the predecessor organization of the American Association of University Women. In 1895, it was called the College Club and had a meeting room on Beacon St. in Boston. Wikipedia.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, James Thomas Fields papers and addenda mssFI 1-5637, Box 1. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara Norton
South Berwick, Thursday, 20th March [1902].
On Sunday evening Mrs. Meynell is expected,* and both Mrs. Fields and I look forward to seeing her with great pleasure. We have cared a good deal for the thoughtfulness and beauty, and above all for the reticence and restraint, of her poems and brief essays. I suppose that Mr. Ruskin first set our eyes in her direction when he was so enthusiastic long ago about her letter from a girl to her own old age, but it is one of her poems that I really care least about now. One always cares about "Renouncement," that beautiful sonnet, though one discovers after a time that she ought to have called it "Possession," or something of that sort!*
It is a great delight that your father has promised to come to dinner on Tuesday.* I can't help hoping that I shall see you on Wednesday morning, if not before; Mrs. Meynell has a reading on seventeenth-century poetry. She is going to give it to some club or company in London, and wished to try it here first. It is always interesting (though sometimes a cause for apprehension) to have a friend come in this way -- to see an old friend for the first time, as one may say; but both Shady Hill and 148 Charles Street have gathered many an angel so, and strangers are not real strangers when they are of the world of letters.
I do not forget that we are to see Dorothy* again so soon, or to look forward with delight. It is a great pleasure to have had her here in the old house, such guests never really go away -- which makes an old house very different from a new one!
Notes
Mrs. Meynell: Alice Thompson Meynell (1847-1922), English poet and essayist. "A Letter from a Girl to her own Old Age" appeared in Preludes (1875), and "Renouncement" in Poems (1893).
"A Letter..." begins:
Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.
O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee!Renouncement
I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight -
The thought of thee - and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away, -
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.
Mr. Ruskin: Wikipedia says: "John Ruskin (8 February 1819 - 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist." When Alice Meynell's first book, Preludes (1875), appeared, Ruskin, a family friend, wrote to her mother in praise of the volume. He particularly praised the poems Jewett mentions: "I really think the last verse of that song ('A Letter from a Girl to her own Old Age') and the whole of San Lorenzo and the end of the daisy sonnet the finest things I've seen or felt in modern verse." (See Alice Meynell).
Your father: Charles Eliot Norton.See Correspondents. Shady Hill was the Norton residence in Cambridge, MA.
reading on seventeenth-century poetry: In fact, Meynell presented her lecture "The Great Transition in English Poetry: From the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century" across the United States during 1902. This presentation was developed into her book, A Seventeenth Century Anthology (1904), which she selected, edited and introduced.
The lecture was covered in newspapers from Oregon and California to Chicago, Indiana and Boston, including the Los Angeles Herald (8 Feb) and the Chicago Inter Ocean (23 March). The Boston Daily Globe of March 26, 1902 says that "Mrs. Alice Meynell, England's foremost woman of letters," recently spoke on seventeenth century poetry for a gathering of women in Boston. The Herald reported on the presentation in detail, noting that "Mrs. Meynell's lecture was artistically anthological, and the many beautiful extracts from the different poets of .the period of which she talked delicately illustrated the points made in her story of the transition of the poetical spirit of that age." Her stay in California began with a lecture at the Los Angeles Newman Club on Catholic poets, announced in the Herald on 25 January.
Dorothy Ward paid a long visit to Jewett and Fields in February of 1902. See Mrs. Humphry Ward in Key to Correspondents.
Dorothy:
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Children of the Grammar Schools of Indianapolis, IN
South Berwick, Maine,
March 21, 1902.
My dear Children of the Grammar Schools:
One of your friends has written me that you have read my story of Sylvia and the little White Heron* and have liked it. You cannot know how much pleasure this news gives me if I do not write and tell you, so I give you my best thanks now, and my kindest wishes.
I should like very much to know what each one of you liked best in the story and what seemed to you the best part of it, and if you think Sylvia would always be glad because she had been the heron's friend? I am sure that you do think so, as the writer of the story did. You see that the best thing in the world is to be self-forgetful and Sylvia was just that when she took care of the bird.
I wish that I knew whether you know the different kinds of birds that live near you, and how many you have learned to know by sight or by their songs, for even if you live in a large city like Indianapolis you must have many birds for neighbors. Some of you may have seen very strange and interesting birds, when you have been away from home, or have seen, what is still better, something very interesting about the birds that live in the trees that you know best. Perhaps you will each write a letter to tell me! Believe me always,
Yours affectionately,
Sarah Orne Jewett
Notes
White Heron: Jewett's short story, "A White Heron," first appeared in A White Heron and Other Stories in 1886.
A printing of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 1743 (109). Though this is not certain, it appears that multiple copies may have been printed.
Centered vertically in the left margin is an oval-framed photograph of Jewett. The signature is in her hand.
In the Houghton folder with this letter is a group of letters Jewett received in reply. Transcriptions of these appear below.
Letters from Indianapolis School Children
They are presented here together, without comment, their usage errors given, but not noted. A few marks appear on the letters. A few I have included in brackets, if they seemed interesting, but I do not know who made the marks.
[ Letter A ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 28, 1902.
Dear Miss Jewett, --
I thank you for the books you have written for it gives me great pleasure to read them. They are so resting to the mind [ (!) ] and are beautiful and homelike.
I liked Sylvia* for her selfsacrifice even for a bird. We have many beautiful birds around our city and in it. The robin, the blue bird and the blue jay are the harbingers of spring. The robin does not build in houses but in some safe sheltered spot. His nest is made of mud. The blue bird builds his nest in the woods & is hard to find. The jay is an enemy of all the birds. He has no nest. His wife lays her eggs in other birds nests and when they are hungry they sometimes eat the eggs of other birds.
Our summer birds are the woodpecker, the zip, thrush, humming bird, oriole, wren, meadow-lark, cat-bird and many other beautiful birds. The woodpecker builds his nest on the inside of a hollow tree. The oriole has a hanging nest from a small twig, the meadow lark and the thrush build near or on the ground. The cat bird in a high tree.
So I think Indianapolis and the country around the city has its share in birds don't you?
Your true friend,
Raymond Stilz
[ Letter B ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 29, 1902.
My dear Miss Jewett:
I want to thank you very much for the beautiful letter you sent us and I am sure everyone would enjoy reading it.
I think the story of Sylvia and the White Heron is a very beautiful story for she had so much love for not only the White Heron but all birds. Sylvia certainly had a great deal of love for the White Heron or she would not have climbed the tall pine tree to see where its nest was so early in the morning.
We have great many birds around in our city but not quite so many as Sylvia had. Around the trees in my own home I have seen the English sparrow which is very common, the robin, the wren, the wild canary the oriole that builds its nest in an elm tree at the very end of a small twig and the rainbow who always tells us when it is going to rain.
The busy little wren who is always fighting came here from his winter home in the south and found the gourd house he had had the year before was occupied by the sparrows. He immediately began to fight the sparrows away and when he succeded he began to tear the nest to pieces. After he got this done one went in and fluttered its wings around so all the dust would come out, then he went to work to and built his nest.
Hoping I will get to read some more of your lovely stories I remain your friend,
Isabelle Cowen
School, No. 32.
[ Letter C ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 29, 1902.
My dear Friend Miss Jewett,
I guess I may call you a friend, because you have written such a beautiful letter to me.
Yes, I have read the story, of Sylvia and the Little White Heron, and have enjoyed it very much. I could never get tired of reading this beautiful little story. I think if I should visit this little country town I should almost know how it looks because you have given such a beautiful description of it.
I may give a name to the part which I thought was the best, and it is, "The Secret." The whole story was excellent!, and could not have been better. I think you must like nature and her children very well, if you could write such a beautiful little book as this.
Brave little Sylvia could not or rather would not tell the secret of the little bird. Although nine years old, and had ten dollars offered into her hands, she would not tell the bird's dwelling place. I think she should have received some money for not telling this,
Of course there are many birds in Indianapolis, which almost every child knows of. I, myself, have seen a great many birds, but I have not seen the White Heron.
I know the robin by his merry song and his brown breast. The blue-bird by his blue dress, the sparrow by his twitter, and bobolink by his song bobolink, bobolink, and the woodpecker by his beautiful coat of different colors. There is also the oriole which has a nest, high up in the tree, like a stocking. The owl is another interest bird, which calls caw, caw. I have seen one in a park in Indianapolis, but in Iowa I saw a wild one. They have large eyes and are mostly of a brownish color. They generally fly to about the centre part of the tree.
Perhaps you might write again. We were delighted to hear that the very lady who wrote the story of the White Heron had written a letter to our school. We thank you over and over again.
Yours affectionately
Jennie Thompson.
[ Letter D ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 29, 1902.
My dear Miss Jewett, --
I am sure that all of the children who have received a letter from you will thank you most cordially, and I am sure that I do. It is not the lot of every one to have the autograph and picture of the writer of such an interesting story as that of "The White Heron" I myself have enjoyed the story very much.
The part that I liked best in the story was that of Sylvia's devotion to the white heron in refusing to disclose its nest, even when offered money that would have bought Sylvia and her grandmother some of the things that they needed most. It would take a pretty brave girl to do what she and to conquer the desire to have the money that her grandmother needed so much. I, also, think that Sylvia would be glad that she had befriended the bird.
I have not been noticing birds much but I have found two kinds that are not usually found in the city. These are the golden oriole and the summer warbler. These birds have made the nest in the trees on either side of us. The peculiar songs first attracted me, and I have been watching them ever since, but have not learned much about their ways. The warbler sings almost incessantly and when he is not singing his mate takes up the song.
Hoping that I may have the pleasure of reading more of your stories, I am
Very sincerely
Ralph Gardner Elvin.
[ Letter E ]
Elizabeth Mills Age. 13 yrs.
Grade 7a. School No. 10.
I am not fully acquainted with many of our birds. I know the robins call and have learned to make it. We are always glad to see the birds come back in the spring for we hear them gayly chirp. The robin is of special interest to the children. Last year each child who wished to protect the birds signed a pledge and received a button with a robin on it. This year was a meadowlark's picture on the button.
Thanking you again for others, who have not had the opportunity to write and for my self, I remain
as ever your little friend
Elizabeth Dodson Mills
[ Letter F ]
1411, Broadway,
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 29, 1902.
My dear Writer, --
When I received your letter this morning, the first thing that caught my eyes was the picture of a sweet-faced woman. On finding that it was you who wrote the story of Sylvia I at once knew that it would not be difficult for one with such a happy look to put in print such a beautiful and sympathetic story. I thank you many times for the story
The ending of your story was just as I expected. The sentence that ran as follows did me and many others I think the most good. "I would rather save the life of a bird than have the ten dollars." In answer to your other question I should say that I think Sylvia was very glad that she was always the heron's friend.
She nor Mrs. Tilly either one liked the idea of killing the birds and could not see why the stranger was so much pleased with his sport. Another part of your story made me contrast Sylvia with one that does not love birds as she did. When she reached the limb of the oak tree that led across to the pine-tree she could have gone back to her husk bed had her love for saving the birds been weaker than it was. Instead of that Sylvia was only to glad that she was so near her destination
[ No signature ]
[ Letter G ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May, 29, 1902.
Dear Miss Jewett,
I thank you very much for the kind letter you have written us.
I was very interested in the story of little Sylvia and felt that I was walking along beside her and her new companion hunting the beautiful bird, that I was climbing the great tall pine and looking far in one direction, saw the mad ocean dashing against the shore and looking in another direction saw the beautiful white bird smoothing its plumage and found it secret. This little story shows that Sylvia thought more of her friend than the money as everybody should. That is the part I like best.
I think you know all the birds around our place and if I should hear the song of the robin, bobeling wren and meadow lark in Africa I would know it.
Yours truly
Jennie Jensen
Grade 7a, School No. 43
[ Letter H ]
Indianapolis, Ind.
May 30, 1902.
Dear Miss Jewett,
When our test papers were handed out this morning, most every child wore a depressed look, but when we turned our papers over and saw your smiling face we felt more like working. We were still more encouraged when we read your letter, and thought how kind you were to write to us.
The story of the 'White Heron' was intensely interesting as well as helpful. I am afraid your story made us feel a little discomfort. When our teacher would be reading it to us, we could almost see Sylvia driving the cow through the woods, where the evening shadows fell, and the comfortable little cabin, sitting on the hill was revealed to us. We wouldalmostbe in a daydream, when our teacher would close the book and we would have to go to our lessons again, instead of being in the free country.
The most common bird of Indianapolis is the sparrow, and while it is greatly disliked, it should be liked, for what would it be without the fussy little creature? Perhaps you have read Longfellow's "Birds of Killingsworth" and if you have, it will give you an idea of the desolation of a land, without the feathered songster.
Pests of locusts have visited different parts of this city, and were it not for the birds, Indianapolis would be left desolate.
I have fortunate enough to discover an oriole's nest, and before the season ends I hope to see the bird itself.
We thank you very much for the lesson you have taught us towards the birds, and we will hereafter try to follow Sylvia's example
We also thank you for your kind letter which we have made an effort to answer. I close, hoping to see, or hear from you, sometime in the future.
Your friend
Grace Clarke
13 yrs.
7B, No. 10.
Cor. Ashland Ave. & 13th st.
P.S. -- We were delighted to know that we could keep your letter.
Sarah Orne Jewett to David Douglas
South Berwick, Maine, April 6, 1902.
Dear Mr. Douglas, -- The photograph delighted me of the quaint old Scottish house of Traquair!* I had never seen any picture of it. I hope that it may not be many years before my hope comes true of spending some time in Scotland, and seeing many and many an old house. I never forget the pleasure of that day with you both at Hawthornden, how often Mrs. Fields and I speak of it! You see that I too have run away from town? It is a very early spring with us. I have never in my life seen our "Mayflowers" (the trailing arbutus) in full bloom on April 6th as I saw them to-day.
the quaint old Scottish house of Traquair: This house near Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott, in the Tweed Valley of Scotland, South of Edinburgh, is supposed to be the model for "Bradwardine" in Scott's Waverly.
Notes
Hawthornden: Wikipedia says that Hawthornden Castle is located on the River North Esk in Midlothian, Scotland, built by the Douglas family beginning in the 15th century. Whether David Douglas the publisher and recipient of this letter is closely related to the Douglas family of Hawthornden is not yet known.
Blanchard in Sarah Orne Jewett (1994) says that Jewett and her maid, Liza, traveled to Edinburgh briefly in August 1882, while in England with Annie Fields. As of yet, we have no other record of Jewett visiting Scotland, though she had ample opportunity in 1892 and 1898, during two long periods in Europe. In this letter, the meeting at Hawthornden seems more recent than 20 years, and Fields seems to have been with Jewett.
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mr. Carlton*
South Berwick, Maineour free library, and you can see at once how valuable this book would be to me.
April 7th -- 1902
My dear Sir
I hope that I am not too late in ordering a copy of Thomas Short, the first Printer?* I have been away from my desk here, and on returning from Boston I find the circular waiting, with many others. I am trying to complete a collection of all books and pamphlets relating to this old town, for
[ Page 2 ]
Yours very truly
Sarah Orne Jewett
To Mr. Carlton --
Notes
Carlton: Mr. Carlton may have been connected with Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., publisher of the book Jewett requested. Or perhaps he was a bookseller. He has not yet been identified.
printer: Thomas Short, The First Printer of Connecticut (1901) by William DeLoss Love (1851-1918) deals with the colonial history of Hartford Connecticut.
This manuscript is held by the Newberry Library, Chicago, IL in the Alice French Papers, Modern Manuscripts, Series 1: Correspondence, approximately 1892-1932: Box: 1, Folder: 13.
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, the Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Abbie S. Beede
Tuesday morning
April 8th 1902
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Mifs Beede
I thank you for your note, and I send you my sister's* sympathy with my own. I was very sorry to hear of your good uncle's death,* both because I know it is a sad breaking of old ties to you and your cousin, and that he was very dear to you, but there are so few left now of that elder generation to which we have always looked. It seems like the loss of an old familiar [ tree corrected ]
[ Page 2 ]
and our landscape of life must be forever changed without it, when it falls -- -- I can easily guess that all the neighborhood will mourn with you and miss the dear old man. I was hoping only the other day that he would soon be at his garden again, and be pleased in his heart with all the prospects of this early spring. We are sorry that we cannot drive
[ Page 3 ]
to North Berwick tomorrow, as we have some friends coming here in the afternoon, but I shall hope to see you before very long dear Miss Beede, and I shall think of you many times before I do see you.
Yours very affectionately
Sarah O. Jewett
Notes
1902: An envelope associated with this letter, addressed to Mifs A. S. Beede, North Berwick, ME, is postmarked 8 April 1902.
uncle's death: Kelsey Squire notes that this uncle is Nicholas Alphonso Pinkham (1815-1902). Also see MWWC Abbie S. Beede materials, folder 5, Nicholas Pinkham's will, which bequeaths the rest of his estate to Sarah Abbie Beede and Mary Emma Leighton. Census records from ancestry.com indicate that Nicholas Pinkham was born April 18, 1815 in Durham, Maine and that he died April 7, 1902, in North Berwick. He is buried in the Friends burial ground. His stepmother was Mary Beede (c. 1802-1877).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, item MWWC0169.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Alice Meynell to Annie Adams Fields
[ Begin letterhead ]
29 FIFTH AVENUE.
[ End letterhead ]
New York
April 11
[ 1902 ]*
My dear Friend,
I have another sweet kindnefs to thank you for. What a dear farewell! I treasure the beautiful and delicate agate and your more than kind letter.
The sweeties were safely packed up, I am glad to find.
[ Page 2 ]
I oftener forget I have done a thing than forget to do it.
I am really upon the eve of sailing now, and have had good letters from home on this last day. Philadelphia, where I spent two days and read the Dickens paper,* was charming. It had red brick pavements,
[ Page 3 ]
like Boston. At New Haven yesterday they also chose the Dickens paper -- I was particularly glad to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Talcott Williams at Philadelphia, and Mrs. Winter. Here, Mr. Howells called on me today, and I have lunched with Mrs. Wharton* and told
[ Page 4 ]
her what Mr. Norton said of her book.*
I take away the happiest remembrance of America. And of all the undeserved kindnefs yours has been the most precious and dear. May god* blefs you and my dear Mifs Jewett.*
Ever, my dear Friend
Your affectionate
Alice Meynell
Notes
1902: Meynell mave a lecture tour in the United States in 1902.
In 1902, 29 Fifth Ave. appears to have been the New York address of Peter F. Collier (1849-1909), founder of Collier's Weekly Magazine.
Dickens paper: One of the lectures Meynell presented during her American tour was "Dickens as a Man of Letters."
Mrs. Talcott Williams ... Mrs. Winter ... Mr. Howells ... Mrs. Wharton: For William Dean Howells, see Key to Correspondents. Mrs. Wharton is American author, Edith Wharton (1862-1937).
Atkinson (2013) identifies American activist, philanthropist and photographer Sophia Wells Royce (1850-1928), who married the journalist and educator, Talcott Williams (1849-1928).
Mrs. Winter has not been identified, but possibly she was the Scottish actor and author Elizabeth Campbell (1840-1922), spouse of American journalist and critic, William Winter (1836-1917).
book: Atkinson (2013) says that Charles Eliot Norton (see Sara Norton in Key to Correspondents) had commented on Wharton's The Valley of Decision (1902).
god: Often it is not clear when Meynell intends to capitalize words. She may well have capitalized the "G" here, which looks lower case, but is perhaps a little larger than usual. Likewise, her "F" in friend often appears to be upper case, even when the situation seems to call for lower case. In Meynell's letters, I transcribe these words as they appear.
Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 47: mss FI 3312, Folder 1. Archival notes on the manuscript have not been reproduced. This letter was previously transcribed by Damian Atkinson for The Selected Letters of Alice Meynell (2013). New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Morgan Dix to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
TRINITY RECTORY,
27 WEST 25TH STREET.*
[ End letterhead ]
April 14.th 1902.
My dear Mifs Jewett: ---
I came back to town a day or two ago, and found your letter, enclosing the autograph poem of Mrs. Grant of Laggan.* I cannot thank you sufficiently for remembering me, & in this overwhelming way. Mrs. Grant's book, the American Lady, is on my shelves, in many editions, including the very rare 1st. ed. in the original
[ Page 2 ]
binding. In that edition I shall insert this precious fragment, together with your own letter, which, already valuable as an autograph, will increase in value as the years go on.
We are also looking forward with real pleasure to meeting you again this summer. We shall be at the same funny little Wayside Cottage.* Mrs. Dix desires me to tell you that she had
[ Page 3 ]
a few days ago, a delightful surprise, in the discovery that you were the author of a little poem which for years has been one of her favorites: she has often repeated it to me: it is entitled "Discontent,"* & is about a daisy & a buttercup; you will recognize it by this memorandum.
We shall never be quite satisfied until you come to the rectory & make us a visit.
Mrs. Dix joins me in very
[ Page 4 ]
cordial messages, and I remain,
very cordially yours,
Morgan Dix.
Notes
STREET: Two dots appear beneath the superscript.
Grant of Laggan: Scottish poet, Anne Grant (1755-1838) sometimes called Mrs Anne Grant of Laggan. Among her books is Memoirs of an American Lady (1808). Wikipedia.
Wayside Cottage: The location of this cottage is uncertain. Resorts of this name have been found near Kennebunkport and Portland in Maine.
"Discontent": Jewett's "Discontent" first appeared in St. Nicholas (3:247) February 1876.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Dix, Morgan, 1827-1908. 1 letter; 1902, bMS Am 1743 (46).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz to Annie Adams Fields
Cambridge
Saturday
April 19th [ 1902 ]*
My dear friend
At your house where we were all so happy last [ unrecognized abbreviation wy ? ], I left a portfolio -- (brown tied with a red string) -- It contained my report and if you will give it to the [ bearer ? ] I shall be glad to have it again, -- regretting very much my carelessness
[ Page 2 ]
in leaving it and so giving you this trouble -- Should my messenger not find it -- as you may be out and the maid may not know about it, -- will you then be so kind as to send it to my Cambridge address (36 Quincy St) where it will [ await my ? ] return.
[ Page 3 ]
I thank you more than I can say for the pleasure you gave our girls* last [ night ? ] It was a beautiful [ unrecognized abbreviation ] which they will not forget, -- for the [ other ones ? ] it was perhaps even more delightful.
with love always
your Elizabeth C. Agassiz
Notes
1902: Huntington Library archivists suggest this letter was composed before 1904. Based on the reference to "our girls," I have tentatively placed it with those of 1902, when Agassiz was honorary president of Radcliffe College.
our girls: Though this cannot be certain, it is likely that Fields has entertained some of the women students of Radcliffe College, where Agassiz was honorary president, 1900-1903. However, Agassiz was closely associated with the Harvard Annex after 1879 and with Radcliffe after 1894.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, James Thomas Fields papers and addenda mssFI 1-5637, Box 1. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sarah Wyman Whitman
South Berwick
Sunday April 20th 1902
Oh darling your two last letters have been most delightful! -- one written upon La Mancha and* the other in Paris to tell me many things that I had wished to know, -- first of all that you were really pulling up hill and feeling better: walking at great [ deletion ] length and talking with Thérèse and Mrs. Lawrence and Madame de Beaulaincourt!* (This is walk and conversation of a high sort!) I got a little shock at hearing that you were to be so little while in Madrid -- I was for a month!! I was for your being there a little while, and not for a tourist sort of perch upon that far [ deletion ] away and difficult bough!! And though the first
[ Page 2 ]
instinct of your heart is toward a friend in trouble -- toward a friend at any rate! do, my dear dear friend try not to forget that the kindest thing you can do for anybody is to do the best thing for yourself just now! Lose sight of the pleasure of immediate service and [ ready ? ]* response, in this largest fact. And beside, "that prince and pattern of physicians: Time" as the great "Sydenham,* father of English medicine" used to say -- must be for Mrs. Kuhn* now, -- must be for you too, portioned into long [ doses corrected ], and unhindered by unnecessary fatigues. I now preach: who know so little how to practice; but do make the most of this summer, do spend it in just the most restoring way! If you take up the old fashion of life too soon it will be with the cares, and expectations, of the world to which you minister out of your own strength -- this little store of a brief holiday
[ Page 3 ]
will disappoint you by giving out too soon. I wish that you could spend a good piece of this [ deletion ] summer in the right sort of place in France -- 'inaccessible but amusing ^spot^, and a stranger there, tho' companioned'* --- But this pen runs on too far and my thoughts run with it. Remember how I wish for you -- and then wish you away! I wish that Travers* would take Old Place for the summer! and now this letter looks like a paper of pins -- it is [ deletion ] so full of exclamation points.
I have been at home since I [ wrote corrected ] last, (and even doing a small bit of writing) except for one night that I spent in town{.} A.F.* keeps very well; Mary* and I are going ^there^ together tomorrow for a few days. Dr. Collyer* is coming on for a little visit -- and we are { , } Mary & A.F. & I, going to the Vincent
[ Page 4 ]
Club dances* on Tuesday -- and it will be a nice little busy week of friendship and dress making and getting a few visits paid. I look forward to seeing poor Appleton Brown's* last pictures. -- did I tell you that I saw Mr. Charles Davis the landscape painter the other day at Doll's,* and thought him a very interesting man -- he has the exact artist look as if he had thought of nothing but his work and had lived long in France with those of the same mind . . . It is Theodore's* vacation and young Greeley is here, for two or three days, with him, and has made up his grave mind to be an Artist instead of an architect! He has been at the Museum School and if I could now proffer a reason for your immediate Return to the Studio, it would be for you to advise with this young creature! He does not seem to have much backing -- he seems very young to me still and I suppose that the same idea pervades his family as he has said ruefully that
[ Page 5 ]
they do not wish him to go abroad to study. I'm not sure that he has any great and evident gift, but one must respect dreams and hopes.
Theodore and Francis Burnett and a choice selection of friends are going to sail for Germany the day after class day* to learn the language! Theodore dropped it in his Freshman year, much warned by his aunt Mary and deeply sympathized with by me -- and now these medical school boys are examined upon German treatises which have no translations. So they [ fly blotted ] but with no unwilling wings, as if anything were better than to spend the summer here under such conviction of ignorance. We shall miss the boy, but I am glad to have him go. -----
Perhaps you have heard that Mr. Norton* had a fall
[ Page 6 ]
which did not seem to amount to anything so that he went on into town, but he was taken ill afterward and I think they have been anxious. Sally writes that he is better and going on all right, but I shall go out as soon as I can to learn more -- Nobody knows just what the illness has been, at least I do not -- I shall tell you, when I have been at Shady Hill and can feel sure about things. That dear friend is not young any longer and a very delicate sort of person it always seemed to me.
I must say one word more: you were never so French even in "that pre-natal state" as when you wrote about Madame de Beaulaincourt. It was a perfectly enchanting bit of the best of letters!
Yours always
S. O. J.
[ Up the left margin and across the top margin of page 1 ]
you cant think how I look at the [ coupés ? ] in Boston when I go out in the morning -- always thinking I may see you going to the Studio. (You find out in such cases what your real habits are!) Please to forgive the nice French [ unrecognized word ] paper, which looks anything but nice, I do confess.
Notes
and: Jewett often writes "a" with a long tail for "and." I render these as "and."
Thérèse and Mrs. Lawrence and Madame de Beaulaincourt: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc and Sophie de Beaulaincourt. Key to Correspondents.
Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas (University of Arkansas) identify Mrs. Lawrence as Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence (1829-1905), one of Whitman's correspondents. See E.L., The Bread Box Papers: a biography of Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence, (1983) by Helen H. Gemmill. She was married to the diplomat, Timothy Bigelow Lawrence (d. 1869). Her home was the Aldie Mansion in Doylestown, PA.
ready: Jewett may have deleted this word.
Sydenham: British physician and author, Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689). This quotation may be found in his "Epistolary Dissertation," where he reported his treatment of a woman suffering from hysteria: "... I could only provide for her safety by leaving her to the prince and pattern of physicians -- Time...." (Works of Thomas Sydenham, 1848).
Mrs. Kuhn: Though this is not certain, it seems likely that Jewett refers to Grace Morris Cary Kuhn (1840-1908), spouse of Hartman Kuhn (1832-1870). She was a Boston patron of the arts, particularly of the Boston Museum of Art.
companioned: The source of Jewett's quotation is as yet not known.
Travers ... Old Place: Susan B. Travers. Key to Correspondents.
Old Place is Whitman's summer home.
A.F. Annie Adams Fields. Key to Correspondents.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. Key to Correspondents.
Collyer: Robert Collyer. Key to Correspondents.
Vincent Club dances: In "Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Massachusetts General Hospital)," Wikipedia says: "The Vincent Club is an exclusive private women's social and charity organization founded in Boston in 1892 to support the Vincent Memorial Hospital. The club continues to support the Vincent Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, staging an annual Spring Gala charity event and other fundraising activities benefiting the department, and organizing educational forums."
Appleton Brown: John Appleton Brown died on 18 January 1902. Key to Correspondents.
Charles Davis ... Doll's: American landscape painter Charles Harold Davis (1856-1933). He studied in France in the early 1880s. Doll and Richards was a major art gallery in Boston. Wikipedia.
Theodore's ... Greeley: Theodore Jewett Eastman. Key to Correspondents. Probably, Mr. Greeley is Russell Hubbard Greeley (1878-1956), Eastman's classmate at Harvard College. The Third Catalog of the Signet (1903) shows that Greeley was living in Boston soon after his 1901 graduation, where he was studying painting, and notes that while at Harvard, he was editor of the Lampoon (p. 79). He studied at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School, where he won two student prizes in 1905. He is listed among the members of the Tavern Club of Boston in 1904.
Francis Burnett: Probably Jewett refers to Dr. Francis Lowell Burnett (1878-1965), son of Mabel Lowell and Edward Burnett. See Key to Correspondents.
class day: At Harvard University at the turn of the 20th century, class day usually preceded commencement by about a week. This remains an occasion for celebrating the achievements of the graduating class, including giving awards and various speeches.
Mr. Norton ... Sally: Sara Norton and her father, Charles Eliot Norton. Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743 Box 6, Item 277.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
So I am refreshed in many ways -- yet keep an extraordinary leisure: & now, as soon as Grace Keeler* has come hither to spend two days with me, I depart for London (on the 2nd of May) and my yet [ more pure ? ] period of loafing.
Paris: April 27 - 1902*
And here your last dear letter (with the possibilities of fresh tribulation for the Willey family!*) found me & rejoiced my heart. I have been thinking of you at that desk with considerable joy: knowing there would inevitably be some spring=tides, and feeling a happy wonder as to what they would leave on Shore. -- Last Saturday I went (after seeing her at Mme [ Foulon de Vault ? ]* where Miss Paget's* long -- might I say lean -- figure was the occasions guest) to Mme Blanc's,' for a quiet dejeuner and tête à tête: and I think I have never had so long & delightful a talk with her. She was feeling stronger, and was ready to discourse upon many things -- and it was a very ample occasion.
2
All her menages I keep in lavender -- but her kindness is always with one.
And [ clerney & Mrs Shaw ? ]* provide many home-comforts: while Madam de [ unrecognized name ] in spite of diplomatic labors, is apt to be in and out of [ little ? ] quiet occasions: and was never never in better nor more wholesome [ mood ? ]. And I have had some quite fine moments with the Humphreys Johnstons* -- (his pictures mean so much to me -- ) and when I dined with them they had two or three artists one of whom was Rodin:* perhaps as dear an old boy as you ever saw. -----
3
I see its good -- for ^its^ not at all a bore -- & I am feeling quite valiant. But O for a pull at solid work [ Sometime ? ] to come!
This is no letter, darling just a little flying word of love with a message to your dear Mary & to Theodore and then to A.F. if this is the time for Charley St.*
[ Page 4 ]
which who can tell!
My address will be now Thomas's Hotel, Berkeley Square London. S.W. -- and three words is a letter when I get it! Remember that. ---
Thine
Sw__
Notes
1902: The envelope associated with this letter seems to have been cancelled in France on 23 April, but this date seems unlikely and the print is difficult to read. It is addressed to Miss Jewett at 148 Charles Street Boston, Etats Unis de l'Amerique. In the return address corner, Whitmas has written what appears to be "boie de Cherbourg," but perhaps was intended to read "bois or joie de Cherbourg."
The reverse side shows an 8 May 1902 cancellation in New York, NY. Penciled on this side is "New Edward H. Newton Shop," presumably a previous owner of the letter.
Willey family: This family remains unidentified.
Foulon de Vault: The transcription amounts to a guess, but Alice Foulon de Vaulx was acquainted with Jewett and Annie Fields, having socialized with them during their 1898 travels in France. In 1872 Alice Devaulx married Henri Foulon (1844-1929). Shortly after they married, they changed their name to "Foulon de Vaulx." Henri Foulon de Vaulx was a Belgian-born industrialist and historian. Alice became a translator, notably of work by Hamlin Garland.
Miss Paget's: Violet Paget. See Key to Correspondents.
Mme Blanc's: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. See Key to Correspondents.
clerney & Mrs Shaw: These transcriptions are guesses, and the persons are unknown. Jewett was acquainted with Cora Lyman Shaw (1828-1922), spouse of Gardiner Howland Shaw (1891-1869) of Boston. Whitman may have been acquainted with Anna Kneeland Haggerty Shaw (1835-1907), widow of Civil War hero, Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863).
Humphreys Johnstons: American painter John Humphreys Johnston (1857-1941).
Rodin: French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917).
Grace Keeler: This person has not yet been identified.
Charley St.: Mary Rice Jewett and Theodore Jewett Eastman in South Berwick, and Annie Adams Fields at 148 Charles St. in Boston. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Abbie S. Beede
[ 8 May 1902 ]*
Mrs. Fields* and I were suddenly called to Boston on Friday, and I have not found a chance to write again to you.
She means to return at the end of this week and then you shall hear from us.
S. O. Jewett
In haste: Thursday morning.
Notes
1902: This note is a postcard to Miss A. S. Beede, postmarked South Berwick, ME, 8 May 1902.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, item MWWC0170.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe
[ Before 10 May 1902 ]*
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Mr. Howe
I am very sorry that the story was not what you wanted -- if only that I have given you the discomfort of writing to say so! ---- Perhaps a jury of girls might have liked it better; perhaps I spoiled it by trying to short it at the last
[ Page 2 ]
moment! Please send it back, and believe me
[ The autograph has been cut out of the page ]
Notes
Before 10 May 1902: While this date is not certain, there is foundation for choosing it, as this letter seems related to another to Mr. Howe dated 10 May 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe additional papers, 1880-1959. MS Am 1524 (774). Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 16 letters from; 1891-1903. Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe
Saturday 10th May
[ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Mr. Howe
As I read your second most kind note I am afraid that something crept into my own note of a very difficult day in which I wrote it .. I did not mean in the least to be impatient about the little story which I had sent you. An old writer like me
[ Page 2 ]
[ learns ? ] to ignore the "fortunes of war." I should have stopped to say that I meant to look at the story ^again^, and to [ tell ? written over something ] ^you^ later what I thought could be done. I do not send my work 'on approval' any more except to a friend like you since we are on quite different terms from ^the^ plain Editor & Contributor relations, but I hope that you will always
[ Page 3 ]
say just what you think as you have done now. You know what a warm interest I take in both the Companion* itself and your connection with it.
And now about the cheque! It doesn't seem very easy to take it, at first thoughts, but neither does it seem easy to send ^it^ back since that might ^seem to^ have a pettishness that does not exist! Will you therefore mark the sketch Left Out (instead of Counted Out,,*
[ Page 4 ]
which I believe comes closer to its meaning, and then put it in a pigeon hole? You can use it in your announcement, (out ^of^ which I refuse to be left!) and before the time comes for printing, either you shall have something that you like better, orthat^this story^ shall be made better, itself. I do not wish to rule out many of the omissions that I made when I thought with sudden woe that it was far too long -----
Mrs. Fields has come back to finish her visit which
[ Page 5 ]
was so sadly broken into, last week, by her brother's death.* I went up to town with her, and I hoped to see you and Fanny while I was there not only to tell you how touched and pleased our dear friend was with your lovely flowers -- but to have a word about the story to save your writing.
I was obliged to come home on Wednesday without doing this, and your letter followed me.
Mrs. Fields asks me to give you her love, you will
[ Page 6 ]know how good it is to have her here!
Yours always most sincerely,
Sarah O. Jewett
I have been reading a most delightful book of Irish stories, "Irish Pastorals" by Shan Bullock --* There is a man to remember! There is so little troublesome dialect and the true turn and quality of Irish wit and pathos. "The Diggers and the Reapers" makes me think of Millet's pictures.*
Notes
1902: A penciled note at the upper left of page 1, presumably written by Howe, reads: "Ack. 5/12/02 with announce &c att. to her programme."
Companion: Howe was at this time editor of The Youth's Companion. See Key to Correspondents.
Counted Out: Jewett's story appeared as "Counted Out" in Youth's Companion in December 1903. Whether Jewett completed the promised revisions is not yet known. She ceased writing for publication after her September 1902 carriage accident. It's appearance 17 months after this letter suggests that Howe may have hoped for revisions that Jewett was not able to complete.
Mrs. Fields ... brother's death: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents. Her brother, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston Adams, Jr, died on 1 May 1902.
"Irish Pastorals" by Shan Bullock: Irish author Shan F. Bullock (1865-1935) published Irish Pastorals in 1901. "The Reapers" is chapter 5; "The Diggers" is chapter 6.
Millet's pictures: Jean-François Millet (1814 -1875) was a French painter of the Barbizon school.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe additional papers, 1880-1959. MS Am 1524 (774). Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 16 letters from; 1891-1903. Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Abbie S. Beede
148 Charles Street
Boston
[ Early May 1902 ]
Dear Miss Beede
Mrs. Fields* has a piece of typewriting to be done about a hundred pages ^not all full pages I think^ of notes on Charity 'Cases' of the Associated Charities: people who have been helped by getting settled in new ground +c! She wants copies made by some manifolding process -- twenty copies, I think. Would this be within your possibilities?
I could not remember your even telling me that you could make copies, but I promised
[ Page 2 ]
to write and ask you -- and what the expense would be -- Which I mean to pay myself as a little contribution to such good works! I shall be here until Monday noon so will you please send a note to this address within that time -- afterwards to South Berwick?
Yours most truly
S. O. Jewett
Notes
Early May 1902: This appears to be the first we have of several notes and letters regarding this report that Fields prepared during the 1900 - 1903 period that Beede is known to have typed for Fields and Jewett. 1900 is not possible because Fields and Jewett were traveling in Europe at this time. 1901 is unlikely, because Beede was busy typing Jewett's manuscript materials for The Tory Lover, then in serial publication and soon to appear revised as a book. 1903 is unlikely, because at that time Jewett was too ill to be involved with this report. That leaves 1902. See below for other May 1902 letters dealing with this topic.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, item MWWC0165
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to George Colby Chase
May 13th
[ 1902 ]*
My dear Dr. Chase
This note is but a postscript to the other. I have just seen Mr Stebbins the Academy Principal who tells me to my great pleasure that he has written to ask you to speak to the school and its friends on their great day. I wish very much that you could see your way to
[ Page 2 ]
an acceptance. And it will give my sister and me much pleasure if you will be our guest.
Yours very sincerely
S. O. Jewett
Notes
1902: See Jewett to Chase of 6 July 1902. It appears that the "great day," Jewett mentions in this letter is the Berwick Academy Commencement. The later letter indicates that Chase spoke at the 1902 commencement and was briefly a guest at the Jewett home.
Stebbins: Frank Stanley Stebbins (1866- ), a Harvard law graduate (1893), served as principal of the Berwick Academy (1898-1902). See The Stebbins Genealogy (1904), p. 974.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Bates College Library: Office of the President, George Colby Chase records.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
May 15, 1902. England.
One word with you . . . to-night, by the river Dart, . . .* I am looking out on one of the most romantic bits of English scenery I ever beheld, -- an idyllic loveliness, and the sea's pulse stirring every now and then the quiet breast of the stream. One can look at England from so many points of view, and just to-day it seems to me a garden in which dwell the most innocent and naive beings ever known in this world of sin. I feel quite old and withered in this cheerful young company, but take heart of grace because of their gentle acts. . . . In this last week I have seen some delightful people; . . . the long-dreamed-of sight in her own house of Mrs. Ritchie has made a mark on my heart forever.* And so I might go on telling you of this strange leisurely life in this more than strange world. So many gates open quietly where I want to go in and browse a little on the herbage.
Notes
river Dart: The Dart flows through Kent in southeastern England.
Mrs. Ritchie: The novelist Anne Isabella Thackeray, Lady Ritchie (1837-1919), was the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
This transcription appears in Letters, Sarah Wyman Whitman. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1907, "Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett: 1882-1903," pp. 61-109.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
[ Before 20 May 1902 ]*
Yes, dear Mifs Beede! Twenty copies of one hundred pages each. The extra two cases you will remember were to be put in, in case some of them were less interesting than others and your fresh eye was to choose and throw out any two of small significance.
I have chosen the second page of the little book of colors for the covers.
You have done excellently in making out the most imperfect ms. I have tried to leave out all names of places and persons so far as is consistent with
[ Page 2 ]
making the cases clear and interesting.
I shall be glad to revise the rest in the same manner.
[ The lower two thirds of this page has been cut away. ]
Notes
1902: See notes for Jewett to Beede, Early May 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0204.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
[ 20 May 1902 ]*
Dear Mifs Beede;
I do not really wish to leave out one of the [ 102 corrected ] cases!!* Therefore suppose we keep them all, unless you have done something about the [ omissions corrected ] --
Believe me148 Charles St.
with true regard
yours
Annie Fields.
Boston. May 20th
Notes
1902: See notes for Jewett to Beede, Early May 1902.
cases: Probably, Fields has prepared a report related to her work with Associated Charities of Boston that includes a list of 102 charity cases. See Fields to Beede of before 20 May 1900-1903.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0202
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Julia Ward Howe to Sarah Orne Jewett
241 Beacon St.
May 31st 1902.
My Sarah dear!
Your telegram gave me much pleasure, and when Annie Fields,* reluctantly, I am sure, sent me your delightful gift of a cane,
[ Page 2 ]
I felt uplifted in spirit, as I am in body, by the graceful support. I parade the cane verily in the sight of the Boston Public. I think that it will "keep my feet," if they should incline to stray from the
[ Page 3 ]
direct path. As I am writing, I will say that we had a very good time reading The Tory Lover. I really suffered anxiety waiting for the [ dinuements so it appears ], which greatly relieved my mind.
Love to sister Mary.* I will send you a story of the Women's Journal, with the best description of the Club celebration of my birthday,* antedating the day itself, on which your telegram was received with joy.
Your very affectionate
Julia Ward Howe.
Notes
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
birthday: Howe was born on 27 May 1819. The transcription of the date of this letter is somewhat uncertain. It seems more likely she intended 31 May, though her writing looks more like 21 May. There is an envelope in this Houghton folder addressed to Jewett in South Berwick and cancelled on 31 May 1902. An old Houghton note on the envelope SOJ 50.5 matches a note on p. 1 of the letter.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Howe, Julia (Ward) 1819-1910. 8 letters; 1901-1905 & [n.d.] (103).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Lilian and Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Sunday June 1st
Manchester by Sea
[ 1902 ]*
Dear friends:
This is our first day at home here and our thoughts turn afresh to you who must now I think be at Ponkapog.*
On the 6th Friday we shall hold a little festival here, Sarah* and I alone, a birthday, and we are wondering if you will be so very good as to come, to pass the night or day and night or day without the night.
[ Page 2 ]
It would be a real pleasure!
There is a train which leaves Boston at 12.40 and returns at 9.26 -- but we hope you will pass the night --
A telephone reply sent to Patrick Boyle Stable, will be sent to me at once.
Affectionately yours
Annie Fields
This is my first note* in a Business envelope!
Notes
1902: This appears to be the only year between 1883 and 1908 when Fields's birthday, 6 June, fell on a Friday, except for 1892, when Fields and Jewett were in Europe.
Ponkapog: The country residence of Thomas Bailey (T. B. A.) and Lilian Aldrich near Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
note: a mark that could be a comma appears after this word.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Thomas Bailey Aldrich Papers, MS Am 1429, Box 6, Items 1446-1538. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
[ Begin letterhead ]
201 West 55th Street
New York
[ End letterhead ]
June 7th 1902
Dear My Lassie
Your welcome letter -- no mere sneeze of a note this time -- came just as I had finished my breakfast and lies under my other arm. I turned out this morning at half past six and went into the park for an hour which is just like the garden of Eden* in early June minus that [ wearysome so written ] serpent and there is one bench I prefer where you glance upward and see a bit of wild New England rock, pine trees, bushes{,} hunger grass, and wild flowers; and there I sit.* It is almost as good as a bit of thunderhill* from below. I was quite tired when I got home from Chicago and the next week was due at Cornell.* [ Unrecognized word ] all told this means about 2400 miles of travel not to count the preaching, so I have dickered with Brother Savage* to preach the next three Sundays as I am and then we close the Church and I will repay him in September. So it is in some sort of vacation already and I shall go to Chestnut Hill Va and Stamford Conn{,} taking the morning prayers only at the Church and I feel like chuckling over my good fortune. The "Friend"* said to the hireling minister thee preaches because thee has to say something when
[ Page 2 ]
thy time comes { -- } friends preach because they have something to say and I was of the hireling only [ obscured word ] had to say something and nothing to say while since we made the compact the word has come but it can [ one or two obscured words ]
We are going to Plymouth for August{,} Emma and I and grandson Rockwood. I wanted a change from the [ unrecognized name Delphine ? ] { -- } was tired of the monotony of the table for one thing { -- } asked Brother [ Buckson ? ] to look up a place for us at Plymouth and he wrote back with a ten cent stamp for swift delivery we must come to them must must must.*
They have big house{,} plenty of room and rooms [ unrecognized word ] galore { -- } pay anything we were a mind to,} so we (I) said amen and we shall pay more because it will be worth more every which way.
I have promised to preach at Beverly August 17th { -- } my turn at Manchester is August 24th. I shall first slip up to Beverly and back again to Plymouth and then come to you the 22 or 23 if you do not put your foot on the plan which I hope you will not.
With love to Sweet Heart Sarah*
Yours always
Robert Collyer
Notes
Eden: The Garden is Eden is a paradise in the the biblical book of Genesis. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden after succumbing to the temptation of an evil serpent.
sit: Collyer omits many periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
thunderhill: Fields's summer home was on Thunderbolt Hill in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.
Cornell: See Collyer to Fields and Jewett of 2 March 1902.
Savage: American Unitarian minister, Minot Judson Savage (1841-1918).
Savage and Collyer worked together at the Church of the Messiah in New York. I am unsure exactly what arrangement this letter describes for filling the pulpit during the summer.
Friend: Collyer refers to Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends, who place particular emphasis upon the ability of each person to experience insight from God. As a result, they did not employ preachers.
I have transcribed the following passage as it appears to me, but I am not able to understand it well enough to guess at a more conventional punctuation.
must: The second repetition is underlined twice, the third 3 times.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. It is possible that Collyer did not write "Sarah." It appears to have been added later in pencil. Still, this almost certainly is the person to whom he refers.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Katharine Lee Bates
Manchester Massts
June 8th [ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
My dear Mifs Bates
I thank you very much for your most kind remembrance in sending me this charming invitation [ of ? ] the Shakespeare Society! I wish very much that I could have the great pleasure of being present but I fear that I must say it is impossible: I am to be at South Berwick then, spending a very few days with
[ Page 2 ]
my ^dear & only^ nephew who has but a brief vacation before he goes abroad for the summer to go on with some of his medical-school work.
-- These must be charming days and very busy ones too at Wellesley = I like so much to remember my evening there with you & Mifs Hazard -- and Mrs. Meynell! Believe me always
Yours most sincerely
Sarah O. Jewett
Notes
1902: Theodore Jewett Eastman traveled to Germany after his first year in Harvard Medical School, where he began study in 1901.
nephew: Theodore Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.
Hazard ... Meynell: Caroline Hazard (1856-1945) was president of Wellesley College 1899-1910). Wikipedia.
British poet Alice Meynell lectured in the United States in 1902. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Wellesley College Special Collections. The transcription is from a photocopy of this manuscript held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, the Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
Manchester by Sea
June 17th [ 1902 ]*
Dear Mifs Beede:
I go to town tomorrow and I may find your packet at the house there. If not, will you please send it to me at the above address and believe me
Much truly yours
A. Fields.
Notes
1902: This postcard to Mifs Beede in North Berwick, ME was postmarked Manchester Massachusetts on 18 June 1902.
The contents of the packages Beede is working on are difficult to know. At this time, Jewett probably was at work on the three stories that appeared in the second half of 1902 and in 1903. Fields had been working on a report for the Associated Charities of Boston during May, and this letter may concern that work. See Jewett to Beede of Early May 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0194.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to William De Witt Hyde
June 17th
[ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
My dear President Hyde
I must answer your invitation informally to tell you how delighted my sister* and I are to be able to go to Brunswick next week to share in this most interesting Anniversary at the Commencement exercises -- As for me I shall be most proud to wear my college colours and
[ Page 2 ]
to show my happy sense of being a part of the great company children of old Bowdoin, as I never have been before -- Indeed I am very proud of this right!
We look forward with great pleasure to seeing you and Mrs. Hyde if even, as is most likely, for a few hurried moments.
Believe me yours most sincerely
S. O. Jewett
Notes
1902: Jewett and her sister attended the 100th Anniversary of the formal opening of Bowdoin College and the annual commencement exercises on 25-26 June 1902. This was a year after Jewett received an honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from the college.
sister: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence Box 3 Folder 156
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
June 18th
[ 1902 ]*
Dear Mifs Beede
Your note crossed my card!
I like the large holes and think the package may be sent to me here by express. After seeing the sheets I will decide if they need anything more than to be tied together.
Please send account with package instead of sending to Mifs Jewett.
Thank you for all --
Very truly yours
A Fields
Notes
1902: This postcard to A. S. Beede North, Berwick Maine, is postmarked Rockport, June 18, (190?). Because Fields seems to write of her July 17 card and to mention the same package, "the other excellent package" in her card of 3 July 1902, I have chosen to date this note to 1902
The contents of the packages Beede is working on are difficult to know. At this time, Jewett probably was at work on the three stories that appeared in the second half of 1902 and in 1903. Fields had been working on a report for the Associated Charities of Boston during May, and this letter may concern that work. See Jewett to Beede of Early May 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0193. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Henry Mills Alden to Sarah Orne Jewett
Metuchen N.J.
June 18, 1902
such other of the brief near-to-hand sketches you make.
Dear Miss Jewett --
I have waited for a moment of real leisure in which I might answer your gracious letter of last month: & here it is at the end of my brief summer holiday. We have been visiting some lovely friends in Saratoga --Ada* & I -- participants in a pleasant house-party, for the last ten days -- & next Monday will find me at my office in Franklin Square.
It is a great pleasure
[ Page 2 ]
to an editor to receive from a contributor such a letter as you wrote me. Almost always there is some strain in the relation; but with you I can always be frank without giving [ offence so spelled ]. You did not need to defend your little Thanksgiving sketch,* indeed you did not attempt to do so; but your disclosure to me of your own view of such near-at-hand, familiar sketches of people was most interesting. I could see in reading your Tory Lover* that in dealing with a former generation you did not leave your own ground, & yet I felt the value of
[ Page 3 ]
distance, upon which you lay so much stress. The recent talk about the historical novel is indeed, as you say, shallow. Some recent examples of this kind of novel have been so miserable that the disgusted critic is in danger of losing poise & perspective. I am sorry that "The Tory Lover" came in for this kind of small talk; but I am sure that your intelligent readers as well as all judicious critics made the discrimination & gave the book its proper place in contemporary American literature. How admirably you put the whole case.
Don't fail to let me have
[ Page 4 ]
I am sending this to So. Berwick, as I do not know just where you are, &, from the same ignorance as to Mrs Fields'* address, I am taking the liberty of enclosing herewith a letter to her from Ada & myself.
Ada regrets very much that she has not met you. We hope to catch you in Boston if we go there next winter. If you ever come to New York we would like to have you with us for a time at our own home.
Yours affectionately
H. M. Alden
Notes
Tory Lover: Jewett's historical novel, The Tory Lover (1901).
Ada: Alden married Ada Foster Murray in 1900. His step-daughter Aline Murray (1888-1941), became a poet and married American author Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918). Wikipedia.
Thanksgiving sketch: Jewett's "Sister Peacham's Turn" appeared in Harper's Magazine in November 1902.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743 Box 1, 4. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
Manchester by Sea
June 20th
[ 1902 ]*
My dear Mifs Beede;
How very generous and kind you have been about this piece of work for me! I thank you sincerely.
The large package came safely last evening. Mifs Jewett was not here but another friend and I admired the neatness and care you had expended upon it.
Thank you for all. If you are to be in North Berwick during July I hope to have another bit of work of a difficult character to send you.
Very gratefully yours
Annie Fields.
Notes
1902: See notes for Jewett to Beede, Early May 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0203.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe
Manchester 24th June
[ 1902 ?]*
Dear Mr. Howe
The story is not on your desk; I wish it were! I shall write you again about it within a week -- if I find that I cannot finish it I must frankly say so!
We had just been talking about you and your household when your letter was put into my hand at breakfast time -- Mrs. Fields* is hoping
[ Page 2 ]
to have the pleasure of seeing you before very long, and sends her love with mine.
Yours sincerely (and beggingNotes
pardon for a hurried note)
S. O. Jewett
I am so sorry to know about your eyes. My own last siege is still fresh in remembrance!
1902 ?: This speculative date is based upon the seeming connection between this letter and another letter to Howe probably written before 10 May 1902.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe additional papers, 1880-1959. MS Am 1524 (774). Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 16 letters from; 1891-1903. Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara Norton
South Berwick, Maine, June 30 [1902].
I am just having a little visit from Mrs. Riggs, the author of our beloved "Penelope in Ireland."* We have known each other in a pleasant way for a good many years. I happened to be near her in London once, and last week when I happened to be in Brunswick, she was there too, and to my great pleasure said that she should like to come over to Berwick. She is the very nice person who wrote our enchanting book. Being with her has reminded me of your pleasure in her story last year, as well as mine. One doesn't always find the writer of the story, -- at least in early acquaintance! but with Mrs. Riggs there is the certainty that one might go right on, and see the next chapter, and Salemina and the maid are absent only for the moment.*
Great things have been happening in Berwick: there was the 200th anniversary of the old village church (that was the time, 1702, when we were converted by missionaries from Harvard, and before we had been only a little royal colony with Church of England preaching)!*
Notes
Mrs. Riggs, the author of our beloved "Penelope in Ireland": Mrs. George C. Riggs (1856-1923) is Kate Douglas Wiggin's name by her second marriage. She wrote a series of stories for young readers based on her travels in Britain. Three of these published during Jewett's lifetime were: A Cathedral Courtship and Penelope's English Experiences (1893), Penelope's Experiences in Scotland (1896), and Penelope's Irish Experiences (1901).
Salemina and the maid: Salemina is a character in Penelope's Irish Experiences.
1702: According to the Old Berwick Historical Society, the First Parish Congregational Church of South Berwick was organized in 1702: "This parish was organized under the name of Unity, in 1693. The first church organized within the limits of Berwick was at Quamphegan Landing, now South Berwick village. This church was formed by the Rev. John Wade, a native of Ipswich, Mass, and graduate of Harvard, in 1693, who had been employed as the minister of the town. Considerable religious interest was awakened during 1701, and on June 4, 1702, an organization was effected with 17 members. The Revs. John Pike, of Dover, Samuel Emery, and Samuel Moody officiated as counsel."
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Abbie S. Beede
Thursday morning
[ Summer 1902 ]*
Dear Miss Beede
Thank you for your note -- I knew that Dr. Williams* was meaning to get ^out^ a new edition of his last book on "x rays" -- he has done some famous work about that great subject out of which so much good is coming. Mrs. Fields* and I both thought that you might be able to help him -- he is such a busy man, and needs somebody of real intelligence and capacity for taking care! -- He has been taking care of Mrs. Fields in her long illness and I am
[ Page 2 ]
glad to say that she is getting better fast.
I remembered the other day with a 'start' that I must owe you something for the last work you did on the typewriter! Please let me know, and please do excuse such carelessness! -- but I hoped then to send more manuscript before summer was over.
Yours most sincerely
S. O. Jewett
The fir pillow is still like a bit of the woods, I keep it on my bed all the time.
Notes
Summer 1902: While this date is uncertain, it is probable. This letter almost certainly precedes Jewett's carriage accident of September 1902, but follows the publication of F. H. Williams's first edition of his 1901 book on the therapeutic uses of x-rays. See notes below.
Dr. Williams: Francis Henry Williams (1852-1936) was making his name at Boston City Hospital in the 1890s for developing ways of using x-rays for chest scans. In 1891, he married Anna Dunn Phillips (d. 1933) of Boston. Before 1895, they were distant neighbors of Fields, at 23 Marlborough St.
His book, The Roentgen Rays in Medicine and Surgery was first published in 1901. It was updated in 1902 and again in 1903.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, item MWWC0171.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs to Sarah Orne and Mary Rice Jewett
[ July ? ] 2nd 1902
[ Begin letterhead ]
TELEGRAMS AND STATION
SACO RIVER
Quillcote-on-Saco
HOLLIS - MAINE.
[ End letterhead ]
Oh! what a hopeless being am I! I woke this morning wondering how Joe was, and Katie, and Mary, and Mary's back, and John,* and the dog and the horses, to say nothing of the two gracious mistresses of the House Beautiful.* In a word I had sent out a dozen tendrils in a single night each one of which was clinging [ to ? ]
[ Page 2 ]
something or somebody in South Berwick; -- not [ helplessly ? ], but affectionately. It was a lovely homelike warm "sisterly" day and I feel better for it.
The minister came, and the minster's wife and I sent the twenty-five cent blue [ beads ? ] home to their little [ port of signs ? ]. I parted [ with ? ] these because I felt
[ Page 3 ]
^[ that ? ]^ in the course of years, when I had grown wise, lovable or beautiful enough to deserve them I should have others to take their place. My birthday is September 28[th ? ] Christmas & New Years follow and my anniversary is March 30th {,} not that these dates have anything to do with beads; I mention these merely as corroborative detail.
[ Page 4 ]
I will remind you from time to time of your solemn promise to come to see us here. Meantime I am, with loyal & affectionate greetings to you both
Ever yours indeed
Kate D. Riggs
Notes
Joe ...Katie ... Mary ... John: Probably these all are people in South Berwick, ME. Joe's identity is least certain. Katie may be Katy Galvin, and John may be John Tucker, employees of the Jewett sisters in South Berwick. Mary very likely is Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
House Beautiful: Presumably, Riggs refers to the residence of Sarah and Mary Rice Jewett on Portland St. in South Berwick, ME.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Sarah Orne Jewett, Correspondence, MS Am 1743, Item 236, Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith) 1856-1923. 7 letters; 1902-[1905]. This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, The Burton Trafton Papers, Box 2, Folder 98. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
[ 3 July 1902 ]*
The small package of which I spoke to you will reach you I think today.
With renewed thanks for the other excellent package.
believe me sincerely yours
A. Fields.
Notes
1902: This postcard to Mifs Beede North Berwick Maine was cancelled in Rockport, NH on July 3 1902.
The contents of the packages Beede is working on are difficult to know. At this time, Jewett probably was at work on the three stories that appeared in the second half of 1902 and in 1903. Fields may have been working on her next book, Charles Dudley Warner, which appeared in 1904.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0195.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs to Mary Rice Jewett and Sarah Orne Jewett
[ July ? ] 3rd 1902
[ Begin letterhead ]
TELEGRAMS AND STATION
SACO RIVER
Quillcote-on-Saco
HOLLIS - MAINE.
[ End letterhead ]
While I think of it, dear Miss M. and S. Jewett I was wrong in my statement about my step-uncle [ unrecognized name ] Bradbury of Hollis. When your father was teaching at the Limerick Academy* my uncle went to school there. He was a little lad nine or less years old. I think probably he was a brilliant
[ Page 2 ]
interesting promising little chap for he was counted quite remarkable when he entered Bowdoin at fourteen. At any rate he was so very young that your father took compassion on him & gave him a bed in his own room so that he should not be thrown [ unrecognized adverb entirely ? ] on his own resources in the boarding place
[ Page 3 ]
where his father and mother had put him. It was in this way he became your father's "roommate" but the word meant the [ usual ? ] thing to me & I jumped to the conclusion that they were in college together.
And now I suppose the fatal midsummer silence will fall upon our correspondence since no one writes other than necessary letters
[ Page 4 ]
in hot weather, but I shall break it once or twice to inquire where you are & when you are both coming to us. And you sometime, please be good enough to put on a post card the name & publisher of the little song book. I probably have most of its contents in other books but in the hope I shall unearth some new jewel I want to get this one.
Every most truly yours
Kate Riggs
Notes
Bradbury: Presumably a brother of Wiggin's step-father, Dr. Albion Keith Paris Bradbury (1822-1875). Find a Grave.
Limerick Academy: A private elementary and secondary school in Limerick, ME. It was chartered in 1803 and closed in 1926, when a public school opened in Limerick.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Sarah Orne Jewett, Correspondence, MS Am 1743, Item 236, Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith) 1856-1923. 7 letters; 1902-[1905]. This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, The Burton Trafton Papers, Box 2, Folder 98. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to George Colby Chase
[ to the right of the letterhead Masstts
July 6th ]
[ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
Pride's Crossing
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Doctor Chase
I wished to tell you many days ago how much pleasure it gave me at Bowdoin to hear your name and your well-deserved honors given -- (You know that I proudly feel myself to be a part of that old college in these days!) The anniversary which was observed and Commencement Day itself were both very
[ Page 2 ]
interesting -- but I wished that the recipients of degrees were obliged to be present as they are at Harvard nowadays!
My sister and I were very glad to get your most kind letter after we reached home and to know that your daughter was better and your anxiety somewhat allayed. Your visit to us, brief as it was gave us very long pleasure! and every where I heard much warm praise and most sincere
[ Page 3 ]
appreciation of your address at the Academy.* ------Notes
Our friend Mrs Whitman* came in on Thursday after a very good voyage. I have seen her twice, and while I do not find her as strong as we could wish she certainly looks better than when she went away. And ^[ deleted word ]^ has returned with a great sense of being refreshed as well as rested in the best way. I have not had the right moment to talk with her quietly, as I wished to do, but presently I
[ Page 4 ]
shall give her your message ---- It is a great comfort to one's heart to have her back again!
With many wishes for a good vacation for yourself, and venturing to send my best regards to Mrs. Chase I beg you to believe me always most sincerely your friend
Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Jewett's crossing of the final Ts extends into a diagonal line to the left and down the rest of the page ]
1902: Dr. Chase received the honorary degree Doctor of Laws from Bowdoin College in June 1902.
Jewett also refers to her own honorary degree from Bowdoin, conferred in 1901, and perhaps to her current efforts with Sarah Wyman Whitman to give a stained glass window to Bowdoin, to honor her father, a Bowdoin graduate and faculty member.
Academy: Presumably, Dr. Chase also delivered a commencement address at the Berwick Academy in South Berwick in June of 1902.
Mrs Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Key to Correspondents
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Bates College Library: Office of the President, George Colby Chase records.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Alice Dunlap Gilman
[ Begin letterhead ]
Pride's Crossing.
[ End letterhead, date appears to the right ]
Beverly July 12
[ 1902 ]*
Dear Cousin Alice:
I am really ashamed to have been so long in writing to you after my delightful visit -- for though Mary* gave you my messages and wrote for us both, I wanted to tell you myself how often I think of the pleasure you gave us. I don't know when I have enjoyed a visit so much; Brunswick is always full of happy
[ Page 2 ]associations and everybody was so kind -- most of all, yourself.
= I was dreadfully sorry to lose nearly all of Lizzie's* visit which Mary has enjoyed so much, but I had long been promised -- on the first of July to my old friend here,* -- and* I had already put off coming until the fifth! Every year I say to myself that perhaps I shall not come again, but this summer
[ Page 3 ]I have found her better than for a long time before and we have been very happy together. Sometimes she hardly leaves her room when I am staying with her but now she gets down to breakfast which is quite splendid! You would find the town of Beverly very little changed, but down along the shore it has been built up very much with summer
[ Page 4 ]houses, many of them very large and fine, like the Baxters', of which I am sorry that I could not see the interior. But we did so many things! -- I am not often so gay!!
Do keep your visit to us in mind when cool weather comes -- you and Mary must come. I think of Cousin Fanny's being with you now and you must give her my love -- I hope that we shall see her on her way home. With love to all the family, believe me always
Yours most affectionately, Sarah
Notes
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Lizzie's: Lizzie probably is Elizabeth Jervis Gilman. See Key to Correspondents.
my old friend here: Jewett's old friend at Pride's Crossing was Susan Burley Cabot.
and: Jewett sometimes writes "and" as "a" with a tail. I have rendered these as "and."
Baxters: These Baxters have not been identified.
Mary ... Cousin Fanny: This Mary probably is Mrs. Gilman's youngest daughter. See Key to Correspondents.
Cousin Fanny may be Frances F. Perry (1861-1953), Jewett's mother's niece, the daughter of Dr. William G. Perry and Lucretia M. Fisk. See William Gilman Perry and Lucretia Morse Fisk Perry in Key to Correspondents.The manuscript of this letter is held by the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Brunswick, ME, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers, Series 1 (M238.1): Correspondence, 1877-1905, n.d. Richard Cary's transcription appears in Sarah Orne Jewett Letters.
New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Abbie S. Beede
[ 15 July 1902 ]
Thank you, my dear Mifs Beede { -- } your work is perfectly done as usual. –
Most truly
yours
Annie Fields
Thunderbolt Hill
Manchester by Sea
July 15 – 1902
Notes
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Collection, item MWWC0196.
Transcription by Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University; edited and with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
[ 1902 ]*
[ A fragment with missing material at the beginning ]
putting the birds that were left into smaller quarters where they seem happy -- ) The dining room looks as it used now, and is so much pleasanter but when we had all the birds -- the cardinal, and the charming sparrows and all those they were really very nice. I dont care much for any of these, especially since I came home this last time to find that dear bright wise little Bobby, father's tame little bird that he was so fond of, was dead
[ Page 2 ]
and gone. There never was a little creature with so true and good a heart. He [ knew corrected ] so many things -- though not one trick! and would chirp at me [ deleted word ] until I answered and spoke to him and then would sing himself to pieces -- How often I have laughed and begged him to be still; and now that live little voice is still ^ - enough - ^ and its wisp of gray feathers. John* and I put him into a little box, and buried him when nobody else knew it down under the grass in father's grave, where so much sweet cheer --
[ Up the left margin and across the top margin ]
fulness lies still already -- It was one of the dear links with those old days you know Fuffy,* and I can't help thinking that Bobbys spark of life is not put out altogether!
[ Manuscript breaks off. No signature. ]
Notes
1902: The only support for this date is that Fields placed this material with a letter probably written at about this time. One may wonder, however, at the likelihood of her father's pet bird surviving 24 years after his death.
Parenthesis marks in this manuscript were penciled by Fields.
Bobby: No other information has turned up about this pet bird that had belonged to Jewett's father, who died in September 1878. If it really did survive 24 years after his death, it probably was a parrot. Jewett also mentions Bobby in a letter to Fields of April 1899.
Jewett's poem "A Caged Bird" (1887) mentions a canary, but canaries seldom live more than 10 years.
John: John Tucker, long-time Jewett family employee. See Key to Correspondents.
Fuffy: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. 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.
Annie Fields transcription
This passage appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), pp. 211-12. It is unlikely that the first paragraph below belongs to the same letter as the second.
Monday morning.*I had a really beautiful day yesterday. I stayed at home from church in the morning and took up President Eliot's life of his son,* and I don't know when anything has moved me so much. You remember how beautiful the magazine paper was that President Eliot wrote about one of their island neighbours down at Mount Desert -- and this is written with that same veracity and Defoe-like closeness to the fact, and with such deep affection as one seldom feels in a book. I finished it last night, for although it is a big volume, much of the latter half preserves his own reports of work on the Metropolitan Park Commission etc., which one does not need to know exactly, at least in the first reading, though this will interest you deeply. So I am sending it right over to you.
The dining-room looks as it used now, and is so much pleasanter! but when we had all the birds, the cardinal, and the charming sparrows, and all those, they were really very nice. I don't care much for any of these, especially since I came home this last time to find that dear bright wise little Bobby, father's tame little bird that he was so fond of, was dead and gone. There never was a little creature with so true and good a heart. He knew so many things -- though not one trick! and he would chirp at me until I answered and spoke to him, and then would sing himself to pieces. How often I have laughed and begged him to be still; and now that live little voice is still enough and its wisp of grey feathers. John and I put him into a little box, and buried him when nobody else knew it, down under the grass on father's grave, where so much sweet cheerfulness lies still already. It was one of the dear links with those old days, you know, dear, and I can't help thinking that Bobby's spark of life is not put out altogether.
Notes for this transcription.
Monday morning: The earliest year the first paragraph could have been composed is 1902, the year Eliot published his biography of his son (see below). If the letter was written in 1902, it almost certainly was completed before Jewett's accident in September.
President Eliot's life of his son: Charles William Eliot, (1834-1926) was, according to the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, "a reforming president of Harvard University and editor of the Harvard Classics." Eliot's The Right Development of Mount Desert appeared as a pamphlet in 1904. The comparison is to Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), for example in Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Eliot's biography of his son is Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, a Lover of Nature and of His Kind, Who Trained Himself for a New Profession, Practised it Happily and Through it Wrought Much Good (1902). Charles Eliot (1859-1897) proposed a plan to the Boston Metropolitan Park Commission, which was published in 1893: Map of the Metropolitan District of Boston, Massachusetts Showing the Existing Public Reservations and Such New Open Spaces as Are Proposed by Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, in His Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission.
magazine paper ... of their island neighbours down at Mount Desert: It is possible Jewett refers to "The Forgotten Millions," Charles W. Eliot, which appeared in The Century 40:4 (Aug 1890) pp. 556-565.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Saturday afternoon, [ 1902 ].*
I long to have you get to the chapter in Dr. James's book that I have been reading to-day: "The Value of Saintliness." I "find" it most particularly fine, and penetrating. There is a good page or two about St. Teresa in the chapter before which would do your heart good to quote, -- I mean now the first paragraph as far as "It is a fine summing-up."*
The other day quite out of clear sky a man came to Mary* with a plan for a syndicate to cut up and sell the river bank all in lots, and oh if Mrs. -- only does want to buy it, or her friend, it will be so nice and make such difference to me. Sometimes I get such a hunted feeling like the last wild thing that is left in the fields.
Notes
1902: Fields dates this letter in 1892, but Jewett could not have read William James's (1842-1910) The Varieties of Religious Experience until 1902, when his Gifford Lectures were collected in a book. Probably this letter was written before 3 September, the date of Jewett's devastating carriage accident.
the chapter in Dr. James's book ... "The Value of Saintliness" : Lectures 7-13 were on "Saintliness"; Lectures 14-15 were on "The Value of Saintliness."
Saint Teresa of Avila was a Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic, author of The Way of Perfection (1583) and The Interior Castle (1588).
good page or two about St. Teresa in the chapter before: Jewett almost certainly has made an error. The phrase -- "It is a fine summing-up" -- does not appear in an electronic search of the text. Saint Teresa is mentioned several times, and there are two pages on her in "The Value of Saintliness" (339-40) but they are not complimentary and, unless Jewett is being ironic, probably are not part of the passage she recommends. In the previous chapter, "Saintliness" where one may expect to find the passage, Teresa is mentioned only once, briefly. In the chapter, "Mysticism" is another passage on Teresa (399-404) which seems more likely to have interested and attracted Jewett, but this is the chapter after rather than the chapter before "The Value of Saintliness."
It is possible that Fields made a transcription error, for the phrase "final summing up" appears several times. One paragraph that seems as if it could have interested Jewett is:
Let us agree, then, that Religion, occupying herself with personal destinies and keeping thus in contact with the only absolute realities which we know, must necessarily play an eternal part in human history. The next thing to decide is what she reveals about those destinies or whether indeed she reveals anything distinct enough to be considered a general message to mankind. We have done as you see, with our preliminaries, and our final summing up can now begin. (493)This is not, however, in either of the chapters Jewett mentions, but in "Conclusions."
Mary: Jewett's sister, Mary Rice Jewett. See Correspondents.
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs to Sarah Orne Jewett
July 22nd 1902
[ Begin letterhead ]
TELEGRAMS AND STATION
SACO RIVER
Quillcote-on-Saco
HOLLIS - MAINE.
[ End letterhead ]
Oh! I pray that I may be kept from [ worshipping so spelled ] my bead chain! But when I look at its delicate beauty, its cool greenness, its [ unrecognized word ] refinement, its darling [ unrecognized word ] pink spots, its rich & expensive painted beads & the generally inspired manner of its stringing, I am divided 'twixt love & [ awe ? ].
[ Page 2 ]
I shall try, as you suggested, to keep it for a [ unrecognized word ] ornament, but I cant promise! It is difficult to have a gem of that kind in the house and not wear it{.} I think I should sleep in it were it not for fear of breaking it.
My love to your Leslie* please. Dont forget you are coming to see us -- Would it be best to take
[ Page 3 ]Notes
us in for a day or two on the driving tour, [ Nora ? ]* and I to join you, in our vehicle when you leave, & drive to Limerick Newfield{,} Persons put at Shapleigh & Alfred.* I wonder if we could be sure of entertainment for four persons?
Ever yours sincerely
Kate W. Riggs
Nora: This transcription is uncertain, but probably this is Riggs's unmarried sister, Nora Archibald Smith (1859-1934).
Alfred: Limerick Newfield, Shapleigh and Alfred all are towns in Maine. It is not clear how Riggs might punctuate this part, but adding a comma seems to help.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Sarah Orne Jewett, Correspondence, MS Am 1743, Item 236, Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith) 1856-1923. 7 letters; 1902-[1905]. This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, The Burton Trafton Papers, Box 2, Folder 98. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
William James to Sarah Orne Jewett
Chocorua, N.H.
July 23rd.
1902
Dear Miss Jewett,
Your letter was a most delightful one to receive. As you well know, such things are the "breath" of a writer's "nostrils," but are rare. I ought to confess, however, that this particular book* has "taken hold" in a
[ Page 2 ]
peculiarly prompt way, and I have had several notes taking it almost as seriously as you do.
The envelope in which this goes was inscribed with your name three months ago: you see how rapid my processes are! It enables me now to ask you, from my wife and myself,
[ Page 3 ]
whether you cannot possibly extend your geographical range this summer so as to cover this region, and pay us a visit. You can learn what plain living (on an abandoned farm) and easy thinking are. I can meet you at West Ossipee Station if I know the train. I only ask now about the possibility, some time in August.
[ Page 4 ]
If you say yes in general we can subsequently fix the special date.
With Alice's* warm regards & hopes, and renewed thanks, I am ever truly yours,
Wm. James
Notes
book: At the end of the manuscript, in another hand, is this note: "Taken from The varieties of religious experience. William James". This book was published in 1902. It appears, therefore, that Jewett has written James about reading the book.
Alice: James's wife, Alice Gibbens.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
James, William, 1842-1910. 3 letters; 1890-1902. (112).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Thomas Brackett Reed to Sarah Orne Jewett
Portland Me
8 Aug. 1902
My dear Mifs Jewett:
I have your book* and am reading it with much pleasure. I do not write you, however, to say that; but to assure you that I am very proud of the inscription and have taken much satisfaction in hoping that you knew I would be --
Sincerely yours
T. B. Reed
Mifs
Sarah Orne Jewett
Notes
book: Probably Jewett has sent him a copy of her most recent book, The Tory Lover (1901).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence, bMS Am 1743 Box 4, Item 187. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett possibly to Sarah Wyman Whitman
[ Summer 1902 ]
And then "Lady Rose's Daughter"!* If you were here how much we should talk about it. There are splendid qualities of the highest sort. One says at certain moments with happy certainty that here is the one solitary master of fiction -- I mean of novel writing. How is she going on at this great pace to the story's end? But one cannot let such a story flag and fail -- there must be an end as good as this beginning.
Notes
This paragraph appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), where she attaches it to an 1892 letter from Jewett to Whitman. However, Lady Rose's Daughter (1903) by Mrs. Humphry Ward began serialization in Harper's Magazine in May 1902. See Jane Silvey, "'The Sympathy of Another Writer': The Correspondence between Sarah Orne Jewett and Mrs. Humphry Ward," in Transatlantic Women, edited by Brigitte Bailey and Lucinda Damon-Bach (pp. 295-6).
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Monday morning. [Before September 1902 ?]*
I had a really beautiful day yesterday. I stayed at home from church in the morning and took up President Eliot's life of his son, and I don't know when anything has moved me so much. You remember how beautiful the magazine paper was that President Eliot wrote about one of their island neighbours down at Mount Desert -- and this is written with that same veracity and Defoe-like closeness to the fact, and with such deep affection as one seldom feels in a book. I finished it last night, for although it is a big volume, much of the latter half preserves his own reports of work on the Metropolitan Park Commission etc., which one does not need to know exactly, at least in the first reading, though this will interest you deeply. So I am sending it right over to you.*
The dining-room looks as it used now, and is so much pleasanter! but when we had all the birds, the cardinal, and the charming sparrows, and all those, they were really very nice. I don't care much for any of these, especially since I came home this last time to find that dear bright wise little Bobby, father's tame little bird that he was so fond of, was dead and gone.* There never was a little creature with so true and good a heart. He knew so many things -- though not one trick! and he would chirp at me until I answered and spoke to him, and then would sing himself to pieces. How often I have laughed and begged him to be still; and now that live little voice is still enough and its wisp of grey feathers. John* and I put him into a little box, and buried him when nobody else knew it, down under the grass on father's grave, where so much sweet cheerfulness lies still already. It was one of the dear links with those old days, you know, dear, and I can't help thinking that Bobby's spark of life is not put out altogether.
Notes
Before September 1902: The earliest year this letter could have been composed is 1902, the year Eliot published his biography of his son (see note below). If the letter was written in 1902, it almost certainly was completed before Jewett's accident in September.
President Eliot's life of his son: Charles William Eliot, (1834-1926) was, according to the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, "a reforming president of Harvard University and editor of the Harvard Classics." Eliot's The Right Development of Mount Desert appeared as a pamphlet in 1904. The comparison is to Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), for example in Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Eliot's biography of his son is Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, a Lover of Nature and of His Kind, Who Trained Himself for a New Profession, Practised it Happily and Through it Wrought Much Good (1902). Charles Eliot (1859-1897) proposed a plan to the Boston Metropolitan Park Commission, which was published in 1893: Map of the Metropolitan District of Boston, Massachusetts Showing the Existing Public Reservations and Such New Open Spaces as Are Proposed by Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, in His Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission.
magazine paper ... of their island neighbours down at Mount Desert: It is possible Jewett refers to "The Forgotten Millions," Charles W. Eliot, which appeared in The Century 40:4 (Aug 1890) pp. 556-565.
Bobby: No other information has turned up about this pet bird that had belonged to Jewett's father, who died in September 1878. Since it seems clearly to have survived at least 24 years after his death, it probably was a parrot.
Jewett's poem "A Caged Bird" (1887) mentions a canary, but canaries seldom live more than 10 years.
Further information is welcome.
John: John Tucker, long-time Jewett family employee. See Correspondents.
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
Plymouth Sep 2d 1902
Dearest Friend
The one place on the planet where I should love best to be this morning is South Berwick where I should see you again in the best of all good company, I have and hold, in my heart -- My note to Mary and Sarah* will tell you all I can tell why I must stay here, but I cannot forbear sending this just to say how good it was to be with you those days, because you were so good first last and always, and then so was everybody bless 'em who climbed the hill* and especially who were there already
In love yours always
Robert Collyer
Notes
Sarah: Mary Rice and Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. This letter is dated the day before Jewett's birthday. On her birthday in 1902, she suffered a serious carriage accident in South Berwick.
hill: Fields's summer home in Manchester, MA, stands on Thunderbolt Hill.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 10: mss Fl 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
3 September 1902
Sarah Orne Jewett is thrown from a carriage in South Berwick, sustaining head and neck injuries from which she never fully recovers. Her professional writing career essentially ends with this accident, but she continues an extensive correspondence until 1909, the year of her death.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 6 September 1902 ]*
Darling: last night A.F.* told me of the news from you: but first there came a [ faster ? ] message saying you were not deeply hurt -- but O I am sure it must have been an awfully hard blow & I shant be free to rejoice till I know that you are wholly yourself again. --
Would dear Mary*
[ Page 2 ]
send me a card or a telegram when this gets to you? and would you know that I think of you & love you, and bless you all the time? and so hope that the first air of affection may be a good one & ^help^ get past this shock that might have been so dangerous.
Yours
__Sw__
Notes
6 September 1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 6 September 1902 at Beverly Farms, MA, and addressed to Jewett in South Berwick. Whitman writes in response to news of Jewett's near fatal carriage accident of 3 September 1902.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. 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. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Annie Adams Fields
This letter was composed in French; a transcription follows the translation.
Editor's Note*
[ 12 September 1902 ]*Dear Annie,
Meudon, 12 September
I sent a check to Sarah* last Monday in South Berwick, but, when sending money, one is always anxious to know whether payments arrive safely. I am sending you a duplicate, and I beg that you find out right away if she has received hers or if she has cashed it. Sarah's health may keep her in South Berwick now, when she ought to be near to you. I think of her constantly, and
[ Page 2 ]
I will be infinitely grateful to learn about her condition in consequence of her unfortunate fall. My heart goes out to both of you. While visiting my Russian friends, whom circumstances have kept with Mme. [ Allion ? ],* I met at their boarding house a charming Bostonian, Miss Meech.* I asked if she knew Mrs. Fields, and she answered so nicely, No one in Boston who has met Mrs. Fields but knows and admires her.
[ Page 3 ]
The boarding house was full of American ladies; I couldn't fail to notice the superior dignity of the Bostonians, though Miss Meech and her friend may not be thought of the highest class among the French. Dear Annie, how I am touched by your kind attention to my Russian articles!* They have only one merit, that they have been composed in the midst of worries and countless difficulties.
[ Page 4 ]
I remain in the almost convent-like retreat where Theodore* found me. It's a little sad, but still restful. In Paris, I have too much on my mind, and I can't take enough exercise; climbing the stairs tires my worn-out heart. Besides, for 3 years, my finances have been in a deplorable state. I'll not leave here, where I pay 6 Francs a day, until I've balanced my small budget. Louise* remains with me for half that amount. She has just suffered a serious stomach ailment, but fortunately she is improving. M. Blanc* has been dangerously ill; appendicitis was feared, but it seems to have passed, and I think he will come to see me. I never go to him because he does not want me there, having a gambler's superstition: he said that I, getting on his nerves, would bring him bad luck. (The contrary of good luck.)* That reason is bizarre; there must be some other reason.
[ Cross-written up the left side of page ]
Madame de Beaulaincourt* was so charmed by your nice present. She's doing as well as she can, and she loves you always.
I embrace you tenderly
Th B
[ Page A ]*
After the unfortunate story of the Rorthays,* I hardly dare to tell you that a charming friend of Mme. de Sinéty, M. Meletta,* who will go to New York to settle the estate of his mother, may also go to Boston,
[ Page B ]
and call upon you to offer greetings on our behalf. Madame de Sinéty is delighted with the marriage of her second son to the daughter of a M. Lefèvre,* who has one of the most beautiful castles in Touraine. They met while traveling, and it is a love match, though the millions do no harm.
Notes
Editor's note: This document was added to the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project or revised after June 2022. At that time it became necessary to change format, mainly to eliminate nearly all links to other documents. As a result, this letter differs in format from most others in the collection.
1902: In this letter, Blanc refers to Sarah Orne Jewett's almost fatal carriage accident of 3 September 1902. Because she appears as yet to know little about it, the letter would seem to have been composed not long after. Blanc's written date seems ambiguous, leading Huntington Library archivists to assign it to December 1902. However, we suspect that Blanc has written "12 Sbre " and that the letter was composed in September.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Mme. Allion: This transcription is uncertain, and the person has not been identified. Presumably, she managed the boarding-house where Blanc met Miss Meech and her friend.
Miss Meech: This person has not yet been identified.
Russian articles: In 1902, Blanc published in Revue des Deux Mondes the following articles on Russia:
"En Petite-Russie: I: Oeuvre de Femme" (1 April) pp. 595-637;
"En Petite-Russie: II: Les Paysans -- Les Villes, Les Pèlerinages" (15 May) pp. 357-399;
"Autour de Tolstoi" (15 August) pp. 872-907;
"Femmes Russes" (15 October) pp. 850-885.
Theodore: Almost certainly, this is Jewett's nephew, Theodore Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.
Louise: Presumably, Blanc's maid.
M. Blanc: Blanc's estranged husband. See Blanc in Key to Correspondents.
luck: This parenthetical note in English seems to be in another hand, perhaps Fields's.
Madame de Beaulaincourt: Sophie de Castellane, Marquise de Contades, then Beaulaincourt, Countess Marles (1818- 25 December 1904). [ French Wikipedia ]
Page A: This and the following page appear in the folder with the above letter, but they may not form part of it. As indicated in the notes below, the Vicomte Jean de Sinéty married in November 1903. While this would suggest that these pages were composed after 1903, the grammar here does not clearly indicate whether that wedding is in prospect or already accomplished. These pages may have been added to the September 1902 letter by Blanc or by a later accident.
Rorthays: Possibly Vicomte Constant Emmanuel Gilbert de Rorthays (1875-1949), an anarchist, art critic and dealer. He married G. de Saint-Hilaire, an actress at the Comédie Française (1881-87). He had two surviving sisters, and both of his parents were living at the time of this letter. While there is no certainty that this is the family to whom Blanc refers, they were very likely known to her. Likewise, his "unfortunate" story is not yet known, but see Blanc to Fields of 1 December 1901. [ Geneanet ]
de Sinéty, M. Meletta: M. Meletta has not yet been identified.
Madame Alice Marie Léonie Ogier d'Ivry Comtesse de Sinéty (1837-1924), wife of Count Joseph Louis Marie de Sinéty (1837-1915).
According to Notices Généalogiques v. 3 (1925) pp. 766-7, Mme. de Sinéty had three children. The youngest was the Vicomte Jean de Sinéty (b. 1872), who married Marcelle Lefèvre in November 1903.
This wedding date would suggest, but not establish, that the 2 extra pages were composed after November 1903.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda mss FI 1-5637, Box 5. Transcription, translation and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College, with essential assistance from Jeannine Hammond, Professor of French, Emerita, at Coe College.
Transcription
Blanc sometimes abbreviates "pour" to "pr" and "vous" to "vs." Such instances in this letter are rendered as "pour" and "vous."
Meudon, 12 9bre
Chère Annie,
J'ai envoyé un chèque
à Sarah lundi dernier
^South Berwick,^
mais avec ces envois d'argent
on est toujours anxieuse
de savoir s'ils arriveront
sûrement. Je vous en
expédie dans un double
et je vous prie de vous
informer tout de suite
auprès d'elle si elle a reçu le sien ou
à la banque s'il a été
touché. La santé de Sarah
la retient peut-être à
South Berwick en ce
moment où elle devrait
être près de vous. Je pense
à elle sans cesse et
[ Page 2 ]
je vous serais infiniment
reconnaissante de me
dire ce qu'il faut penser
de son état et des suites
de cette malheureuse chute.
Tout mon coeur est
avec vous deux. En allant
voir mes amies russes
qui, par suite des événements
sont encore chez Mme.
[ Allion ? ] j'ai fit connaissance
dans leur pension, avec
une charmante demoiselle
de Boston, Miss [ Meech ? ] .
Je lui ai demandé si elle
connaissait Mrs Fields et
elle a si joliment répondre
"Il n'y a personne à Boston
qui ne connaisse et admire
[ Page 3 ]
Mrs Fields ne lui eût-on
jamais été présentée! -- La
pension était pleine de
dames américaines; je
n'ai pu m'empêcher de
remarquer quelle supériorité
de dignité avaient sur
les autres les Bostoniennes,
quoique Miss Meech et
son amie ne soient peut-être
pas de ce qu'on appellerait
en [ priorité ? ] chez nous
la toute première société.
Chère Annie, comme je
suis touchée de votre
bienveillance pour mes
articles russes! Ils n'ont
qu'un seul mérite, celui
d'avoir été écrits au
[ Page 4 ]
milieu de soucis et de
difficultés sans nombre.
Je suis toujours dans la
retraite presque conventuelle
où m'a trouvée Théodore.
C'est un peu triste, mais c'est
reposant. À Paris je suis trop
dérangée* et ne peux prendre assez
d'exercise; les étages fatiguent mon
coeur usé. En outre mes finances
ont été depuis 3 ans dans un
état déplorable. Je ne bougerai
pas d'ici où je paye 6 f. par jour
avant d'avoir rétabli l'équilibre
dans mon petit budget. Louise
est avec moi, pour la moitié de
de cette somme. Elle vient d'être très
malade de l'estomac, mais va
mieux fort heureusement.
M. Blanc a été en danger: on
craignait l'appendicite, mais il
commence à sortir et je pense qu'il
viendra me voir. Je ne vais jamais
chez lui pour ma part puisqu'il ne le
désire pas par suite d'une superstition
de joueur: je lui porterais malheur, dit-il
étant enquiquinée. (The contrary of good luck.)*
La raison est bizarre; il doit y en avoir une autre.
[ Cross-written up the left side of page 1 ]
Mme de Beaulaincourt a été si charmée de votre
joli présent. Elle va aussi bien que possible
et vous aime toujours.
Je vous embrasse tendrement
Th B
[ Two more pages appear in the folder with this letter. It is unclear whether they actually were connected with this document. ]
[ Page A ]
J'ose à peine vous dire,
après la fâcheuse histoire
Rorthays, qu'une charmant
ami de Mme de Sinéty,
M. Meletta qui s'en va
recueillir à New York
la succession de sa
mère, ira peut-être à
[ Page B ]
Boston, et vous portera
en ce cas nos amitiés
réunies. -- Mme de Sinéty
est ravie du mariage
de son second fils avec
la fille d'un M. Lefèvre qui
possède un des plus beaux
châteaux de la Touraine. C'est
un mariage d'amour, une
rencontre en voyage, mais les millions
n'y gâtent rien.
Notes
dérangée: This line and the next are marked with an extended open parenthesis in the left margin.
luck: This parenthetical note in English seems to be in another hand, perhaps Fields's.
Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton* to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 30 September 1902 ]
Dear Miss Jewett --
I thank you for your remembrance of my birthday. It awakens a tender recollection of your honored grandfather and his family when they were children at home, your mother among them.
With loving remembrance
Very truly yours
E. B. Wheaton
J.
Norton. Mass. Sept. 30th 1902
Notes
Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton (1809-1905) was the daughter-in-law of Judge Laban Wheaton and the founder of Trinitarian Congregational Church in Norton, MA. When the Judge's daughter died, Mrs. Wheaton persuaded him to establish a female seminary in her memory. The Wheaton Seminary is, today, Wheaton College in Norton. She apparently was acquainted with Jewett's grandfather Perry and his children, including Jewett's mother.
A note appears top center of page 1, perhaps in another hand: Dictated. The "J" after the signature presumably identifies the secretary.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett. bMS Am 1743 (231).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Rice Jewett to Harriet Jackson Lee Morse*
[ Upper left of side 1 -- stamped in red ink,
inside a circle, superimposed initials SOJ ]
Monday
[ Autumn 1902 ]*
Dear Mrs. Morse:
I hope this lovely day finds you very well and that you have had a long lovely drive to see the green country. I have been wishing that Sarah could go for a drive, indeed she spoke of it herself today, but she is not yet strong enough to bear the fatigue. She was more comfortable last week until the damp weather
[ Page 2 ]
came to bring her more aches. So she is tired today in consequence, but will I hope be better tomorrow. She is asleep now so I can send no message except her love which is always ready for you and dear Frances. I have been reading to her since dinner some of Jane Barlow's Irish Stories* in which she greatly delights. I wish I could show you how green and lovely all the country side is, and if only Sarah could enjoy it with me how happy I could be. With much love to you and Frances affly Mary R. Jewett
Notes
Autumn 1902: 1904 is penciled in another hand on the top right of this card, but by 1904, Jewett had recovered about as well as she ever did from her 1902 carriage accident. This note seems to have been written closer to the time of her injury. Though Mary Jewett speaks of the green countryside, suggesting spring, Jewett was well enough to go to Boston in the late spring of 1903 and 1904.
It should be noted that Mary Jewett could have written this letter after 21 April 1909, but then Jewett was on her deathbed, and it seems wildly optimistic to write of going out for a drive.
Morse: See Frances (Fanny) Rollins Morse in Key to Correspondents.
stories: Irish author, Jane Barlow (1856-1917). Wikipedia.
The manuscript of this card is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743.1 (123) Box 4, II. Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Thomas Bailey Aldrich
October 1st [1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine.
[ End letterhead ]My dear T.B.
Thank you so much for sending me this charming book.* It could not have come in a better week and my beloved Thomas Phipps "reads" better than ever -- as for His Grace the Duke I think that is one of the most beautiful pieces of work
[ 2 ] that you have ever done! There are so many things I long to say about it ---- and indeed I wish that I could see you and Lilian to hear about Charley* and all about Tenants Harbour and how you both are and how Mrs. Richardson* is. Theodore*and I went to see her one Sunday afternoon in Spring, [when corrected] I was in town and the house at 59 had just been closed. (He has [ deleted word ] been abroad all summer [ and corrected ] has just gone back to the medical school.) Perhaps you haven't heard what bad days I have fallen upon -- or rather that I fell upon too hard a road the first part of last month! I was thrown out of a high wagon and hurt my head a good deal and concussioned my spine so that I am still not very well mended, and have to stay in bed or lie down nearly all the time -- But
[ 3 ]
these days give a great chance for reading now that I am so much better -- you see how glad I was to get your book!
Yours most affectionately
S.O.J.
Cant you run down to have luncheon with A.F.* some day? She has a telephone -- just call 'Manchester' {.} I dont think she is numbered, but she's there. (But do keep writing stories!) What does make Mr. Howells* scold us so for writing about the Past?
Notes
1902: Jewett reports that her September 1902 carriage accident occurred a month previous to this letter.
charming book: Probably, this is Aldrich's A Sea Turn and Other Matters (1902), which included his stories "The Case of Thomas Phipps" and "His Grace the Duke."
Charley: The Aldriches' twin sons, Talbot and Charles were born in 1868. Charles was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1902, a*nd he died two years later in March 1904.
Mrs. Richardson's: According to George Carey's "The Rise and Fall of Elmore," The William Richardsons at Seawoods and the Aldriches at the Crags were neighbors during summers at Tenants Harbor, ME. See Key to Correspondents. Mrs Richardson died late in 1902 or early in 1903.
A.F. : Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Howells: William Dean Howells. See Key to Correspondents.
It is difficult to know exactly to what Jewett is responding in the writings of Howells. In his "Editor's Study" column in Harper's Magazine 105 (September 1902), Howells quotes from a letter that could have been written by Jewett, though the style seems not to be hers. Howells identifies the author as a female writer of the best local realism, and he lets her freely defend the importance of a necessary distance from one's subject: "Surely ... we must have some atmosphere, some distance or time between us and our theme, to get any perspective, whether we are painters or writers. One can get color, action, beauty, in one's composition of past or present, if one knows to the heart's core the materials with which one works; it is the thing of to-day, the voices on the street, the action in one's own house, that is most impossible to do, because we can only half understand, it being so close" (p, 648).
This letter seems to have been written in response to Howells pronouncing on the value of historical fiction, but such a pronouncement in Harper's has not yet been located.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Thomas Bailey 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: 2765.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Jennie O. Starkey
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
October 5th [ 1902 ]*My Dear Miss Starkey
I thank you for your very kind note which I should have been glad to answer at once but I am slowly recovering from a bad accident in being thrown from a carriage -- and* even after some weeks I can
[ Page 2 ]write very little.
The story you ask about was printed with others in a volume called The Queen's Twin. Your letter gave me real pleasure and I am very glad indeed that you liked "Nora"*
---- I also have to thank your paper ^the Free Press^ for much pleasure in the past: I like to think that I have
[ Page 3 ]
this good chance to say so!
Believe me with my best wishes for your own happiness in your work of writing
Yours sincerely,
S. O. Jewett.
Notes
1902: Jewett refers to as recent her accident of 3 September 1902.
and: Jewett sometimes writes "and" as an "a" with a long tail. I render these as "and."
"Nora": Jewett's "Where's Nora?" appeared first in Scribner's 24 (December 1898), pp. 739-755. It was collected in The Queen's Twin (1899).
This letter is held by Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine: JEWE.1. It was originally transcribed, edited and annotated by Richard Cary for Sarah Orne Jewett Letters. This new transcription with revised notes is by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Monday
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
[ 6 October 1902 ]*
My dear beloved Annie
It was so good to get your letter this morning with Mrs. Bells.* It sounds pleasant at Pomfrett,* I should like to see Pomfrett. It is a lovely high country as you go through by rail. I remember its beauty even once in the [ water / winter ? ] when I was on my way to Horsfords* with Sally Norton* -- we must find some [ new books ? ] for
[ Page 2 ]
dear Mrs Bell. I hoped to look for some today but I could do nothing. I hope it will not worry you but do your dear [ unrecognized word ] good if I have to bring Miss Ryan* with me to Manchester. I am still so shaky and I [ several unrecognized words ] her{.} I really do not feel as if I could come alone or quite [ unrecognized word ]
[ Page 3 ]
[ two unrecognized words ] while I am there but with her I can do very well and I feel sure of the good the change will do{.} I will begin a letter to [ Linnet ? ]* but it seems to grow harder and harder [ unrecognized word or words to write ? ] I cant say [ how I long ? ] to get to you [ just ? ] as if [ if repeated ] would you {give ? } me new life. I shall [ stay ? ] until the 17th [ perhaps five unrecognized words ] Louisa* will come
[ Page 4 ]
down with me. I am just going to ask Loulie if she will meet me with her motor at Hamilton* and bring Miss R & us right to you? The train gets there ( from Ports* ) at fifteen or 20 minutes past 11. if you see her first perhaps you will ask her [ unrecognized word ] for
[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]
me -- . or you might [ stop and take ? ] [ unrecognized words ] [ from ? ] there or Beverly{.}
[ No signature ]
Notes
6 October 1902: This letter was obviously composed at a time when Jewett was seriously ill, almost certainly fairly soon after her September 1902 carriage accident.The lines are not straight and the handwriting erratic.
Monday 6 October seems a likely date, as about the earliest time she could have dreamed of leaving home, though the letter seems to make clear that she is overly optimistic about departing in a few days and staying until the 17th of the month, or perhaps leaving home on the 17th. Fields rarely remained in Manchester-by-the-Sea past the end of October.
This transcription often produces what Jewett apparently intended to write rather than what actually appears on the page. Scholars wishing to see exactly what she wrote should consult the manuscript. Link to manuscript image.
Mrs. Bells: Helen Choate Bell. See Key to Correspondents.
Pomfrett: Probably, Jewett means Pomfret, CT.
Horsfords: The family of Eben Norton Horsford. See Key to Correspondents.
Sally Norton: Sara Norton. See Key to Correspondents.
Miss Ryan: Presumably, Miss Ryan is a nurse and companion, aiding Jewett after her injury. No information about her has been located. Later in the letter, she is Miss R.
Linnet: This transcription is uncertain. If it is correct, then Jewett refers to Thomas Bailey Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents.
Louisa: Louisa / Loulie Dresel. See Key to Correspondents.
Hamilton: Hamilton, MA, a town just north of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Ports: Almost certainly Jewett is abbreviating Portsmouth, NH.
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.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Sarah Orne Jewett
This letter was composed in French; a transcription follows the translation.
[ About 15 October 1902 ]*
My poor darling, what a blow this bad news is! How grateful I am that you waited until the strength of your handwriting could reassure me, and yet how I reproach myself for not having the presentiment that you were hurt! You know, don't you, the pain caused by this lack of intuition about our friends' situations. It seems as if some instinct should give us notice. But, alas, we are
[ Page 2 ]
nothing, we know and understand nothing. From the deep humility this thought inspires in me, I send you a thousand wishes for healing, and I pray for you with all my heart during these days of prayer, the anniversary of the illness and death of my beloved mother. I spent those days at Versailles, with Marie [ Poussialgue ? ],* of whom Theodore* keeps such a friendly memory. She is less young and
[ Page 3 ]
less lively than when she made him welcome. Illness overwhelms her at the moment, a nervous disease mainly, but no less painful. All of my nearest friends are having a hard time. Hélène de Maunkovskoy,* having remained in Paris because of the political events, and who spent a month with me, away from society, in Meudon where your dear nephew came looking for me, has just been in danger as a result of a phlegmon*
[ Page 4 ]
very badly placed under the armpit. We feared at first that the gland would have to be removed. Thanks to God, the care of a man and wife team of doctors, the Santa-Marias* (the wife, a Russian , the husband, a French surgeon of Spanish origin, wonderful people I would like you to know,) their care, I say, has put her back on her feet. I lent her Louise* for the duration of her illness, so I myself was very badly served, but the hospitality at Versailles has remedied it all.
I am undertaking, at
[ Page 5 ]
this moment a difficult task: I am helping my son to regain his reason. The debts that M. Blanc has stubbornly refused to pay off for him have forced him to dispose of a large portion of his collections, which were obligating him to pay interest rates beyond his means. I suffered from their loss with him and almost as much as he did, but I had the comfort of hearing him say: “Since I would never have had the courage to part with them voluntarily, I am glad to have been forced to this action,
[ Page 6 ]
and after the first despair, I have a feeling of deliverance.” That was spoken like a mature man, when we consider that he is deprived of what he loved most in the world, of what he had gathered with great difficulty and at great risk. So I have hope for the future. I want to help more than I can; soon he will have left Paris { and } until then he is staying with me, so at least he has a place to live and moral support. -- So that
[ Page 7 ]
though for many reasons my task is difficult, I do not deny it, but it also is interesting and imposes itself. Tell Annie* that Professor Norton* has taken her little package to the Boulevard des Invalides, and it was conveyed immediately to the Countess.* Correction has been made of the mistake* that she pointed out to me. I make mistakes all the time! Sometimes I have such a tired brain that I feel I can't even remember my own name. Two weeks ago, we had
[ Page 8 ]
a magnificent musical mass in the small church at Acosta,* with the cooperation of the director of St. Merri,* (marvelous children's voices) and artists borrowed from the orchestra of the National Opera of Paris. [ Unrecognized name ] played the organ, and was praised by our greatest organist [ working on that name ], who was invited for the occasion. Several buses awaited a choice audience at the station, and people came in from all around. The peasants acted as proud as if they were giving the party themselves. There were 3 huge tables laid out with lunch, and later, the same number
[ Page 9 ]
of dinners with champagne. Mme. de Beaulaincourt took the time to speak with everyone, brilliant, active, and escorted the guests herself through the park to her front gate at 10:30 in the evening. She changed her hat twice during the day. Unfortunately, the gown from Worth* was lost en route to her. Instead of crying, she took it in stride, saying that we always have plenty of pretty things. Though she had counted on this dress, she remarked that she had still gotten compliments about the elegance of her old gown.
[ Page 10 ]
Her overabundance of energy made me fear a reaction, and I had begged your lovely compatriot, Mrs. van Vorst,* who has spent a fortnight at her home, to keep me posted. But she remained strong and cheerful through everything, and the little silver vase with fresh flowers on her table, served, as always, as the pretext for praise of Boston and of two Boston ladies in particular. I will complete this letter by sending you a money order as soon as I can go to Paris, where waits the great sum of 300 Francs that the Maison Hachette* has for you. Tenderly to you
ThB
Notes
1902: Dating this letter is somewhat complicated by Blanc apparently writing "8bre," an impossible month. Almost certainly she meant October.
This date is supported by events Blanc mentions. In her letter to Jewett and Fields of 7 October 1904, Blanc indicates that she annually remembers her mother during the anniversary of her final illness and death, giving that period as 6-14 October. In that same letter, she describes an annual music festival at the Chateau d'Acosta that usually occurs at the end of September (see note below).
Almost certainly this letter is from 1902, composed a month after Jewett's nearly fatal carriage accident, which took place on 3 September, Jewett's birthday. Probably, this is the first letter Blanc wrote to Jewett after learning of the "bad news" about this accident.
Marie [ Poussialgue ]: The transcription is uncertain, the person not yet identified.
Theodore: Theodore Jewett Eastman, Jewett's nephew. See Key to Correspondents.
Hélène de Maunkovskoy: Despite Blanc often mentioning this person, we have not yet been able to confidently transcribe her surname or to identify her further.
phlegmon: A medical condition usually involving inflammation of the soft tissue beneath the skin.
Santa-Marias: These physicians have not yet been identified.
Louise: Mme. Blanc's maid.
M. Blanc: Blanc's estranged husband. Their son, Édouard, was a traveler and writer; presumably he collected materials during his travels. See Blanc's entry in Key to Correspondents.
Annie: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Professor Norton: Harvard professor, Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), father of Jewett's close friend, Sara Norton. See Key to Correspondents.
Countess: Almost certainly this is Sophie de Beaulaincourt. See Key to Correspondents.
mistake: What mistake Blanc refers to is unclear. Does it have to do with the delivery of the package? Perhaps Blanc thought it was for her, when it really was for Mme. de Beaulaincourt? Or does it have to do with a textual error in a manuscript Blanc and Fields are working on.
Acosta: The Chateau d'Acosta was the estate of Sophie de Beaulaincourt. In a letter to Jewett and Fields, Blanc described a music festival held at Acosta at the end of September 1904. There she indicates that this was an annual event, noting that there had been a festival the previous year.
St. Merri: The Church of Saint-Merri or Église Saint-Merry is a parish church in Paris. French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was organist of the church from 1853 to 1857. Wikipedia.
Gigoux: This transcription is uncertain and the person remains unidentified.
Worth: The House of Worth was a French fashion house founded in Paris in 1858 by British designer Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895). Wikipedia.
Mrs. van Vorst: Bessie McGinnis Van Vorst (1873-1928) and her sister-in-law, Marie Louise Van Vorst (1867-1938) co-authored a number of books and articles, including The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Ladies as Factory Girls (1903). If Blanc is precise in calling her "Mrs." Van Vorst, then she would be Marie Louise Van Vorst.
Maison Hachette: Blanc's Paris publisher. Possibly, Jewett is receiving payment for a translation of her work. The only Jewett translation known to have been published by Hachette, is The Tory Lover (1901), which appeared in 2 different translations in 1904 and 1905.
This letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA: b MS Am 1743.1, Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence III. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Blanc, Thérèse (de Solms) 1840-1907. 4 letters; [n.d.] Identifier: (9) Box 1. Transcription, translation and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College, with essential assistance from Jeannine Hammond, Professor of French, Emerita, at Coe College.
Transcription
Blanc sometimes abbreviates "pour" to "pr" and "vous" to "vs." Such instances in this letter are rendered as "pour" and "vous."
Versailles 15 [ 8bre ? ]
Ma pauvre chérie, quel
coup je ressens en apprenant
cette mauvaise nouvelle!
Comme je vous sais gré
d'avoir attendu que la
fermeté de votre écriture
pût me rassurer, et cependant
comme je me reproche de
n'avoir pas eu le pressentiment
que vous souffriez! Vous
connaissez, n'est-ce pas, cette
angoisse que nous inspire le
manque de divination en amitié.
Il semble qu'un instinct devrait
nous avertir. Mais, hélas, nous
[ Page 2 ]
et, après le premier désespoir
j'éprouve un sentiment
de délivrance. -- C'est ^enfin^ parler
en homme, si l'on considère
qu'il est privé de ce qu'il
aimait le plus au monde
de ce qu'il avait amassé
à grand peine et à grand
risque. J'espère donc pour
l'avenir. Je veux l'aider [ mais / moins / mesure ? ]
de mes possibilités; bientôt
il aura quitté Paris ^jusque^
là il demeure chez moi et a
au moins un foyer, un
appui moral. -- Que pour
[ Page 3 ]
beaucoup de raisons ma
tâche soit difficile, je ne le
nie pas, mais elle est aussi
intéressante et elle s'impose.
Dites à Annie que le prof.
Norton a déposé bd des Invalides
son petit paquet et qu'il a
été porté aussitôt à la Comtesse.
Correction faite du lapsus qu'elle
m'avait signalé. J'en
fais bien d'autres! Il y a
des moments où j'ai le
cerveau si fatigué qu'il me
semble ne plus me
rappeler mon propre nom.
Nous avons eu, il y a
[ Page 4 ]
très mal placé sous l'aisselle.
On a craint un instant
d'être [ obligé / obligié ? ] d'extraire la
glande. Dieu merci les soins
d'un ménage de docteurs, les
Santa-Maria, (la femme russe,
le mari, chirugien francais
d'origine espagnole, des gens
charmants que je voudrais
vous faire connaître,) leurs
soins, dis-je, l'ont remise
d'aplomb. Je lui ai donné
Louise pour le temps de
sa maladie, de sorte que
j'étais moi-meme fort
mal servie, mais l'hospitalité
de Versailles a remédié à
tout. Je m'acquitte en
[ Page 5 ]
ne sommes rien, nous
ne savons et ne comprenons
rien. Au fond de l'humilité
que cette pensée m'inspire
je vous envoie milles voeux
de guérison et je prie pour
vous de tout mon coeur
en ces jours de prière qui
sont les jours anniversaires
de la maladie et la mort
de ma mère bien aimée.
Je les ai passés à Versailles,
auprès de Marie [ Poussialgue / Poussialque ? ]
dont Théodore a gardé si
amicalement le souvenir.
Elle est moins jeune et
[ Page 6 ]
moins vive qu'au temps
où elle lui faisait accueil{.}
La maladie l'accable en
ce moment, maladie nerveuse
surtout, mais qui n'en
est pas moins pénible{.}
Toutes mes amies les plus
proches sont éprouvées.
Hélène de [ Maunkovskoy ? ], restée
à Paris par suite des évènements
politiques et qui a passé
un mois en ma compagnie
à Meudon dans la retraite
où votre cher neveu est venu
me chercher, vient d'être en
danger par suite d'un phlegmon
[ Page 7 ]
quinze jours une magnifique
messe en musique dans la
petite église d'Acosta, avec
le concours de la [ maîtres ? ] de
St. Merri,* (des voix d'enfants
merveilleuses) et d'artistes empruntés
à l'orchestre de l'Opéra. [ Unrecognized name ]
tenait l'orgue et a été complimenté
par notre plus grand organiste
[ Gigoux ? ]* invité pour la circonstance.
Plusieurs omnibus attendaient
un public de choix à la gare
tous les environs étaient venus
les paysans se montraient
aussi fiers que s'ils eussent
donné la fête eux-mêmes
Il y eut 3 immenses tables
de déjeuners à Acosta et autant
[ Page 8 ]
Ce moment d'une tâche
difficile: j'aide mon fils
à redevenir raisonnable.
Les dettes que M. Blanc s'est
obstinément refusé de payer
l'ont forcé à se défaire d'une
grande partie de ses collections
qui l'obligeaient à des loyers
au-dessus de ses moyens{.}
J'ai souffert de leur perte
avec lui et presque autant
que lui, mais j'ai eu la
consolation de l'entendre dire;
-- Comme je n'aurais jamais
eu le courage de me séparer
d'elles volontairement, je suis
aise d'y avoir été contraint,
[ Page 9 ]
de dîners au champagne,
Mme de B. allant de l'une
à l'autre sans [ courir ? ], brillante
active et reconduisant les
hôtes à dix heures 1/2 du soir
jusque dans le parc. Elle
a changé deux fois de
chapeau dans la journée{.}
Malheureusement sa robe
de [ Worth ? ] a été perdue en
route. Au lieu d'en pleurer,
elle a pris cela comme
une [ unrecognized word ], déclarant que
nous avions toujours trop
de belles choses. Puisqu'ayant
compté sur cette robe, elle se
trouvait être encore félicitée de son
élégance avec la vieille
[ Page 10 ]
La surabondance de vie
qui se manifestait chez elle
m'avait fait craindre une réaction
et j'avais prié votre charmante
compatriote Mrs van Vorst qui a
passe 15 jours chez elle, de
me donner des nouvelles. Mais
jusqu'à la fin elle est restée
forte et gaie, et le petit vase
d'argent qui porte toujours
sur sa table des fleurettes fraîches
a été comme de coutume le
prétexte à un éloge de Boston et
de deux dames de Boston en
particulier. -- Je continuerai
cette lettre en vous envoyant ^par mandat postal^{,} des
que je pourrai me rendre à
Paris, d'où [ m'élargue ? ] un gros [ unrecognzed word ]
300 f. que la maison Hachette tient à
votre disposition. Tendrement à vous ThB
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 25 October 1902 ]*
Dearest. I had your very dear letter and you can imagine that going to Brunswick without you will be pretty gloomy! But I am thankful to have ^you^ do all the things which are best: for this quiet, now, will make action so much the surer and safer. So I take comfort in that righteous consideration: and as soon as I have moved to town and gotten my affairs shaken into shape, I shall go straight to Brunswick and make the [ investigation ? ] necessary, and, I trust, [ report ? ] to you en route returning. ---
I write from Walpole where I am spending two days with [ Fanny Mason ? ]* (promised last winter) after two days with my aged aunt at Woodstock:
[ Page 2 ]
and I am seeing really amazing beauty -- a great fall mosaic, rich as Aaron's breast-plate,* & multiplied with tones and overtones of colour.
Meantime A.F.* is sitting [ familiarly ? ] with you all, and the winter callofto prayer is about to begin and then presently we shall all be meeting again I hope.
If nothing happens I shall move to town on Wednesday.
Love & blessing to you tonightOctober 25, 1902
__Sw__
Notes
25 October 1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 26 October 1902 and addressed to Jewett in South Berwick. Whitman writes in the context of Jewett's recent serious carriage accident, which made her unable to join Whitman in a visit to Bowdoin College to begin consideration of the memorial stained-glass window, dedicated to Jewett's father, that will be Jewett's gift to the college.
Aaron's breast-plate: See Exodus 39 in the Bible.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Fanny Mason ... aged aunt: Almost certainly, Whitman refers to Fanny Peabody Mason (1864-1948), Boston heiress and patron of the arts.
Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas (University of Arkansas) note that Mason was a member of a committee to prepare a minute of tribute to Whitman (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Radcliffe College Governing Board Records, 1878-1999, Series 2. Correspondence and Papers of Council (Associates), 1897-1914, Acceptance: Miss Fanny Mason as member of committee to prepare minute of tribute to Mrs. Whitman, 1904).
Whitman designed a stained glass window for Fanny Mason's house at 211 Commonwealth Street (the window is now at the Boston Athenaeum).
Whitman's aged aunt has not yet been identified.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Transcription from Letters of Sarah Wyman Whitman (1907)
Part of this letter appeared on p. 108.
Walpole, October 25, 1902.I am seeing really amazing beauty, a great fall mosaic rich as Aaron's breastplate and multiplied with tones and overtones of color.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Louisa Loring Dresel
South Berwick
Sunday 25th October [1902]*
My dear Loulie
My letter almost reached you before yours came to me! I have been thinking of you and wishing to write. I am so glad to know all about you dear, but I refuse to take the photograph of Loulie however good the likeness is of the handsome cat. I really cant 'discover that you sat' for it, and looked at the names on the back of the card with wonder! I suppose
[ Page 2 ]
it is the angle at which your dear head was tipped. --
I wish that I could say after all this time that I feel good for much. I am better (I am so tired of that endless word!) than I was in Early Summer after the shock and worry of dear Mrs. Fields's* illness &c but as I look back I dont believe that I can do much than I could a year ago or when I was at my best at Mrs. Cabots* in the winter. The sprained
[ Page 3 ]
=ancle-feeling [so written] in the back of my neck and the attacks of pain trouble me less just as they did then, but they are still ready to come back at the least provocation. But I wont talk about it and I do try not to grumble, though I haven't the spirit about things that I kept for a long time. Reading and writing are both pretty difficult, but I have taken to crocheting! --
I love to hear about your cousin Johanna,* do tell me about
[ Page 4 ]
her again! Try her with Miss Sarah Rackemann!* I remember how hard it used to be, when I was taller than most and could not feel more than nine years of age. Mrs. Agassiz* would be so dear to her -- she would feel quite at home with her, would Johanna. -- but oh how I wish I could know how that dear friend is! Do write soon again on purpose to tell me and give my love to your Aunt Emma Cary* too when you see her -- The Time grows very long that I have missed seeing my friends and I do miss dear Mrs. Whitman* so
[ Up the left margin and, then, down the top margin of page 1 ]
dreadfully -- Good-bye dear Loulie{,} Thank you for writing such a good letter. Mrs. Fields is at 148 and will be so glad to see you and knows. Yours always
S. O. J.
Notes
Sunday 25th October [1902]: While the archivist gives the letter a 30 October date and the manuscript is very difficult, it seems fairly clearly to read 25 October, which fell on Saturday in 1902 and on Sunday in 1903. This is problematic for determining the year of this letter. Jewett's report on her health and a long period of not seeing her friends fits better with October of 1902, just weeks after her September carriage accident, than with 1903, when -- though she remained limited in health -- she was more actively traveling and visiting. Jewett fairly often dates her letters incorrectly, giving a day of the month different by a day from the day of the week.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields, who lived in Boston at 148 Charles St. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Cabots: Susan Burley Cabot. See Key to Correspondents.
Cousin Johanna: Johanna (d. 1852?) has been identified as a grand-daughter of Julius Dresel, half-brother to Louisa's father, Otto. Julius Dresel (1816-1891?), an immigrant wine-grower in Texas and then in Sonoma, California. His wife probably was Jane/Johanna Plage (1823-1864?), whom he married in Bexar, Texas on 6 August 1850. She is likely, then, to be visiting Louisa from California, and is likely to be about 10 years old. Further information is welcome.
Sarah Rackemann: Probably this is Sarah Parkman Rackemann Hyde (1892-1988), the daughter of Felix Rackemann (1861-1954) of Boston. She first married Edward Wigglesworth (1885-1945), who became director of what is now the New England Museum of Natural History. See also the Minot-Rackemann Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Mrs. Agassiz: Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz. See Key to Correspondents.
Aunt Emma Cary: Emma Forbes Cary (1833-1918) was the youngest sister of Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz. See Key to Correspondents. Though Lousia's mother was a close friend of the Cary family, no evidence has yet been found to establish that she was a relative. Therefore, it appears the "Aunt" is an honorary term in this case. See Lucy Allen Paton, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz: A Biography (1919).
Mrs. Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Columbia University (New York) Library in Special Collections, Jewett. Transcription from a microfilm copy and annotation by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Isabella Stewart Gardner to Sarah Orne Jewett
Sunday Oct. 25. [ 1902 ]*
[ Begin Letterhead ]
GREEN HILL,
BROOKLINE, MASS.
[ End Letterhead ]
Dear Miss Jewett
I have just come from spending the night in your room at 148 Charles Street!
This is why -- Mrs. Fields* was bad & wicked, [apparently deleted letters ] overworked "doing Boston" with Lady
get rattled, so I calmly walked into your room & spent the night. Please forgive -- Of course the doctor was worried, as she is not a young girl, although she acts like one -- But this morning she is ever so much better. I & she
[ Page 2 ]
Henry Somerset, Miss Cameron & Mr. Saunders,* & topped off last night by the Symphony Concert, where the heat was intense! The combination was too much for her, & she had a fainting spell. She was sitting in Mrs. Whitman's seat,* directly behind me, so that when she went out, I went too. When she was in bed ^at 148 Charles Street^ with Dr. Williams* & a nurse in attendance, I thought perhaps the servants might
[ Page 3 ]
had our breakfasts in our rooms, after which I
[ Page 4 letterhead page ]
hadwent into her for a little chat. And to scold her for getting over-tired! The doctor
[ Page 5 ]
thinks she must really have great quiet & rest. She likes her nurse, she told me, & looked so pretty in bed [this corrected] morning, with her soft hair about her face -- I told her I would write to you, so don't expect others from her. She sends her love. I shall take her in [some ?]
[ Page 6 ]
flowers tomorrow, & do some more scolding. She really must rest.
Do take care of yourself dear -- I think of you so much. don't hurry to get well{;} do it slowly, that is
[ Up the right margin of page 6 ]
better.*
affy yours Isabella
Notes
1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled at 8 a.m. on 26 October, 1902. On the back of the envelope Gardner wrote this note: "I nearly stole your story which I saw on your table. But really I did not touch."
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents. For roughly half of each year, Jewett resided with Fields at 148 Charles Street in Boston or at her summer home in Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts.
Lady Henry Somerset, Miss Cameron & Mr. Saunders: The Minneapolis Journal (22 October 1902, p. 5) reports that the American Women's Christian Temperance Union held its 29th Annual Meeting in Portland, ME on 17-22 October,1902. Distinguished guests and speakers included three representatives of the British Women's Temperance Association, Lady Henry Somerset, Miss Cameron, and Rev. Dr. Henry Sanders (accounts vary in spelling his name). Somerset and Sanders also spoke at the Tremont Temple in Boston, on 26 October, in favor of allowing a local option governing the sale of alcohol (see The Congregationalist & Christian World 1 November 1902, p. 613 and Boston Post, 27 October 1902, p. 8).
Lady Henry Somerset (1851-1921) was a British philanthropist who focused on women's rights and temperance. With Frances Willard (see Key to Correspondents), she formed part of the British and American leadership for temperance activism.
Miss Cameron almost certainly is Julia Mary Hay Cameron (1873-1937), Somerset's cousin, the niece of her maternal aunt, the photographer Julia Margaret Pattle Cameron (1815-1879). Rita Gollin, in Annie Adams Fields, refers to a second letter to Jewett, written the following day, which identifies Miss Cameron as an expert at needlework (253-4). Miss Cameron is named as a member of Lady Somerset's party in the Minneapolis Journal.
Rita Gollin transcribes the third name as "Miss Saunders," though in the manuscript the word looks like "Mr." or perhaps "Mrs." Almost certainly Gardner refers to the Rev. Dr. Henry S. Saunders/Sanders of London. Little has yet been learned about Rev. Sanders. The Minneapolis Journal says he was rector of a large parish in East London.
The BSO concert that evening, conducted by Wilhelm Gericke included works of Berlioz, Rubinstein, Saint-Saëns, and Huber. Cello soloist Elsa Ruegger performed the Rubinstein Concerto No. 2 in D. Minor.
Mrs. Whitman's: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See Correspondents.
Dr. Williams: Perhaps the most prominent Dr. Williams practicing in Boston at this time was Francis Henry Williams (1852-1936), who was making his name at Boston City Hospital in the 1890s for developing ways of using x-rays for chest scans. However, it seems unlikely that he would be been treating Fields in general practice.
better: Gardner refers to Jewett's very slow and never fully completed recovery from her carriage accident of September 1902.
The manuscript of this letter is held in the archive of Historic New England, Jewett Family Papers, Folder 13, Letter 15. MS014.01.06.09.001. Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Francis Jackson Garrison
November 1st
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
[ 1902 ]*
My dear Mr. Garrison
Thank you very much for your most kind letter on the part of the House, and for all your own most friendly kindness and good wishes. I am really getting very well now and I hope soon to be much better again, but I still have to be careful -- It is very pleasant to know
[ Page 2 ]
that the books keep alive, and have done so well in this least active half of the year -- The two Betty Leicesters* never seem to be forgotten among Christmas books either.
Please remember me most kindly to Mr. Mifflin* and my friends at the office, and to Mrs. Garrison when you go home.
Yours very sincerely
Sarah O. Jewett
[ Page 3 ]*I slip this note of two books which has been lying on my desk into my letter, so that they can be sent to me in proper course --
Notes
1902: This date is speculative, based mainly upon Jewett's indication that she has been seriously ill for a long time and the indication that both of her Betty Leicester books remain in print. It seems reasonably likely that this letter is from the first November after Jewett's very seriously September 1902 carriage accident.
In the upper left of page 1 is a very lightly inked publisher's stamp, a square containing several lines with unreadable headings. There is a penciled check mark on the 2nd line, and a word in pencil that may be "house."
The sheet has been punched with two holes in the right margin of page 1, so that the holes also appear on the unused portion of the second side.
Penciled on the bottom left of page 2 are initials, probably F.J.G, for Francis Jackson Garrison.
two Betty Leicesters: Jewett's two books featuring this character are Betty Leicester (1890) and Betty Leicester's Christmas (issued by Houghton Mifflin in 1899).
Mr. Mifflin: George Harrison Mifflin. See Key to Correspondents.
Page 3: This note appears next in the Houghton folder, but it is not clear whether it belongs with this particular letter.
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 Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 14 November 1902 ]*
O yes darling, you see I have been between the devil & the deep sea, and having altercations [ next ? ] old Fitz,* and making him admit I have "got back my temperament" as he chooses to phrase it, but am still [ defiant ? ] in legs! And this air & everything else makes me a bankrupt in all the virtues
[ Page 2 ]
of friendship (except loving) -- beside being possessed of such enforced frowns [ deleted word ] of abstinence for fear of being over-expressed when times [ is ? ] difficult (dear A.F.* so [ frail ? ] that I am afraid to ring the door-bell, lest I should break the spell of her peaceful & [ ever shakily increasing ? ] recovery!) that I guess I am a first-class instance of a medical conscience. But I can tell you darling that when we all get mended up again, I guess we will have some heart to heart days that will make us forget these long hours of durance and be just free again.
For all these reasons also, I
[ Page 3 ]
have not yet made my tryst with President Hyde:* and now just as I was settling in my Cousins send word that they are coming! But I shall get to Brunswick the first free day I have, alas, not to stop in the way hence, but to refresh in full at the end of the route, & tell you all the conditions &c &c.
I cant begin on the real work till after Xmas but I want to have the [ dream ? ] working [ unrecognized word ] [ all or are ].
I wonder if you [ know ? ] much of love and
[ Up the left margin of page 3 ]
constant tonic thought goes with this Silly sheet? ----- warm love to your Mary --*
Sw
Notes
14 November 1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 14 November 1902 and addressed to Jewett in South Berwick.
Fitz: This may be Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz (1843-1913), a prominent Massachusetts physician and a professor of Medicine at Harvard University.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents. Fields had collapsed during a Boston symphony concert on 24 October 1902. At this time, Jewett was confined to her home, recovering from her 3 September carriage accident.
President Hyde: Wikipedia says: "William De Witt Hyde (September 23, 1858 - June 29, 1917) was an American college president, born at Winchendon, Mass.," and educated at Harvard University and Andover Theological Seminary. He was the seventh president of Bowdoin College (1885–1917). After she received her honorary degree from Bowdoin in 1901, Jewett made arrangements for Whitman to design and build a memorial window for her father at Bowdoin.
Xmas: An abbreviation for Christmas.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara Norton
Thursday, November 20. [1902]
How much I wish for you at this moment, Sally dear! but it must be a heavenly day at Newport, and without this touch of the North that makes a fire not look unwelcome in my room. Now that the leaves are down I can see the smooth top of my hill like a little Yorkshire moor, and it makes me wish that we were walking there again. Oddly enough I am just reading one of Mrs. Ritchie's stories that keeps one much out of doors in the Lake Country, -- "Mrs. Dymond,"* -- and between reading and looking up at the hill, I got too keen a sense of being housebound! One flies to Miss Thackeray's stories at certain turns of Fate, for a world full of shadows, and written out of deep and touching experience, but with beauty and consolation never forgotten or curtained away. Don't you remember Fitzgerald's saying somewhere that he thirsts for the Delightful as he grows old and dry?* Perhaps he was writing about Miss Thackeray -- then the Village on the Cliff which he really loved.
Get rested, dear, and make the most of these days in Newport by doing just the least you can with them! I think of you most lovingly and oftener than I can dare to say. As for me, I am much the same, getting back little by little to ordinary life, but not downstairs yet, or equal to much that can be really called decent or properly useful behaviour.
Notes
1902: Fields places this letter among those from 1905, where it may well belong. However, Jewett implies at the end that she has been ill for a long time and unable to go downstairs. This suggests that the letter comes from the first months after her September 1902 carriage accident. Blanchard in Sarah Orne Jewett (1994) says that Jewett was confined to her bedroom until Thanksgiving of 1902 (p. 350).
Mrs. Ritchie's stories ... "Mrs. Dymond": Anne Isabella Thackeray, Lady Ritchie (1837-1919), published Mrs. Dymond in 1885.
Don't you remember Fitzgerald's saying somewhere that he thirsts for the Delightful as he grows old and dry? ... The Village on the Cliff: The Village on the Cliff (1866) is by Ann Thackeray, Lady Ritchie. Edward Fitzgerald, in a letter of December 30, 1875 says that William M. Thackeray's novels are "terrible," because like Jane Austen and George Eliot, they deal too much with ordinary life: "I really look at them on the shelf, and am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper into the Springs of Common Action than these ladies: wonderful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry." In other letters, he says that he does not much like Ann Thackeray's books either. See Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald (1889).
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Bliss Perry
22nd November [ 1902 ]
[ Begin letterhead ]
[ End letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
Dear Mr. Perry
I hoped to write to you very soon and to tell you that I had read ^all^ your book,* but I am on short allowance in these days of both reading and writing. -- You were giving more pleasure than you knew with your kind remembrance and your most kind words on the flyleaf. I have read the Short Story chapters
[ Page 2 ]*
over again with great admiration, and ^as^ for the Chapter on Realism, I can hardly say how much I admire such a broad and truly admirable piece of work! I wish that I could say at this moment all I feel about it!
I hope that you and Mrs. Perry are both well
[ Page 3 ]
and I send my affectionate wishes and regards to you both.
Always your sincerely
S. O. Jewett
I am getting well, but very slowly. I shall hope not to have such an accident again, but I shall be sure to believe my good doctors when they say it must take Time to cure me! I wished so much to tell you what a delightful number
[ Page 4 ]
of the Atlantic you made for October* -- one of the first half dozen of all the numbers that have ever been. Miss Preston's Meredith* was almost incomparably good. I remember Miss Francis* too -- but one needs to speak of everything{.} Has Miss Preston ever written about "Mifs Thackeray?" I loved to see Fitzgerald again -- one of your headings -- 'One thirsts for the Delightful as one grows old and dry.' *
Notes
1902: This date is based mainly upon Jewett referring to as recent, the October 1902 issue of Atlantic Monthly.. She also refers to a recent accident that has limited her reading and writing. This would the near-fatal carriage accident of September 1902, from which she never fully recovered.
Page 2: In the bottom right corner of page one is penciled, in another hand, the ms number, 295.
your book: Almost certainly, Jewett is reading Perry's A Study of Prose Fiction (1902), which contains a chapter entitled, "Realism." However, there is not a chapter specifically on short stories.
Miss Preston's Meredith: Harriet Waters Preston. See Key to Correspondents. Preston's essay on British author George Meredith (1828-1909), "A Knightly Pen" appeared in Atlantic Monthly v. 90, October 1902, pp. 506-514.
I have not been able to learn whether Preston published anything on the British novelist, Anne Thackeray (1837-1919), daughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
Miss Francis: Susan M. Francis was an editorial assistant and copy-editor for nearly 50 years at Atlantic Monthly and a frequent contributor to the magazine, as well as an editor and compiler of various books. She may be best remembered for her work on a revised edition of John Gibson Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Watler Scott (1901). See Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly 1857-1909, pp. 78, 172, 206, and Bliss Perry, And Gladly Teach (1935 printing), pp. 168-9.
She appears to have no signed contribution to the October 1902 issue of Atlantic, but several sketches and reviews appear in the "Books New and Old" columns for September and November; these are signed S. M. F.
Fitzgerald ... old and dry: British poet, Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) is best remembered for his translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859). The quotation is from his letter to S. Laurence of 30 December 1875, speaking of William Makepeace Thackeray: "... wonderful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets old and dry" Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, v. 1 (p. 378).
I have not been able to confirm that Fitzgerald is mentioned or quoted in the October 1902 volume of Atlantic Monthly.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 8 letters to Bliss Perry; undated. Perry, Bliss, 1860-1954, recipient. Bliss Perry letters from various correspondents, 1869-1942. MS Am 1343 (290-297).
Alice Meynell to Annie Adams Fields
[ Begin letterhead ]
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
DEVONPORT.
[ End letterhead ]
November 24.My dear Friend,
[ 1902 ]*
I saw Mrs. Moulton* in London just before she sailed, and she told me that you had not been well -- but that this was more than a month ago, and you were well again. I hope so much that your recovery
[ Page 2 ]
is perfect, and that you are as well as before. She also told me that dear Mifs Jewett* had had a carriage accident, but not a grave one. I afsure you it was very sad to hear two pieces of bad news about my dear friends in
[ Page 3 ]
Boston.
My husband and I are hoping for the pofsible chance of a visit to America, but not until the early spring. We have an invitation to New York, but my husband must not mifs Boston. I shall hope to
[ Page 4 ]
see you, if we really go acrofs. Whether my daughter* will be married then I do not know. My eldest son, who was to go to Canada, stays in England, having a little employment. I am with my sister, wife of General Butler,* the man who tried to prevent the war. He had, on his recall from the command
[ Across the top margin of page 1 ]
at the Cape, the appointment to this beautiful district{.} But I go home in a week. Will you give
[ Across the top margin of page 2 ]
my love to Mifs Jewett? I have much enjoyed her Tory Lover. It is excellent. My dear sweet Mrs. Fields
[ Across the top margin of page 3 ]
accept my love and every affectionate remembrance.
Always your attached
Alice Meynell
Notes
1902: This date is supported by the report of Jewett's 1902 carriage accident. See notes below.
Mrs. Moulton: Louise Chandler Moulton. See Key to Correspondents.
Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. Her novel, The Tory Lover, appeared in 1901. She suffered severe and debilitating injury in a carriage accident on 2 September 1902.
daughter: Meynell's eldest daughter, Monica (1880-1929), married English physician, author and eugenics supporter, Caleb William Saleeby (1878-1940) in June 1903.
Meynell's eldest son was Sebastian (b. 1878).
General Butler: Lieutenant General Sir William Francis Butler (1838-1910). As a result of discouraging British moves toward the Second Boer War in early 1899, Butler was recalled from service in South Africa and posted to command of the Western District in England. Butler married painter Elizabeth Southerden Thompson (1846-1933), Meynell's younger sister.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 47: mss FI 3306, Folder 1. Archival notes on the manuscript have not been reproduced. This letter was previously transcribed by Damian Atkinson for The Selected Letters of Alice Meynell (2013). New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
Wednesday [ Evng ? ] --
[ 29 November 1902 ]*
Dear heart:
Sally's* letter is delightful -- She came here herself today. She is sleeping better and looks very fresh and sweet. She will take anything to our Jess,* so I have just put a trifle into her hands by way of remembrance. She means to come again because she has a whole fortnight before sailing --
Sally Fairchild* came later. She is with [ unrecognized name ] Mason* and will "pass Sunday with Mrs Whitman"* she said. Mr. C. G. Ames* came also today. Did I tell you that Mifs [ Dostam ? ] is a college friend oftheirhis daughter now Mrs Crosby* -- They came to call one day but I could not see them. The [ elders ?] were enchanted with Mifs D.!! After Mr Ames came Mrs. Higginson* and made a most friendly visit -- She looked well and young and seemed cheerful. She said she was [ obliged ? ] to tell "[ mamma ? ]" of the coming concert on her birthday. Mrs A. looked very much disconcerted and said "My dear child I have always said I did not wish any public [ notice ? ]
[ Page 2 ]
2
to be taken of any such event for me! I have said so again and again" "Dear Mamma, it is for all the Radcliffe girls too{;} they will all be there{.}" That seemed to quiet her and all went off perfectly -- After they had all gone home Mrs H. said she went down on her knees [ a for and ] kissed her mother's hand and asked if she were forgiven!
Evidently it was a beautiful experience to them all -- Mary Russell* [ sent flowers? ] today and Mrs Cabot* [ a for and ] the Masons violets!
Now let me turn and thank you all from my heart about the [ home ? ]{.} Theodore* wrote me an excellent note beside being full of heart professing his possessions to the last spoon{.} I hardly know how to tell you all I feel about it, but I am so well at Manchester it seems more promising than anything else for perfect restoration which is of course to be considered.
Elsie's* note was most straightforward but Mr. Grew* told me he thought the solution would be that E. or B. would go to Europe. They had asked him and his wife to take Eppie !! He spoke as if they did not feel ready to say "yes" but this was likely to be the solution of their difficulties
[ Page 3 ]
3
Do not hurry to return the books. I do not need them. I am much pleased you liked "Little Gidding." Jamie* always said the organ next us in the old house when we lived in the village [ reminded ? ] him of it. I think he was there once ( in L.G.) and he used to talk quite intimately of Nicholas Farrer,* though I forgot why! Mrs. Higginson told me that Eva* had fallen ill -- I was afraid of this! So tonight I had asked L.V.* to go to her, see how she is and have her moved to this house to be taken care of if she is in fit condition -- She ^Eva^ spoke {of} a dear letter from you which she which she could not answer when I saw her. She did not stop [ 3 words obscured in a fold ] and I fear she should have done so.
Do you see by the Transcript that Mr. Paine* is half corrected about [ overseas ? ] relief -- I told him "he was half persuaded to be a [ Christian ? ]" at which he [ laughed corrected ] hugely --
Goodnight dearest from your own
Annie.
Notes
29 November 1905: This is the Wednesday preceding the concert in honor of Ida Agassiz Higginson. See note below.
Sally: Sara Norton. Key to Correspondents.
Jess: Jessie Cochrane. Key to Correspondents.
Sally Fairchild: Key to Correspondents.
Mason: The first name not being recognizable, this person has not yet been identified.
Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. Key to Correspondents.
Ames: Charles Gordon Ames (1828-1912), an American Unitarian clergyman, author and activist. His wife also was an activist, Fanny Baker (1840-1931). Wikipedia.
One of his children was Edith Theodora Ames Crosby (1874-1964).
Dostam: Transcription of this name is uncertain and this person has not yet been identified.
ese names has proven beyond me, and I have not been able to identify C.G. Ames or the rest of these people.
Higginson: Ida Agassiz Higginson. Key to Correspondents.
Her step-mother was Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, a co-founder of Radcliffe College and of the Radcliffe Choral Society.
On 5 December 1902, her 80th birthday. the Higginsons arranged for a concert in her honor by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society in the Sanders Theater at Harvard. Though Agassiz abhored public birthdays, she accepted this one. See Elizabeth Cary Agassiz: a Biography (1919) by Lucy Allen Paton, p. 329.
Mary Russell ...Mrs Cabot ...the Masons: Mary Hathaway Forbes Russell, Susan Burley Cabot, and the family of Ellen Frances Mason. Key to Correspondents.
Theodore: Theodore Jewett Eastman. Key to Correspondents.
Elsie's: Probably this is Elsie Alice Perkins (1867-1942), wife of William Hooper, a Boston cotton mills, mining, and railway executive. Alice Perkins Hooper maintained a home in Boston and a cottage in Manchester-by-the-Sea, where she entertained many of the women in the Fields-Jewett circle. Helen Bell characterized her house as the only salon in Massachusetts.
Grew: Probably this is Henry Sturgis Grew (1834-1910). His wife was Jane Norton Wigglesworth (1836-1868). A successful Boston businessman, Mr. Grew had homes in Boston, Hyde Park, and Manchester-by-the-Sea. The Manchester home was the Sumacs, on Masconomo St.
It appears that Grew and Mrs. Hooper have been discussing travel abroad, presumably for relatives of Mrs. Hooper. E may be Elsie, but the identities of B. and Eppie remain undiscovered.
Jamie: Fields's husband, James T. Fields.
Little Gidding is a small village in Cambridgeshire, England.
Nicholas Farrer: This transcription is uncertain, and the person has not yet been identified.
Eva: Eva von Blomberg. Key to Correspondents.
L.V.: This person has not yet been identified.
Paine: Probably this is American philanthropist Robert Treat Paine (1835-1910).
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 Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
Notes
[ 5 December 1902 ]*
My birthday 1902
O my darling, if you knew what it was to have the Fair without you,* (after all the other days beside!) & how we all looked like Mr Franklin, who couldn't rise [ above corrected ] his disappointment: and old Coolidge a-coming up out of pure gallantry, and A.F.* in the little River Prison and [ all ? ] just so homesick. And so now I write to tell you -- yet only so briefly -- that the Birthdays & [ May or Mary ] Irwin's joyful composure in the face of the Gift and a concert in her honor, has somehow restored me: and I shall not weep on the page, but
[ Page 2 ]
like the little Eliphant Child* it hurt our ["hippus" ? ] to have you away for a cause so sorry. But never mind you are better for the Thanksgiving dinner [ from ? ] that: and I am so altogether glad & grateful.
And Alice* is to see A.F. I guess tomorrow: and so I put a birth-day love [ afresh ? ] in this page with every sweetest wish -- and only haven't written a long story of many things because you have more letters than is good, and I am trying to practice the [ arts or acts ] of virtue.
Peace & blessing to the House and all who are therein.
Your
Sw
5 December 1902: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 5 December 1902 and addressed to Jewett in South Berwick.
without you: At this time, Jewett was confined to her home, recovering from her 3 September carriage accident.
Mr Franklin ... old Coolidge ... A.F.: The fair probably is a pre-Christmas fund-raising sale at Trinity Church (Episcopal) in Boston, where Whitman was an active member. Mr. Franklin, mentioned in other letters as a fellow member, has not yet been identified. Whitman may refer to one of her correspondents, Elizabeth Franklin, who was a member of the Bible class Whitman taught at Trinity Church in Boston. In a letter of 14 June 1890, Whitman writes to Miss Franklin about her father's health.
Coolidge Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. Key to Correspondents.
A.F. is Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents. Fields had collapsed during a Boston symphony concert on 24 October 1902. She apparently remains unable to attend public events at the time of the fair, and, presumably, is confined to her home at 148 Charles Street, Boston, which backed onto the Charles River.
Irwin's: This person has not been identified. It is possible Whitman refers to the Canadian-born New York actor, May Irwin (1862-1938). Information about a Boston concert in the honor of this person also has not yet been located.
Eliphant Child: One may guess that Whitman refers to British author Rudyard Kipling's newly published "just so" story, "The Elephant Child" (1902).
Alice: Which Alice Whitman means is difficult to determine. The two more likely are Alice Longfellow and Alice Greenwood Howe. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Wyman Whitman to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dec. 13th [ 1902 ]*
Darling, one word tonight to tell you that I saw dearest A.F.* day before yesterday, & found her looking so truly like herself -- a little pale & thin, but so sweet. Alas, having gone at a time I thought well chosen, I came just after a longish call from [ Georgy ? ] Eaton,* & so
[ Page 2 ]
I really only went up to kiss her and sit three minutes, as one visit a day is the rule & I only went up at all because the [ aunts thought it ? ] [ unrecognized word prudent ? ]. But I was cheered & happy about her, & "so I tell you"!
I wrote to Dr Hyde* that I must take a little safer time for travel -- though the larger fact was that I was rather done up after my "staying company", and much jobbing which the time of year [ brings ? ]. But soon
[ Page 3 ]
I say to myself & to you, dearest.
All blessings on you and yours from this incompetent but fond
Sw
December 13. 1902
Notes
1902: Though Whitman has dated her letter twice on 13 December, the associated envelope was cancelled on 12 December 1902, and addressed to Jewett in South Berwick. At this time, Jewett was confined to her South Berwick home after her 3 September carriage accident, and Annie Fields was slowly recovering from a physical collapse at the end of October.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Eaton: If this transcription is correct, Whitman probably refers to Fields's Manchester neighbor, Georgiana Goddard Eaton (1857-1911).
Dr Hyde: Wikipedia says: "William De Witt Hyde (September 23, 1858 - June 29, 1917) was an American college president, born at Winchendon, Mass.," and educated at Harvard University and Andover Theological Seminary. He was the seventh president of Bowdoin College (1885–1917). After she received her honorary degree from Bowdoin in 1901, Jewett made arrangements for Whitman to design and build a memorial window at Bowdoin to honor her father.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Whitman, Sarah (Wyman) 1842-1904. 92 letters; [1884]-[1903] & [n.d.] Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930. MS Am 1743.1 -107. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dec 22d
[ Begin letterhead,
with a small drawing of an arm lifted above water grasping what appears to be a bone. ]
93, RHODE ISLAND AVENUE,
NEWPORT.
[ End letterhead ]
Dearest Sarah -- just a line to thank you for your letter and to say how glad I am to have you even a hint better. It has all been hard and horrid, but you and dear A.F.* are going to "win through" with patience and the sun shine again.
I did a stupid thing when I was in Boston -- which was . this{.}* I carried down a Christmas present for you -- a
[ Page 2 ]
china [ tray ? ] for your brushes, and left it to be sent with a parcel for A.F. [ on ? ] Christmas [ unrecognized word ] -- not quite taking it in that you [ were not yet down ? ] for the holidays as usual --
Mrs Fields must not be bothered with re=packing it, so please write her to just keep it for you. Unless Theodore* is going up and will carry it in his [ red right hand ? ] and not let it break! I was so tired that week that my mind did not [ unrecognized word ] [ seem ? ] to act much, -- [ perhaps 2 unrecognized words ] [ than ? ] tears!
[ Page 3 ]
Kate Hunt* sent a [ 3 unrecognized words ] [ dog or day ? ] pillow to the Fair this year -- a large one in which [ 8 unrecognized words, one of which probably is wreath ]. And T.W.W.* bought it for $12.00 -- and was to give it to one of the Mrs [ Keyses ? ] as a superior Christmas [ light ? ] -- I forgot to tell you a droll thing which happened at the Fair, which was [ that ? ] among the articles which Sally Fairchild* [ unrecognized word ], was a yellow & white [ table cover ? ] woven by a weaver -- at [ unrecognized name ] town -- I recognized it as my last years Christmas gift to her, but said nothing,
[ Page 4 ]
thinking it meant, perhaps, for a decoration -- [ unrecognized word ] she said to me -- "That is a nice thing -- dont you think so?" "I am glad you like it" I replied -- And then I saw a gradual sense of recognition [ coming ? ] over her, and she went [ into hysterics ? ], and informed me that she supposed the [ sisters ? ] had given it to her! She wanted to withdraw it out of civility, but I interposed and sold it promptly to [ Lucie Bertol ? ]* for $15.00! ---- This year I gave her a [ backgammon box ? ] which she wanted, and marked it "Not for the Fair!" ---
[ Up the left margin page 1 ]
My love to Mary and a new year to you both so happy as to make the bad old one seem like an [ unrecognized word ] dream ---
Coolidge
Notes
1902: Associated with this letter is an envelope addressed to Jewett in South Berwick, canceled 22 December 1902. This letter follows what turned out to be Jewett's permanently debilitating carriage accident on 3 September 1902.
A.F.: Annie Adams Fields. Key to Correspondents.
this: The period appears between "was" and "this" but not after those words.
Theodore: Theodore Jewett Eastman. Key to Correspondents.
Kate Hunt: This person has not yet been identified. Woolsey reports on events at a holiday fund-raising fair at Trinity Church, Boston.
T.W.W ... Keyses: These transcriptions, like many in this letter, are uncertain. T.W.W. may be Theodora Walton Woolsey, Woolsey's sister. The "Keyses" have not yet been identified.
Sally Fairchild: Key to Correspondents.
Lucie Bertol: This transcription is uncertain and the person remains unidentified.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743.1 Additional Correspondence, Box 3, Item 112.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Saturday
[ December 1902 ]
Dearest Annie
(Your letter was the best of comforts last night -- my heart hops right up to the ceiling when you are feeling better -- philosophical as it may try to be about down days! I could seem to share Mr. Thiddy's* visit -- though I am glad enough that he had it to himself. He has been waiting so long for the chance -- as you say, hours dont match! I couldn't help thinking how wise Dr. Williams* was about your not seeing people after six -- If I am not careful then, I get into such a worry ^after I get to bed^ so that I put off upstairs as early
[ Page 2 ]
as I can after we have finished supper. The pencil doesn't hold out, I can see, on that soft rough paper, but get John* to sharpen it good and long; it will be nice for your little note-sheets that we normally write on, where a hard pelty* is so wearing to the writer's feelings --) I dont say much about Christmas dear Fuff* but you will know that it goes very hard with me that I cant think of being with you. After all, as I said to myself this morning, it would be a great deal harder [ not written over to ] to be together, if we didn't care about each other any more! if there were any real separation
)I
[ Page 3 ]
mean, but we are closer than ever in love and friendship and belongingness, aren't we? It is wonderful with all the chances and changes of life that I could always [ manage corrected ] to have part of Christmas Day in Charley Street* for twenty years without any break -- and we mustn't mind too much if an unlucky tumble keeps your Pin* away this year!
-- ( As for Christmas things = I was looking over a box, and trying to see how I could help Mary* yesterday and I got so puzzled and tired that I could have cried. The less we think about them the better! Mary is going to send along a basket of jelly &c right away for a useful Christmas
[ Page 4 ]
offering -- and you shall have more by and by! She thought the perils [of corrected ] such a basket would be greater later in the week. I begin to doubt about the French Country House* &c but I [ )( in pencil by Fields, superimposed and perhaps deleted ] -- I mean to send you a few copies of The Flower of the Mind* ^with^ which you can do what you like -- or put them by.
But do take your copy and read a poem of Campion's "Follow Your Saint"* -- It is full of the most exquisite music and unexplainable charm to me -- (Somehow it makes me think of your things though I cant say just what! Just read it two or three times and see if you fall under the spell too!!
Oh dear, another Sunday
[ Up the left margin and then across the top margin of page 1 ]
is coming -- but much too soon! What a nice thing if there were a Sunday mail! It is a most clear and lovely morning here.
Goodby dear with a heart [ full ? ] of love from your
P.L.
Notes
December 1902: Fields penciled "December 1902 1904" in the upper right of page 1.
Almost certainly, this letter was composed near the Christmas after Jewett's September 1902 carriage accident.
Parenthesis marks in this manuscript also were penciled by Fields. Fields has deleted "Annie" in the greeting, and she has drawn a line from about the middle of the page down to the right corner. On page two Fields draws another line down about half the page, to where she placed her end parenthesis.
Mr. Thiddy's: Theodore Jewett Eastman. See Key to Correspondents.
Dr. Williams: Perhaps the most prominent Dr. Williams practicing in Boston at this time was Francis Henry Williams (1852-1936), who was making his name at Boston City Hospital in the 1890s for developing ways of using x-rays for chest scans. However, it seems unlikely that he would be been treating Fields in general practice.
John: Almost certainly an employee of Annie Fields.
pelty: This word seems to be a coinage by Jewett. She uses it in various contexts to describe people and horses as difficult to manage; that seems to be her sense here as well.
Fuff: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Fields has deleted this word with her pencil.
Charley Street: Annie Fields's Boston home at 148 Charles Street.
unlucky tumble ... Pin: Jewett almost certainly speaks of her serious carriage accident in September 1902.
Pinny Lawson (Pinny / Pin / P. L.) was an affectionate nickname for Jewett, used by her and Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
French Country House: As Jewett mentions Adelaide Kemble Sartoris (1815-1879) in a letter of 1903, it seems likely that this is her reference here as well. Sartoris was an English opera singer, the younger sister of Fanny Kemble, actress and anti-slavery activist. She wrote A Week in a French Country House (1867).
The Flower of the Mind: British poet, Alice Meynell (1847-1922) edited an anthology of English verse, The Flower of the Mind (1897). See Key to Correspondents.
British poet Thomas Campion's (1567-1620) "Follow Your Saint" appears on pp. 51-2 of the 1904 edition. Jewett may have underlined Campion's title in addition to placing it in quotation marks.
Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet!
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!
There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:
But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.
All that I sang still to her praise did tend,
Still she was first, still she my songs did end;
Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy.
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!
It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight.
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.
Bertha W. S.* to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Christmas 1902 ]
Dear Sara to you who seem always to smile whatever the pain, I send this with my loving wishes for Xmas and the New Year --
Affec'ly
Bertha W. S.
Notes
1902: This guess at a date has some support. The author includes a poem first published in 1902, and at Christmas in 1902, Jewett was recovering, slowly and painfully, from her September 1902 carriage accident. However, it is quite possible that this letter was composed in nearly any year between 1902 and 1908, Jewett's final Christmas.
W. S.: Neither the Houghton Library nor I have been able to identify this person. Though a few persons named "Bertha" appear in the Jewett correspondence, there is no other known correspondence with such a person.
In the folder with this letter is a two-color print of a poem, "The Smile," reprinted from The Standard Upheld and Other Verses (1902) by Morgan van Roorbach Shepard (1865-1947), who sometimes published as "John Martin." See "John Martin's Book" in Wikipedia.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence, bMS Am 1743 Box 4, Item . I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Harriet Jackson Lee Morse and Frances Rollins Morse
Wednesday 31st
Decr
[ 1902 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
Dearest Mrs. Morse and Fanny
I must send a word to thank you for your dear and* kind letters which have brought me such pleasure, and to wish you both the happiest of new years. I am getting better but about as slowly as a very unambitious snail! However
[ Page 2 ]
I hope to get to town before the New Year gets old, and to see you both. Oh I was so sorry when I found that you didn't get to Mrs. Agassiz's* concert ^I wish [ we ? ] had stayed at home together!^ -- but Fanny's Christmas walk did me good -- as if I had gone too! I hope that you have some good drives and walks too in this bright winter weather, dear Mrs. Morse!
With much love
yours always
Sarah
Notes
1902: This date was penciled in by another hand, and probably it is correct. Jewett reports her slow recovery, presumably from her carriage accident of September 1902.
and: Sometimes in this letter, Jewett writes an "a" with a long tail for "and." I render these as "and."
Agassiz's: Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz. Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743.1 (123) Box 4, II. Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Harriet Prescott Spofford
South Berwick, Maine, December 31, 1902.
My dear Friend, -- I am late in thanking you for my dear little Christmas book,* but I wished to read it before I wrote, and these have not been good reading-days. It is a dear story: I felt almost as if I were seven years old again and cuddled into a corner with my beloved story of "Mr. Rutherford's Children."* The same feeling came over me as nearly as it ever can come again. Your story walks faster, as a story of these days should, but there are very real people and real experiences, and your charming fancy -- your quick imagination -- your beloved sympathy, make the pages live. What any "sister authoress" would really love to do would be to hold the pen that was equal to writing you!
But I must write no more at this hour of night! I hope to see you very soon, as I am coming back to town presently.
Notes
my dear little Christmas book: It seems clear that Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921) gave Jewett a copy of one of her books for Christmas in 1902, and it is likely this would have been a book for children. It seems possible that the gift was The Children of the Valley (1901), or perhaps even an early copy of That Betty (1903). Spofford also published The Great Procession and Other Verses for and about Children in 1902, and she contributed the introduction to Gail Hamilton's Life in Letters, by Gail Hamilton (Mary A. Dodge, 1833-1896) in 1901.
my beloved story of "Mrs. Rutherford's Children": Susan Warner (1819-1885) is best known for her very popular novel, The Wide, Wide World (1850). She published Mrs. Rutherford's Children in 1853.
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Edited by Terry Heller, Coe College.
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