Sarah Orne Jewett to Mr. Jamieson*
34 Beacon
Street
Boston Feby 23rd
[ 1904 ]*
My dear Mr. Jamieson
Your letter
gives me great pleasure and* brings up many pleasant and
affectionate associations. Indeed I remember you and your
dear mother whose kindness and gentleness none of her
friends could easily forget. --
-- I should like very much to see you
and Mrs. Jamieson and to answer your letter without
writing, but I have never got over a bad accident* of more
[ Page 2 ]
than a year ago, and though I have come to Town for
a change, I am obliged to be very careful about keeping
quiet.
I have only the copy of Mrs.
Thaxter's* book that she gave me, and I do not know of
another, which could be bought, but I think if you go to
Mr. Sullivan* at Little and Brown's that he can find one
for you, certainly by waiting a little; and you might
leave an order, also, at Bartlett's* in Cornhill where
they deal chiefly in secondhand books. Sometimes at the
bookstores in smaller cities one can find a book like that
and in much better condition.
Believe me yours most sincerely,
S. O. Jewett
Notes
1904: Richard Cary assigned the letter this
date, presumably upon the ground that Jewett says her 1902
carriage accident took place more than a year ago.
Jamieson: The identify of Mr. Jamieson
remains unknown.
It seems possible that Jewett is
writing to a son of Canadian-born American author, Cecilia Viets Dakin Jamison (1840-
11 April 1909). Though her name is spelled "Jamison" in
her books, it was fairly common during her lifetime to
find her books advertised as by "C. V. Jamieson."
Mrs. Jamison was likely well-known by Jewett and Fields, a
popular writer and artist living after 1902 in Roxbury,
MA, having published with Ticknor and Fields and in many
of the magazines where Jewett published. However, no
evidence has been found that she had a son.
Another potential recipient is "John
Franklin Jameson (September 19, 1859 - September 28, 1937)
... an American historian, author, and journal editor who
played a major role in the professional activities of
American historians in the early 20th century" (Wikipedia).
His
mother
was Mariette Thompson Jameson
(1838-1924).
and: In this letter, Jewett sometimes writes "a"
with a long tail for "and." I have rendered all as
"and."
accident: Jewett refers to her debilitating
carriage accident of September 1902.
Thaxter's: Celia Laighton Thaxter.
Key to Correspondents.
Cary notes:
Two books by Celia Thaxter are inscribed to Miss
Jewett by the author: Poems, 11th ed. (Boston,
1883), and An Island Garden (Boston, 1894). One
of
Mrs. Thaxter's poems in manuscript, "Vesper," hangs in a
frame with her photograph in the breakfast room of the
Memorial House at South Berwick.
Bartlett's: Cary writes:
N. J. Bartlett & Company was the
most fully stocked of the several bookstores on Cornhill
Street, Beacon Hill east of Scollay Square. Here could be
obtained new theological works, fine books by
discriminating presses, standard sets of English authors
from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, a few
first editions, and the run of Georgian and Victorian
volumes. Little, Brown & Company, located on
Washington Street near the Boston Globe building,
offered somewhat the same assortment. Both catered to the
gentleman of moderate means intent on a general library
rather than to the special collector.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Colby College
Special Collections, Waterville, ME: JEWE.1. Richard Cary
included his transcription in
Sarah Orne Jewett Letters.
New transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Harriet Mann Miller to Sarah Orne Jewett
827 DeKalb Ave
Brooklyn, New York
[ 2 March 1904 ]
My dear Miss Jewett:
I have just got out a book* of Maine
Studies, with a sentence of yours for sending
???. You are so associated with Maine in my thoughts
-- and I am so proud of that state -- that I venture to
send you a copy, hoping that you may enjoy the selections,
by one who loves the Pine-
[
Page 2 ]
Tree State almost as much as you do
yourself.
Cordially yours
Olive Thorne Miller
March 2d 1904
Notes
book: In the folder with this manuscript is a note
that reads: "Taken from With the birds in Maine. Olive
Thorne Miller." This book opens with a Jewett quotation
describing a spot on the coast of Maine, from Jewett's "By
the Morning Boat" (1890).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am
1743 Box 3, Item 154 I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Mary Augusta Ward to Annie Adams Fields
March 9,
1904.
[ Begin letterhead ]*
25, GROSVENOR PLACE. S.W.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear M
rs Fields, I was delighted to get
your last kind letter, and should have answered it before
but for the bustle of our wedding preparations. Little
Janet* is to be married at Oxford on the 19
th,
& we all have our hands very full just now. Thank you
for your kind congratulations. It is a most happy marriage
in all its present omens.
[ Page 2 ]
George Trevelyan has inherited many of the Macaulay gifts --
great historical ability, the warmest of hearts, & a
remarkable high mindedness. And Janet understands & fits
him wonderfully --
Alack! I shall not be in Rome I fear,
this spring. We go to Venice after the wedding & then to
our villa at Cadenabbia{.} If you are passing through in May
& would rest a night with us, we
[ Page 3 ]
we should be so enchanted to see you. Address from April
21. Villa Bonaventura Cadenabbia --
I have been so truly sorry to hear of dear Mifs Jewett's
long suffering.* I do hope that she will soon be herself,
& able once more to enjoy and make use of her delightful
talent.
Thank you very much for what you say of 'Lady Rose'.* I hope
the new book may find as many
[ Page 4 ]
friends! But there are only 3 numbers done, & I am
still in the nervous stage about it, obliged however to put
it out of my thoughts as much as possible, till dear Jan's
wedding is over.
Yes, I know beautiful Taormina & the
Hills Villa. But we saw it in snow & storm -- I am
envious of your almond blossom! May Rome be sunny & kind
to you also!
With affectionate regards
yours most [ truly ? ]
Mary A. Ward
Notes
letterhead: Stamped in the upper left corner of
page 1, on the diagonal: TELEPHONE, 560 VICTORIA.
Janet: Ward's daughter, author and activist,
Janet Penrose Trevelyan (1879-1956). Her husband was British
academic historian, George Macaulay Trevelyan
(1876-1962). Wikipedia.
suffering: Ward refers to Jewett's long and never
completed recovery from a carriage accident in September
1902.
'Lady Rose': Ward's
Lady Rose's Daughter appeared in
1903. Ward's next novel was
The Marriage of William Ashe
(1905).
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 Edward Garnett
Boston March 10th
1904
[
Begin letterhead ]
34 Beacon Street.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear M
r Garnett
I have so long
wished to write to you -- Your review of The
Ambassadors*
was wonderfully good -- I can hardly say how much I ^
take^
delight in Mr. James's work. You shall not find me wanting
in sympathy when you write such an appreciation -- or
failing now to read everything you write of books and men
with eager interest. I have seen
[ Page 2 ]
The
Speaker* and some numbers of The
Academy
-- -- Alas, I have had [ many
corrected ] weeks
when I could read much less than I wished and* with great
dullness and difficulty of holding my mind to anything,
but I am again coming to better weeks, and this most
trying phase of the effect of my accident* is fast
disappearing. I had all Mrs. Garnetts* Editions
[ Page 3 ]
of [ Turgenieff
corrected, perhaps with a single "f"
] ready to hand with the delightful looking prefaces, just
before I left the country, and I am already looking
forward to getting back to them. The spring is coming on
fast, after a hard winter.
--- --- This
is but a word to say that I have not forgotten your
kindness or the pleasure of reading what you write.
[ Page 4 ]
-- I sent on your letter to Messers Houghton Mifflin
&co.* and I suppose they may be waiting for the time
when I can be dealt with again upon business
affairs! Believe me
yours most sincerely
S. O. Jewett
Was not Mrs. Meynell's Two Childhoods* in the
Monthly
Review a poem to take to ones heart?
-- The Wordsworth and Dante -- perhaps I have not
remembered the name --
Notes
Ambassadors: American author, Henry James
(see
Key to Correspondents) published his
novel,
The Ambassadors in 1903. Garnett's review
appeared in
The Speaker new series 9 (14 November
1903): 146-7.
With this title and the magazine titles
that follow, Jewett probably intended underlining the
capitalized "The" with each, but she placed only a short
line under the noun in each title.
The Speaker ... The Academy:
The Speaker (1890-1907) was a
British weekly review of politics, literature, science and
the arts.
The Academy was a British
weekly review of literature and general topics (1869-1902).
In 1902-1915, it became
The Academy and Literature
and struggled to continue. Garnet published his overview of
Jewett there in 1903: "
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett's Tales."
and: In this letter, Jewett sometimes writes "a" with
a long tail for "and." I have rendered all as "and."
accident: Jewett refers to her carriage accident of
September 1902, which resulted in permanent disability.
Mrs. Garnetts:
Constance Black Garnett (1861-1946)
was a prolific English translator of nineteenth-century
Russian literature. She translated much of the work of
Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) between 1894
and 1899. Edward Garnett authored at least some of the
introductions, e.g.
Fathers and Children (1895).
Meynell: Alice Meynell. See
Key to Correspondents. Her poem, "Two
Childhoods" appeared in the British periodical,
The Monthly Review 13 (1903):
168-9. The poem praises British poet
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and
Italian poet,
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321), as
examples of poets who carried into adulthood and their
poetry the two childhood loves that Meynell says inspire all
great poetry, love for nature and for a person.
Houghton, Mifflin: See Jewett to Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. of 1 October 1904. In Jewett's letters to Garnett
of 12 October 1903 and 2 October 1905, there is discussion
of a possible new selection from Jewett's published short
stories along the lines of
Tales of New England
(1890). Richard Cary describes the project as proposed in
Garnett's letter of 31 August 1904:
Garnett specifically proposes that Houghton
Mifflin publish an edition of The Best Tales of Sarah
Orne
Jewett,
the first volume to be an entirely new work; volumes
II, III, and IV, Selected Tales; volume V, The
Country of the Pointed Firs. "I believe that
Duckworth would take a thousand copies of each volume if
such an Edition could be arranged." (Colby College
Library)
Such a project would have encountered difficulty with volume
1, for Jewett produced no new work after 1902. Perhaps
the volume could have contained uncollected stories, though
it seems likely Jewett had before considered and rejected
most of these for republication.
This manuscript is held by the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Jewett,
Sarah Orne, 1849-1909. 2 ALS, AL to Garnett, Edward,
1904-1905, undated; Edward Garnett Collection MS-1541.
Container 9.1. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe
College.
Annie Adams Fields to Lilian Aldrich
[ Spring 1904 ]*
Dear Lily:
I stopped my messenger
on his way with a card of remembrance, to you just to thank
you and to say I shall put the violets in my dress presently
where their odor shall tell me of your thoughts. Thank you,
dear, for holding yourself so bravely and remembering us
under the cloud of you ever present sorrow{.}
[ Page 2 ]
I have been wishing to know that your cold is better. From
your note I suppose, at least, you are not shut in your
room.
Sarah* has been here one week and a day
suffering head ache all the time and chiefly shut in her
room and bed.
She is more
[ Page 3 ]
comfortable today and sends her thanks with mine to you
both.
Affectionately
yours
Annie Fields.
Notes
Spring 1904: This date is speculative, based on
Fields mentioning Jewett suffering from severe headaches and
Lilian Aldrich's "ever present sorrow," which probably
refers to the death of her son, Charles Frost Aldrich, on 6
March 1904. The gift of violets suggests the letter was
composed in April or later.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See
Key to Correspondents. In the spring
of 1904, Jewett continued to suffer debilitating symptoms
resulting from her near fatal carriage accident of September
1902.
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 George Edward Woodberry
148 Charles Street
Boston April 18
th 1904
Dear Mr. Woodberry:
Having small knowledge of my own I fell
upon the great dictionary to learn that our French word
means as I suggested "to beat all" but with the addition of
beating all in impudence, impertinence, and fellow
attributes. "Outrecrudence" seems to soften these rather out
spoken accusations which spoken in English might bring one
into ^[ the
? ] police^ court!! But this
opening is only to give me an excuse for
[ Page 2 ]
speaking of your poem which I believe [ firmly
? ]
should be printed. If the [ passages
? ] of half
cooked [
unrecognized word ] for the intellectual
palates of the moment, cannot see this, would it not be well
to lay aside a portion of the poem, each small part as may
not be necessary to the progress and [ communication
?
] of the poetic idea and try it on the public, keeping the
rest for some time when the whole may appear in a book --
I think it is important for the author as for the public
[
Page 3 ]
that true work, especially poetry should
be allowed to appear. It will be a joy to someone as it
was to the writer and many will have a lovely picture
before their eyes, after reading the poems. Do try the
Atlantic and Scribner before laying it aside.
We shall miss you this summer but when you return let us
try to make up for much lost time. Mifs Jewett*
continues to improve and we have [ now ? ] to
look forward to many happy hours in the old library,
where we shall delight to have you come and read or talk
as often as you will. Mifs Jewett said "did you
give him Charles Lamb's book* to look at"! She did not
think much of me as a showman evidently{.}
[ Page 4 ]
We shall be deeply interested to know whither the wings of
fortune carry you. We
have the vale of Enna{;}
perhaps you will climb Delphi.* But poetry does not ask us
to climb mountains nor seek for her too deeply{.} She will
meet you somewhere on the road.
Goodbye
affectionately
From us both
Annie Fields --
Notes
Mifs Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key
to Correspondents.
Charles Lamb's book: Possibly, Jewett refers to
Fields's
A Shelf of Old Books (1894).
Delphi: Enna is a commune in Sicily. In some versions
of the ancient Greek myth, Persephone was abducted from the
Valley of Enna.
Delphi is in Greece.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: George Edward Woodberry
correspondence and compositions I. Letters to George
Edward Woodberry, Fields, Annie (Adams) 1834-1915. 65
letters; 1889-1914., 1889-1914. Box: 2, MS Am 1587, (71)
This transcription is from a photocopy
held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, Burton Trafton
Collection, Box 2, folder 87.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Houghton Mifflin & Company to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
All letters, to ensure prompt
attention, must be addressed to the Firm.
__________________________________________________
CHICAGO OFFICE
378-358 WABASH AVENUE.
|
BOSTON OFFICE,
4 PARK STREET.
|
NEW YORK OFFICE,
85 FIFTH AVENUE
|
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY,
Publishers.
Boston, April 27, 1904*
[ End letterhead ]
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett,
South Berwick, Maine.
Dear Madam: --
We
desire to place the remaining copies of the Edition De Luxe
of Lowell's works, so far as possible, with subscribers who
have previously secured other limited editions of the
American Authors. The edition of Lowell is uniform in
typography with the editions of Emerson, Hawthorne and
Fiske* previously issued, all of which were quickly sold and
are now selling at a premium. As you are a subscriber to a
part of the series, we feel sure you will fully appreciate
the desirability of adding the set of Lowell to your
collection, while it is possible to do so.
This edition is unique from the fact that
it is the first issue of Lowell's Writings containing the
Letters, delightfully interwoven with biographical
information written by Lowell's friend and literary
executor, Prof. Charles Eliot Norton. It is also the most
beautifully illustrated edition of Lowell ever offered to
the public.
We are willing to
reserve a set,
assigning to you the lowest available number at the time
your order reaches us and hold delivery until the edition is
complete in the Autumn, if that be your wish. Or, we will
deliver immediately the six volumes that are now ready and
the remainder of the set in the Autumn. If you would like to
see a sample volume before definitely placing your order,
kindly advise, and we will send it immediately.
We trust you will fully appreciate the
importance of attending to this matter
before going away
for the Summer, if you desire us to reserve a set for
you.
Yours very truly,
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
: The date was typed in.
Lowell's works ... Emerson, Hawthorne ... Fiske: For
James Russell Lowell and Ralph Waldo Emerson, see Key to
Correspondents. For American author, Nathaniel
Hawthorne (1804-1864) and American philosopher and historian
John Fiske (1842-1901), as well as for the editor, American
author and Harvard University professor, Charles Eliot
Norton (1827-1908), see Wikipedia.
The typescript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett
Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., firm,
publishers, Boston. 6 letters; 1891-1904.. (101).
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 McCracken to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 11 May 1904 ]*
My dear Miss Jewett: --
"The Country of the Pointed Firs"* has
come to me; and I thank you for sending it, more than I can
say. Since first I read it, I have [ felt
? ]
grateful to you for writing it, more than I can say.
My sister calls my books a "free private
library", -- because so many of them are given away. But I
have a few volumes which I only lend and this treasure, of
yours, from you, is already numbered with those few.
Thanking you once more, I am
Sincerely yours,
Elizabeth McCracken.
39 Jason Street
Arlington, May 11th, 1904.
Notes
"The Country of the Pointed Firs": Jewett's
novel appeared in 1896.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am
1743 Box 3, Item 142 I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Kate Douglas Wiggin Riggs to Sarah Orne Jewett
[
May ?
] 28
th 1904*
Ever dear Sarah Jewett
We have been in [ these
? ] isles -- my husband{,}
my sister & I -- since May 1
st &
we are sailing home tomorrow in the big new Baltic.*
It is fortunate that it
is big for I have only just
heard that Bowdoin has conferred an
[ Page 2 ]
honorary degree upon me & the surprise, the
unexpectedness & the honour, combined make me desire a
very large place in which to spread myself.
I have just written President Hyde* that deeply impressed as
I am to be the daughter of Bowdoin, I am [ sure
? ]
[ Page 3 ]
prouder & happier to be Sarah Jewett's sister!
And so I am, & I wish I were worthier! Still, so far as
the degree is concerned, I have met as many as three men in
my life, who possessed degrees & yet were quite dull
& disagreeable!
[ Page 4 ]
And how are you dear Miss Jewett? Did you go to
commencement* & will you go next year & hold up my
feeble knees when I don the cap? And may I come for a chat
with you some time soon, [ in
? ] Berwick, since I
fear you ought not to take the tiring [ dull
? ]
journey to Hollis.* Please write me a [ little
?
] line chère, where oh, joy! I hope to be by August [ 6
th
]! With affectionate regards to your sister I am [
unrecognized
words ]
Kate Douglas Riggs
Notes
1904: The transcription of the entire date
is uncertain, but because Riggs received her honorary degree
from Bowdoin in late June 1904, and she has been in England
since 1 May, this letter almost certainly is from May. It is
puzzling that Riggs asks Jewett if she attended commencement
and refers to her own degree as coming "next year."
Which commencement she means is not clear.
Baltic: The
RMS Baltic was an ocean liner of
the White Star Line, new in 1904, at which time this was the
world's largest ship and sailed between Liverpool and New
York.
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).
Riggs received her honorary degree from
Bowdoin in 1904.
Hollis: Riggs's home in Hollis, 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.
Maud Howe Elliot* to Sarah Orne Jewett
241 Beacon St May 31st
[ 1904 ]*
Very dear Sara;*
I write for mama who
will write herself very soon to thank you for the wonderful
chudder shawl* that came to her on her birthday from you. It
is glorious in colour, exquisite in texture, and she is
perfectly enchanted with it. I hope you will see her soon,
sweet, wrapped up in the splendid thing. We got though the
birthday party very well. She looked [ looked
deleted
with x's ] like a white rose. There were many [ flow s
intended flowers ] and such a beautiful cake from
dear Mrs Fields.* Laura has gone down to Maine today,
Rose [ is Groton
so typed ], and Betty goes to [
Pofret
intended Pomfret
? ] tonight so the
clan that gathered to greet the old Chieftainess on [ her
corrected
] birthday, is now almost scattered, and the old daughter
now remains and opens her pack of stories, sweet and sad,
that she
[ Page 2 ]
gathered together for the long evening talks, far and wide.
I am such a [ wanderedr
so typed ] that I miss a lot
of things, but if I do not dream, you have touched Sicily
with the magic pen of yours, and as I am still under the
spell of* that Siren* land, I am going over today to the
public library to find out just what you have written about
it! I hope dear you are quite yourself again. How wicked
that you should* be ill who never deserved even a finger
ache! Sin must be healthful Sara, dear, for this hardy old
sinner deserved to suffer far more than your dear saintship.
You will I am sure,
with the lovely summer weather, cast off the last twinges
and by [ automn
so typed ] be well and at work again
Your devoted
[ signed by hand ]
Maud Howe Elliot.
Notes
Elliot: Maud Howe Elliot (1854-1948) was a
daughter of Julie Ward Howe. In this letter, Elliot mentions
other relatives, her sister Laura Richards, and, probably,
Laura's daughters, Rosalind (1874-1964) and Laura Elizabeth
Richards Wiggins (1886-1985). For Julia Ward Howe and Laura
Richards, see Key to Correspondents.
Julia Ward Howe's birthday was on 27 May.
1904: This date is arbitrarily chosen, as
between 1903 and 1908. As Elliot refers to Jewett being ill
in May but hoping perhaps to recover by autumn, she almost
certainly refers to the effects the September 1902 carriage
accident that, as it turned out, brought an end to Jewett's
professional writing career. This letter then almost
certainly was composed during the final years when Jewett
was able to send birthday gifts to Mrs. Howe.
Sara: Howe consistently spells Jewett's name so in
this letter.
chudder shawl: Alternately spelled, "chuddar,"
this is a large shawl worn by Muslim or Hindu women that
covers them from head to foot.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to
Correspondents. In "Mrs" the "r" and "s" are typed one over
the other.
of: After this word, Howe starts a new indented
line.
Siren: Elliot refers to the mythical singers who
appear in Homer's
Odyssey, where they attract
sailors against their wills to shipwrecked on nearby
rocks.
Jewett published about Sicily only in
Chapter 7 of
The Story of the Normans (1887), "The
Normans in Italy."
should: In this word, Howe has typed "l" and "d" one
over the other.
The typescript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett
Correspondence Series: I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett MS Am
1743, (58) Elliott, Maud (Howe) 1854- 1 letter;
[n.d.].
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 4, Folder 159, Burton Trafton Jewett Research
Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Louisa Loring Dresel
Friday
[June 1904]
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Loulie
I wonder if you cant use these
tickets? the 'Pudding Play' is apt to be good
fun. I expected to get back to town before this, but
my sister is still ill from a long continuing rheumatic
attack. I am getting
[ Page 2 ]
on pretty well, but between a desire to do all that one can
in a busy season outdoors and in, and knowing that if a
person moves round
too much it makes trouble, life
isn't so very easy. I hope you are getting on well --
it isn't until late next month that you sail, is it dear?
but I know what a busy Loulie you are. Dont
[ Page 3 ]
stop to write about the tickets at any rate, and find the
love I sent you by this small letter{.}
Yours very affectionately
S. O. J.
Notes
June 1904: Though it is possible this letter
was composed in 1903 or, perhaps even in 1905
, it
seems more likely to come from 1904. Jewett's report
of her health problems would seem to place it after her
September 1902 carriage accident. Her speaking of Hasty
Pudding tickets and dating the letter in June point toward
1904. Jewett was likely to have received such tickets from
her nephew, Theodore Jewett Eastman, who was a Harvard
medical student during those years.
'Pudding Play': Almost certainly, Jewett offers
Dresel tickets to a theatrical put on by the
Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard
University. The
club's theatricals typically are
"burlesque cross-dressing musicals." The April 1903
show was
The Catnippers. In June 1904, the
club presented
Boodle and Co. The May 1905
production was entitled
Machiavelli.
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.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe
Tuesday
[ June 1904 ]
34 Beacon St.*
[
Blue inked letterhead of initials SOJ within a circle
]
I was
so sorry not to have even a quarter of your
kind visit that I think you must mercifully come very soon
again, my dear friend! I can give you just what you wish and
I am so glad to have the truth told about
[ Page 2 ]
the Scarlet Letter m
s -- M
r Hawthorne is
certainly very careless. This book is in much better
temper than its predecessor where he gave digs that were out
of some fit of jealous ill temper of his own and not
deserved to many persons. Mr. Fields* was as kind and
generous as his own father could have been -- so was Mr.
Bennoch* about whom he speaks most kindly here
[ Page 3 ]
-- "one of his foolish statements where he says that
my husband
burnt up ^(or allowed it to be
destroyed)^ the mss of the Scarlet letter because" (or as
if) "he did not appreciate the story -- The truth is,
Hawthorne gave me the ms. of "The House of the Seven Gables"
and when I was talking with him one day, I said, 'I could
wish it were The Scarlet Letter, and what had he done with
that?
"Oh I put that up the chimney"*
[ Page 4 ]
he said "and now I wish I hadn't!" -------
Mrs. Fields said in her letter that she
was "not sure she should restrain herself from writing to
Julian Hawthorne -- I have often heard her tell the story of
the Scarlet Letter ms -- and so have other people but I
think it would be very good to have it put into print [
blurred
mark ]
[ Up the left margin of page 1
]
except that one doesn't like his saying "served Hawthorne's
children"
[ Up the left margin of page 2
]
They ought [ to
? ] serve him on their
hands
and knees! Yours ever
S. O. J.
Notes
June 1904 ... 34 Beacon St.: As indicated in
the notes below, Jewett refers to a conflict between Julian
Hawthorne and Annie Adams Fields that took place in June of
1904.
34 Beacon St. is the Boston address
of Susan Burley Cabot. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mr. Bennoch: The English silk merchant,
Francis Bennoch (1812-1890),
befriended the Hawthorne family when Nathaniel Hawthorne
served as American consul in Liverpool, England (1853-1857).
See Ernest Earnest,
Expatriates and Patriots,
p. 168, and J. Hawthorne,
Hawthorne and his Circle, pp.
92-5.
Jewett refers to a controversy between
Annie Adams Fields (see
Key
to
Correspondents) and
Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), son of
the American author of
The Scarlet Letter (1850) and
The House of the Seven Gables (1851),
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864).
Judith Roman recounts the conflict in
Annie
Adams
Fields:
the
Spirit
of
Charles
Street, pp. 151-2. Julian Hawthorne in
Hawthorne
and his Circle (1903) implied that Annie Fields's
husband and his father's publisher, James T. Fields, had
failed to appreciate the importance of
The Scarlet
Letter and had allowed the manuscript to be destroyed.
Jewett gives a summary of Annie Fields's position in this
letter. Roman provides the June 1904 exchange of letters
between Annie Fields and Julian Hawthorne.
The reference to serving "Hawthorne's
children" remains mysterious.
chimney: Jewett's placement of quotation marks in
this passage is puzzling; it is not clear exactly where she
meant to place them.
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 Frances Rollins Morse
148 Charles Street
Saturday
[ June 1904 ]*
Dearest Fanny your note followed me here -- I was hoping to
see you and* your mother -- Tell dear Mrs. Morse* that I
shall be coming to Manchester before long and run -- (
RUN
! ) to see her there.
-- I am beginning to feel more like myself -- not really
strong yet but keeping hold of [ thing's
so spelled
]
[ Page 2 ]
much better -- quite three quarters myself now, and with the
other quarter I shall be all put together again -- perhaps a
size smaller and showing some cracks & nicks but never
mind! I was going to telephone you but your note came first.
You dont know what a comfort your letters have been. I am [
saving
? ] Mrs. Morse such a delightful note and
meant to say so quite honestly when I saw her.
With love to you both, and please
[ Page 3 ]
give Mrs. Elliot* a message from me -- I wish that I could
see her this summer. I begin to feel that one loses
enormously in being such a Rip van Winkle* person, but it is
such a pleasure when one gets back!
Yours most affectionately
Sarah
I have seen M
r Henry James* (of Lamb House
Rye!) at last, and hope to see him once more before he goes
back.
[ Page 4 ]
Mrs. Fields* sends her love -- She means to go down to
Manchester in about a week --
Notes
1904: This guess rests upon Jewett mentioning
that she has seen expatriate author Henry James, who visited
the U.S. in 1904. In June, Annie Fields typically moved to
her summer home in Manchester by the Sea.
Morse: Harriet Morse, Fanny Morse's mother.
and: Sometimes in this letter, Jewett writes
"a" with a long tail for "and." I give these as "and."
Mrs. Elliot: This may be Maud Howe Elliot, daughter
of Laura Richards. See Richards in Key to
Correspondents.
Rip van Winkle: American author, Washington
Irving (1783-1859) wrote "Rip Van Winkle" (1819), the story
of a man who magically sleeps for 20 years, to awaken an old
man in changed world.
Henry James: Key to Correspondents. He moved to
Lamb House in 1897, where Jewett and Fields visited him in
1898.
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
1743.1 Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence II.
Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, Box 4 (122).
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Harriet Jackson Lee Morse*
South Berwick
Wednesday
[ June 1904 ]*
Dearest Mrs. Morse
I am so sorry to hear that you have been
ill, and* so glad to be told at the same moment that you are
getting better! This is just a word to carry my love and to
say that I wish I could come and sit near by for half an
hour, and even if we couldn't talk we could "think things to
each other" -- We can do this
[ Page 2 ]
now, cant we dear? -- I feel nearer than ever to you and
dear Fanny.
I am going to call me Rip Van Winkle* the
Second, if was high time I returned to my village!
With dear love always
S.O.J.
Notes
Morse: See Frances (Fanny) Rollins Morse in Key
to Correspondents.
1904: This date is a guess based on Jewett
mentioning feeling like Rip Van Winkle. She made the same
comparison in a letter to Fanny Morse in a letter believed
to be from June 1904.
and: Sometimes in this letter, Jewett writes an "a"
with a long tail for "and." I render these as "and."
Rip Van Winkle: American author, Washington Irving
(1783-1859) wrote "Rip Van Winkle" (1819), the story of a
man who magically sleeps in the wilderness for 20 years, to
awaken and return to his village, an old man in changed
world.
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.
Death of Sarah Wyman Whitman
June 24 or 25, 1904
(Sources disagree)
Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett to Sylvia
Hathaway Watson Emerson
[ After April
1904 ? ]
Dear Sylvia: I seize the paper nearest at hand to thank
you for your dear letter. I was saying to Sarah
only last eveg "we have neither of us been able to write
to Sylvia and thank her for her dear letters and flowers
and all kindnesses", and here you are writing us again
and telling us what we wish to hear. We are
getting on, yet rather slowly and letters are more than
we are able to -- I rejoice to hear particulars of
the young engagements, for although we have heard some
of the bare facts it is good to have them allied to real
persons and made as the phrase is, into human documents
--.
How interesting that Richmond
[
Page 2 ]
business* has been, doing a world of good I am sure to
both North & South -- Mrs Booker T. Washington* has
been here, a delightful creature, singularly like her
husband, both in appearance and interests.
Sarah sends you ^both^ her love and
thanks with mine.
Goodbye dear Sylvia and Ralph* from
your affectionate
Annie Fields
Dear Sylvia
I found this note going on and said
that I must add a word to it. As I get better I
find it harder to write for some inscrutable reason and
I can hardly write at all if I set at a desk, [ as
?
corrected?] I have had a slight habit of doing
these many years! I know you will be eager to hear
about dear Mrs. Fields and I hasten to
[ Page 3 ]
say that I have found her even better than I had
expected, looking almost entirely well often and often,
but much effort makes her look pale and weak. I
think the conditions of an illness, the shutting up and
losing ones work which is the backbone of life, are
often as bad as the illness itself. And you know
how she has depended upon her walks? -- I am
slowly getting over the effects of my accident,* but "I
aint what I was" as our country friends would say
-- I still have much pain and dizziness, and I
cant walk very well, but before I came away the weather
had been so bad that I could only get out a very little,
and I need practice!! All my excellent doctors
have said '
no writing, no effort for a long time
yet.' You will know how I keep thinking that it would be
nice if I were well and could do things to help our dear
A.F. but we must be patient. Mary* is coming
[ Page 4 ]
for me next week. How I wish that I could get to
see you and dear Mr. Emerson{.}* I hoped to see
you both, and that we should be playing together a great
deal this last winter -- but now let's just look forward
to next winter instead and no matter how many pencils
there are, I'll come and sharpen them!
I don't think much of this block of
paper. I'd like you to believe that these finger
marks aren't appertaining to either A. F. or me. I
just tore the page off, but they look like gardening
persons fingers, and I wish mine
had been
grubbing.
Yours with unforgetting love
S. O. J.
[
On the reverse side of page 1 are these notes, which
may not be in Jewett's hand.]
Dr. Seiss. 17th St. E.
Please call. Write to [Sir
or Dr. Thorst
?]
Prof Zeiss?*
Notes
1904: The letter is not dated, but apparent
references to Jewett's 1902 carriage accident as some
time in the past and Fields's mentioning the Richmond
Streetcar Boycott suggest this date. Jewett's
expression at the end of the letter of a wish to be
gardening indicates a spring or summer season.
Richmond business: It seems likely that
Fields refers to the 1904
Richmond Streetcar Boycott, which
began in April of 1904 and lasted until early fall.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington:
Wikipedia says: "Booker Taliaferro
Washington (1856-1915) was an American educator, author,
orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States.
Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant
leader in the African-American community." He
married his third wife, Margaret James Murray, in 1893,
after losing his first two wives.
Whether there is a link in Fields's
mind between the Richmond Streetcar Boycott and Booker
T. Washington is not clear. It is generally
assumed that Washington opposed such boycotts,
preferring a more accommodationist approach to opposing
"Jim Crow" racial segregation laws.
Ralph: This is likely Mrs. Emerson's son,
Ralph Lincoln Emerson (1868-1899), though it may be her
husband, William Ralph Emerson.
my accident: A carriage accident on 3
September 1902 incapacitated Jewett for professional
writing; thereafter, she no longer wrote for
publication.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mr. Emerson: William Ralph Emerson.
See Sylvia H. W. Emerson in
Key
to
Correspondents.
Prof Zeiss: The meaning of these notes is not yet
known, nor have any of the names been identified.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Library of
Congress in the Owen Wister Papers, 1829-1966, MSS46177,
Box 19. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Margaret Deland to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Before 29 June 1904 ]*
Dear Miss Jewett --
Please dont forget the Club and [ me
? ] on Wednesday, the 29
th, at
1 [ oclock
so written ] -----
Cordially
Margaret Deland.
Notes
1904: Associated with this letter is an envelope,
addressed to Jewett in South Berwick. Houghton
archivists have dated the envelope and this letter to
1904. In 1904, the 29th of the month fell on
Wednesday in June.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett
Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Deland, Margaret (Campbell)
1857-1944. 2 letters; 1904 & [n.d.], bMS Am 1743
(44).
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 Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Summer 1904 ]*
Dearest: It has been a true happiness to me to hear of
your visits and the sense of returning life --
Stevenson our [ rare
? ] Stevenson* -- prays you
recall -- "renew in us the sense of joy".
Does not Mary wish to be rid of a
Pinny* while two
[ Page 2 ]
dressmakers are abiding -- if so, you will find both Eva
and Rose* with a glad welcome here -- not to speak of
your own A.F.
But your time is not long now
[ Page 3 ]
before you intend coming away for Mrs Cabot.* Yesterday
we had a great drive with Rose [ a
for and ] I
with Mr. Grew* over one of the exquisite new roads made
by Mr. Sonier.* Today Rose goes to
[ Page 4 ]
Mr Winthrop's* to luncheon and this afternoon I propose
to take them both to Alice's.*
Good bye -- there are no letters
worth sending -- your own Annie
Friday --
Notes
1904: If Mr. Winthrop, who died in 1905, is
correctly identified below then almost certainly this
letter is from 1904, the year Stevenson's book of
prayers was published. Almost certainly, as well,
this letter was written from Manchester, MA between May
and October.
Stevenson: Scottish author, Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850-1894). Wikipedia.
Fields quotes from
Prayers
Written at Vailima (1904).
Pinny: One of Jewett's nicknames.
Eva and Rose: Eva von Blomberg and Rose Lamb. Key
to Correspondents.
Mrs Cabot: Susan Burley Cabot (d. 23 March 1907).
Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Grew: Probably this is Henry Sturgis Grew
(1834-1910). 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.
Mr. Sonier: Presumably Fields refers to macadam
roadways, which began appearing in Massachusetts in
1894. The transcription of "Sonier" is uncertain,
and this person has not yet been identified.
Winthrop's: This probably is Robert Charles
Winthrop, Jr. (1834-1905), brother-in-law of Jewett
correspondent Ellen Mason. Wikipedia.
Alice: Probably Alice Greenwood Howe. Key
to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sarah Orne
Jewett Additional Correspondence, 100 letters from Annie
Adams Fields, bMS Am 1743.1 Box 1, Item 33.
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Helen Bell to Sarah Orne Jewett
Woodstock [ Sun ? ]
[ July 1904 ]*
Dear Sarah
I feel as if I could stand "all
jocund on the mountain-tops"* hearing good news of
Annie.* Your description of the nurse with her love of
reading slew me!
It is [ "fourth of
[ Page 2 ]
July'
so punctuated ] weather here -- The drives
of course are divine, but give me the hills & dales
and rivers of 148 Charles St. and I will ask for no more
tawdry scenery -- Many York Harbor folk do most
congregate here. The Sawyers,* Mrs. Loring, Mrs.
[ Page 3 ]
[
Unrecognized name] & the Fox's come
tonight -- Oh yes, the Perkins, Mr. & Bessie are
expected though there is a fear that something has
busted with their machine as they do not appear -- Think
of going over this country with no chauffeur in one of
these capricious vehicles -- Well, folks is different!
[ Page 4 ]
It is so strange to have days with no sunsets! The sun
just flops down behind the hills and that is all -- but
it is as if all the poetry in the world were turned into
prose -- beautiful prose, but prose ---
I send no love to Annie -- She has
behaved too awful bad --
Grateful love to you.
Helen B.
Notes
1904: This manuscript is dated 1898 in
another hand, but there is no support for this in the
content. Indeed, during the summer, until late
September, of that year, Jewett and Fields were
traveling in Europe.
Another possible date would be
October of 1902, when Fields needed nursing, but at that
time, Jewett was confined to her home in South Berwick
after her September carriage accident, and Bell would
not have expected her to be with Fields at Manchester by
the Sea, where the envelope with the letter was
directed.
I have chosen, arbitrarily, to place
the letter at a more likely date, in the summer of 1904,
when Jewett had the help of a nurse who enjoyed reading
and shared her love of the poetry of Alice
Meynell. See Jewett to Meynell of 14 December
1904.
"all jocund on the mountain-tops": A reference to
British playwright William Shakespeare's
Romeo and
Juliet, Act 3, Scene 5:
Night’s candles are burnt out, and
jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty
mountain-tops.
Annie: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to
Correspondents.
The Sawyers: Possibly, Bell refers to the family
of Mary Abbott Gorham (1831-1934), Mrs. George C. Sawyer
(1834-1914). After graduating from Harvard in
1855, George Sawyer served as principal of the Utica
(NY) Free Academy (1858-1896) before moving to
Cambridge, MA. Mary Sawyer, a correspondent of Sarah and
Mary Jewett, was the daughter Dr. David Gorham (Harvard
1821, married to Deborah) of Exeter, NH, a probable
associate of the Jewetts' grandfather, Dr. William
Perry.
Other people mentioned in the letter
were:
Mrs. Loring: See Katharine
and Louisa Loring in Key to Correspondents. This Mrs.
Loring may have been their aunt, Mary Josephine Hopkins
Loring (1852-1914).
the Fox family: These people
have not yet been identified.
the Perkins, Mr. & Bessie:
While this is not certain, it is likely that she refers
to Charles and Edith Perkins. 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.
Bell, Helen. 2 letters; [1898
& n.d.] (19).
An envelope associated with this
letter addressed to Jewett c/o Mrs. Fields in
Manchester-by-the-Sea was cancelled in Woodstock, VT on
15 October.
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 Aldrich
July 15th 1904
Manchester by Sea --
Dear Lilian;
It was very good to have your letter
and to have news of you both. I did not imagine you at
Ponkapog all those weeks after I left Boston on the 15
th
of June or I should have sent you a bit of a bulletin
from my hilltop where I am indeed much better. As
to going to make you a visit (which I should rejoice to
do) I fear I must forego that pleasure to live quietly
and regularly and to see the few friends who can come to
me, seems to be
[ Page 2 ]
the limit of my tether at present. Tell dear T.B. I hope
d
his ears burned [ hotly
corrected ] last evening
when Mr. Bartlett* came and we told each other in
confidence how [ truly
? ] we loved him. Mifs
Cochrane* of Rome is passing two months with me. Her
music gives something better than the proverbial "oil on
troubled waters," beside which she is a delightful chum
so I am most fortunate -- But of our dear Sarah* I do
not think the news is exactly re-assuring of quick
recovery. (This is for you and T.B. please --). The
nurse writes frequently saying that she is as well as we
can expect after so many months of effort and struggle
when she should have been resting -- and we must be
patient -- Heaven knows that she and her sister and I
have
[ Page 3 ]
all been patient, but ^after^ two years of invalidism
and with no certain solution even now, one's heart often
feels very heavy indeed. Let us not say this for I dare
say Mary does not take it all in and she is very happy
this summer with her garden and her pleasant old house
of which she is such an excellent "[Chatelaine
corrected
]."
Indeed we are all three comfortable and hopeful in spite
of the feelings I have confided to you. It is such a
rich world with the friends* who are left in it to love
and care for. [ Beside
corrected ] there are good
things still for us to do and to live for. Sometimes
when the unseen world is beckoning to us
[ Page 4 ]
and our vanished ones make it seem a happy land, because
they are calling to us, this world does not seem more
troublous, only less so -- -- a green half=way land
where there is much daily to enjoy --
I have nothing to offer you here in exchange for your
social
life at York, but there is a welcome and time for talk
and a green wood if you should ever see your way clear
to come to me.
Affectionately to you both
Annie Fields.
Notes
Mr. Bartlett: Probably Edward Jarvis Bartlett.
See
Key to Correspondents.
Mifs Cochrane: Jessie Cochrane. See
Key to Correspondents.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See
Key to Correspondents.
Jewett was slowly improving after her September 1902
accident. She and her sister Mary were at their home in
South Berwick, ME, at this time.
friends: Fields probably is gently alluding
to the death of the Aldrich's son, Charles, the previous
March.
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.
Ellis L. Dresel to Annie Adams Fields
[ Letterhead contains this
information, arranged in 3 columns ]
FREDERIC S.
GOODWIN
ELLIS L. DRESEL
PHILIP S.
PARKER.
GOODWIN. DRESEL AND PARKER
COUNSELLORS AT
LAW
84 STATE STREET.
TELEPHONE MAIN 542.
BOSTON,
[ End of letterhead
After "Boston" the following date
is typed. ]
July 26, 1904.*
Mrs. James T. Fields,
Manchester, Mass.
Dear Mrs. Fields: -
Enclosed herewith I send you a rough
draft of your will. I am sorry that it has been delayed,
but it took me a little longer than I expected, owing to
finding that Mr. Fields's will was filed in Salem
instead of Boston.
Please change the language wherever
it seems to you it could be improved. I have altered as
little as possible both in the first will and the draft
which you made; but I found in your draft some matters
that needed to be expressed more fully, and I also made
a few verbal changes in clauses 5 and 6 of the first
will.
The trust provision in clause 3 is at
least advisable, and almost necessary, as, when Miss
Jewett* dies, the estate is to be sold; and when the
income only of personal property is given, a trustee has
to hold it for the person eventually entitled. It
occurred to me that possibly you might think it wiser to
appoint two trustees instead of one. Two are more usual,
but you may have some special reason in this case. The
principal arguments in favor of two trustees are that if
the trust continues a long time, one of the trustees may
become incapacitated through age or some other reason,
leading to possible difficulties; and that in case of
the death of one trustee, the testator can be sure that,
for a time at least, the property is in control of
someone of whom he or she
# 2. Mrs. Fields.
approves. Perhaps neither of these reasons are very
material in this case, but I thought it as well to
mention them.
I assume from your draft that you
would not, in any case, want the legacy to Miss Jewett*
to "be held in trust as well as the Charles Street
house," but wished to give it to her absolutely. I
inserted, as you will notice, a provision that the
Charles Street house should not "be sold in Miss
Jewett's lifetime without her consent, believing that
you would like to have this put in.
I also noticed that you have not
mentioned the Manchester house, which will, therefore,
at once pass to your nephew,* unless the personal estate
is insufficient for the legacies given, which I suppose
is not the case. I omitted the last part of clause 7 in
the former will, making provisions in case there was not
enough to pay all the legacies, as I supposed that there
would be no chance of difficulty on this score.
I have put in a clause that the
legacies should be paid free of taxes; that is, that
your estate should pay these succession duties, and not
the legatees. Please let me know in case this was not
right; it is usually inserted.
I put in, after some consideration,
the paragraph at the end of clause 1, as to personal
gifts, which I thought might about meet your wishes and
which is unobjectionable from a legal standpoint. You
could at any time make a memorandum in accordance with
it, which you could change from time to time as you
wished. This paragraph is, however, merely a suggestion,
and you may perhaps prefer to leave it out altogether,
or to change the wording of it.
I notice that in the last Directory, Miss. Z. D. Smith*
is
# 3. Mrs. Fields.
called [ "Supervisor" corrected ] of the Associated
Charities. Is this her proper title? Should, therefore,
clause 4th be changed accordingly? And shall I say
"supervisors, registrars and agents", or is this
unnecessary?
I suppose the direction to keep the
"bequests to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts together as
the "James T. Fields Collection" imposes a positive
condition that they "be so kept; but I take it this is
what you wish. It occurred to me remotely that possibly
the bust of Tennyson could not conveniently be kept with
the portraits. This you doubtless have considered.
Please give me the place of residence
of Miss Cochrane and Miss Alden and Miss Guiney,* for
which I have left blanks, as it is just as well to
insert the domicile where the legatees are not related
to the testator.
I hope very much that this draft will
be fairly satisfactory to you; but if it is not, please
criticize it as freely as possible. If there is anything
which I have not made clear, or which you would like to
talk over with me before writing it out finally, I will
gladly come down to see you; otherwise, if you will send
the draft back, with such changes as you care to make.
I will copy it out and bring it down
to be signed by you any afternoon that will be
convenient. There will have to be two witnesses besides
myself, and I will arrange to bring them with me, unless
you prefer some other arrangement; the bequests to
your servants make them incompetent as witnesses, and it
is, in any case, quite as well to have witnesses from
outside the house.
I return your first will and your
rough drafts for pur-
#4. Mrs. Fields.
poses of comparison.
If the Manchester house is to go
outright to your nephew, as it does under my draft,
should he have the furniture in it? By clause 1 Miss
Jewett has all furniture in both houses; is this right?
Always yours,
[ signed ] Ellis L. Dresel
Enclosures.
Notes
1904: This letter is a typescript,
double-spaced. Ellis Dresel is a family friend to
both Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. See Louisa
Dresel in Key to Correspondents.
Miss Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See
Key to Correspondents.
nephew
: Fields had three nephews: Zabdiel
Boylston Adams III, Bolyston Adams Beal, and William
Fields
Beal.
It
is not yet known which is mentioned here. See Fields in
Key to Correspondents.
Miss. Z. D. Smith: Zilpha Drew Smith (1852-1926),
American social worker, a "leading figure in the charity
organization movement and in the professionalization of
social work, in Boston and across the nation."
Wikipedia.
Miss Cochrane and Miss Alden and Miss Guiney:
For
Jessie
Cochrane
and Louisa Imogen Guiney, see Key to Correspondents.
While this is uncertain, it is
possible Dresel refers to Annie Fields Alden
(1863-1912), daughter of Harper's Magazine editor, Henry
Mills Alden. See Henry Mills Alden in Key to
Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington
Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields papers:
mss FL 5637. (Box 16, FI 5489). Transcription and notes
by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Louise Imogen Guiney to Annie Adams Fields
57 S. John's Road, Oxford
July 27, 1904
Dear Mrs. Fields:
I refuse to believe that I have never
yet thanked you for a delightful letter of April and
Italy. Surely there is much wool and web clay inside my
head, or the like would hardly come to pass. Hundreds of
times have I thought of you, and hung about the verandah
where you showed me all the pictures of the Greek
sepulchral marbles on my first visit, and where poor
little Crab* used to run up for a caress; and when you
came down in white, looking almost as well as I hoped, I
have just stolen away again. (I used to believe, when I
was very young, that I could be, and generally was,
invisible! nor have Iost the ghost-'feel' to this day.)
We have little to say for ourselves here. All goes
[ Page 2 ]
drowsily and peacefully, and will till my Mother goes
home again, which she thinks of doing with our old
friends Mrs. Roberts* and her family, who were long of
Auburndale, and later of Brattle Street, where they
built a house not far from Mrs. Russell.* The ship in
view sails in October. I shall not go, as I am not
wanted, and the arrears of work after nearly two years'
absolute enforced inaction are not yet all met and
slain. And how to face the publicity of our life in the
most strenuous of all Arcadias, I know not. It has been
my humor here to be a happy hermit, and not even a
poeticula; and I look with anxiety which I know to be
sufficiently comical, to the publication next autumn of
my delayed big memoir of Hurrell Froude,* because there
must be reviews! and I must own up at last to my
underground goings-on, before an unsuspecting Oxford.
[ Page 3 ]
You know, do you not, Hannah Kimball, Mrs. Kehew's
sister? She used to be a great friend of mine, and is so
still; and has just given me a huge pleasure by letting
me see, by post, a long poem she has written. I
wish you might read it. 'Pindaric', as they call it, in
form; really Patmoresque;* with the Persephone myth* for
subject. But it isn't Hellenic-idyllic a bit, like your
masques: only analogical and modern. To me it seems
notable and beautiful. One hardly ever sees the
footprint of a true Muse of any species nowadays. I do
not think, for one, that I have been able to afford an
admiration since A Shropshire Lad* came out, except for
isolated verses. The remedy is simple: one can always
return to feed in the blessed lyric pastures of the
seventeenth century. Did I tell you I was editing Thomas
Stanley for Tutin of Hull*? It is done now. He is a
crystal.
[ Page 4 ]
I have had one excursion in a year: viz. to Cambridge
for a week, a visit crowned by an introduction to Ely
Minster.* What a glory is that Lantern Octagon! and much
else. There is a sad old Saxon cross there, with an
inscription: Lucem Ovino tuo da Deus et pacem.*
Such slight things delight my untravelled soul, but
Cambridge is grandly prosy besides this dear gray place,
and left me cold. It has been a fine even summer, warm
enough; orrid ot, according to the natives. My Mother
has been well throughout, though never over-inclined, as
you may know, to think so. It is dull for her, and I am
dull, too, alas, and I suppose not worth staying with.
What I shall do when she leaves me is a trying problem,
and I have not yet become accustomed to it. My dear
Charlotte Maxwell is in France with Miss Sally Barnes of
New York.* I hope to see them yet. My love to Miss
Jewett:* health befall her and you. I sent her my little
monograph on R. Emmet* in the spring.
Affectionately yours.
L. I. Guiney
Notes
Crab: Crab, or Crabby, was a dog
belonging to Fields. He is mentioned in letters
of the 1890s. This letter appears to be the
latest date at which he is mentioned.
Mrs. Roberts: This person has not yet
been identified.
Mrs. Russell: This person has not yet been
identified.
Hurrell Froude: Richard Hurrell Froude
(1803-1836) was Anglican priest, brother of historian
and biographer, Anthony Froude. Wikipedia.
Hannah Kimball, Mrs. Kehew's sister:
American author Hannah Parker Kimball (1861-1921).
Find a Grave. Among her surviving sisters was
American labor and social reformer, Mary Morton
Kimball (1850-1918), who married William Brown
Kehew. Find a Grave and Encyclopedia.com.
Pindaric .. Patmoresque: After Pindar
(518-433 BC), an ancient Greek poet from Thebes, and
British poet, Coventry Patmore (1823-1896). Wikipedia.
Persephone myth: In Greek mythology,
Persephone, daughter of the gods Zeus and Demeter, was
abducted by Hades, god of the underworld. As a result,
she came to live through winter in the underworld and
summer in the natural world, causing the two main
seasons of the year. Kimball's poem has not yet been
identified.
A Shropshire Lad: British classical scholar and
poet, Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) published his
collection of poems, A Shropshire Lad, in
1896.
Thomas Stanley for Tutin of Hull: Guiney
edited Thomas Stanley: his original lyrics,
complete, in their collated readings of 1647, 1651,
1657. With an introduction, textual notes, a
list of editions, an appendix of translations, and a
portrait (1907). It was published by J. R. Tutin, of
Hull, UK.
Ely Minster: Better known as Ely Cathedral, an
Anglican cathedral church in Ely, UK.
Charlotte Maxwell ... Miss Sally Barnes:
Charlotte E. Maxwell (c. 1856-1936) was the owner and
operator of St. Botolph Gymnasium in Boston, used by
Guiney. See Writing Out My Heart: Selections from
the Journal of Frances E. Willard, p. 392.
Sally Barnes has not yet been
identified. However, Guiney may have been acquainted
with American painter Harriet Isabella Barnes
Thayer (1864-1928).
Lucem ... pacem: Latin: God give light and
peace to your Lamb.
Miss Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett.
Fields's edition of Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett
appeared in 1911.
Emmet: Guiney's Robert Emmet
appeared in 1904.
This manuscript is held by the Dinand Library of
Holy Cross College in Box: SC007-GUIN-002, Folder 29.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Sarah Orne Jewett --
Fragment
This letter was composed in
French. A transcription follows the translation.
l Summer 1904 ]*
… Fontainebleau and now I'm leaving for Maine. If you
write, you should send to Chateau de Tassay, by
Savigné-l'Évêque, Sarthe. Your letters are a very sweet
comfort, and by some mysterious bond of sympathy, they
always arrive just when I am most in need of one.
This morning I received the Boston Post* and I respond
to two notices there regarding the book that interests
us. You will find some small errors of judgment, but
these are less disagreeable than those who present me as
a critic more than as a novelist. I believe this
may be because my novels are known in America only by
poor, unauthorized translations. This explains why one
says "better known in America as a frequent contributor
of critical essays, etc . . .
[ Page 2 ]
but this unequivocal "better known" would amaze
French critics, no less than would the apostrophe placed
at the end of the word "
Veille" that turns the
word
Veillée, [
meaning a “funeral wake” ]
into
Veille, [
meaning “the day or evening
before” ]. Perhaps they don’t know how to handle
the French title
Les Veilleuses de Miss Tempy?
-- Ah!, dear Miss Jewett, I can forgive all for the
country that has given me friends like you, but all the
sympathetic zeal I have put into making literature known
remains poorly repaid! I wish for all the world
that I had never read even the most well-intended of
those articles. And again this morning, I confess, I
feel upset to read that my twenty novels, which are all
my literary work that I care about, are placed low in
the [ literary ] hierarchy. Here, no one would rank
their genre that way, whatever their merit. I speak my
heart freely, knowing that you will not suspect me of
literary vanities that are as far from my mind as from
yours ---- Know that I love you and that I respect
and admire you in all sincerity, and please answer the
practical question I've asked you in whatever way seems
best to you. Devotedly,
M Blanc Bentzon
[ Cross-written on the same
page, up the left half ]
How sorry I am to learn of the death of your lovely
friend! You are cruelly tried. I understand.
Some of my old friends are passing away with a
frightening rapidity, reminding me that I too am near to
death. The thought of death is actually rather sweet to
me; it's the partings that I find so hard to bear.
The separation itself from those I have loved.
[ Cross-written on the same page,
down the left lower quarter ]
Did you send me the interesting book by M. Wilkins? -- A
thousand thanks. I was familiar with it already.
The first of the short stories was translated by [
Happell
? ].
Notes
1904: I have decided to place this letter in the
summer of 1904, after the death of Sarah Wyman Whitman,
when Blanc was nearly 69 years old. This choice is
almost utterly arbitrary, the window of probability
being 1899-1907.
Dating this letter is a vexatious
problem. It contains so much information that
could lead to an accurate date, but not quite enough.
Being able to locate the
Boston Post articles
Blanc references could be decisive, but that has not yet
proven possible.
Blanc's comments on "Miss Tempy's
Watchers" are helpful. Jewett's story first appeared in
Atlantic Monthly in March 1888 and was collected
in
The King of Folly Island (1888). At
that time, Blanc and Jewett had not yet met face to
face, and the tone of this letter suggests that they
have become intimate friends. Blanc's translation of the
story appeared in 1893, with the title "Une Veillée
Funèbre," which translates into English as "A Funeral
Wake," and by that time Jewett and Blanc had met in
Paris (1892). However, their close friendship
seems to have begun when Blanc first visited the U.S. in
1893-4. Almost certainly, then, this letter was
composed after 1894. However, in 1895, Blanc was
only 59, seemingly a little young to be feeling herself
nearing death.
In 1898, Jewett and Annie Fields
spent weeks with Blanc, in Provence, in Paris, and at
Blanc's country home, significantly deepening their
friendship. In the following year, Blanc turned 64, and
then it seems a little more probable that she might
consider herself close to death.
If only we had all of this letter or
Jewett's letter to Blanc! For one of these might name
the friend whom Jewett has recently lost. If this was
someone like Celia Thaxter (died 1894) or Sarah Wyman
Whitman (died 1904) or Thomas Bailey Aldrich (died
1907), all of whom Blanc met during her visits, then
surely Blanc would have named the person.
How helpful it would have
been for Blanc to name the book she believes Jewett has
sent her, or at least to have been more specific about
the author! Almost certainly "M. Wilkins" is Mary
Wilkins, better known today as Mary Eleanor Wilkins
Freeman (1852-1930), but who published as Mary E.
Wilkins. There were no other prominent American fiction
writers named "Wilkins" in the last decades of the 19th
century. Technically, though, Wilkins was Mrs. Freeman
after her marriage on 1 January 1902. However, it is not
clear that Blanc would have seen before 1907 a book with
Freeman's married name on it.
Blanc mentions that "Happell" has
translated the first story in Wilkins's book, but that
transcription is very uncertain, and this translator has
not yet been identified; hence the story remains
unnamed.
Having established a tentative window
of 1899-1907 for this letter, I'd finally note that
immediately before and during that period, Wilkins
Freeman published at least six volumes of short stories.
In 1904, the more recent collections would have
included:
A Far-Away Melody and Other Stories
(1902),
The Wind in the Rose Bush and Other Stories
of the Supernatural (1903), and
The Givers and
Other Stories (1904).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett
Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
King, Grace, 1852-1932. 1 letter;
1907. bMS Am 1743 (124)
Transcription, translation and notes
by Terry Heller, Coe College, with essential assistance
from Jeannine Hammond, Professor of French, Emertia, Coe
College.
Transcription
[ Page 1 ]
… Fontainebleau et maintenant
je repars pour le Maine. Si
vous m'écrivez que ce soit
château de Tassay, par Savigné-l'Évêque, Sarthe.
Vos lettres
sont toujours pour moi
une consolation très douce
et, par je ne sais quel
courant de sympathie, elles
m'arrivent toujours à l'heure
où j'en ai le plus besoin {.}
Ce matin j'ai reçu le Boston
Post et Je réponds à cet envoi
par deux notices sur le livre
qui nous intéresse. Vous y trouverez
q.q. petites erreurs de jugement,
moins désagréables toutefois que
celles qui me present en critique
plutôt qu'en romancier. C'est
à croire que mes romans ne
sont connus en Amérique que
par les traductions dont on m'a
affligée sans autorisation. En ce
cas je comprendrais que l'on met
"
better known in America as a frequent
contributor of critical articles, etc . . . mais
[ Page 2 ]
ce {"} better known" absolu étonnera
la critique française, non moins que
l'apostrophe mise après une
Veille funèbre
que n’est pas une
Veille, mais une
Veillée. Peut-être ne sait-on pas à
quelle équiva que aurait prêté le titre
Les Veilleuses de Miss Tempy? -- Ah! chère
Miss Jewett je pardonne tout au pays
que m'a donné les amis tels que
vous, mais combien le zèle tout
sympathique que J'ai mis à faire
connaître la littérature a été mal
reconnu. Les articles les mieux intentionnés
publiés sur mon compte étaient
encore de ceux que j'aurais voulu pour
tout au monde n'avoir jamais lus.
Et ce matin encore{,} je l'avoue{,} j'éprouve
une impression assez pénible à lire
que les vingt romans qui sont tout
le bagage littéraire dont je me soucie
sont mis au dedans de hiérarchie
Personne ici est songe à [ les
? ] comparer
q.q. [
unrecognized word ] que puisse être
d'ailleurs leur
mérite. Je vous parle à cœur ouvert
puis que vous ne me soupçonnerez
jamais de vanités littéraires qui sont
aussi loin de mon esprit que
du vôtre ---- Croyez que je vous aime
{ et } que je respecte, j'admire
en toute sincérité, et veuillez répondre
à une question pratique que je vous
ai déjà adressée pour le mode d'encore
le plus sûr [ de tous
? ]. Tout à vous
M Blanc Bentzon
[
Cross-written on the same page, up the left half
]
Quelle peine m’a causée la nouvelle de la mort
de votre charmante amie! Vous êtes éprouvée de
bien des façons cruelles. Je le sais. Certains de
mes vieux amis tombent avec une rapidité
effrayante qui me rappelle que je touche
moi aussi au décès. La pensée de la mort
m'est d'ailleurs plutôt douce; c'est l'adieu
que j'ai peine à supporter. La séparation
même [
unrecognized word ] d'avec ceux que j'ai
aimés.
[
Cross-written on the same page, down the left
lower quarter ]
C'est vous qui m'avez
envoyé le livre si intéressant
de M. Wilkins? -- Merci
mille fois. Je le connaissais
déjà. La première nouvelle
a été traduite par [ Happell
? ].
Sarah Orne Jewett to Katharine Peabody Loring*
Wednesday
[ Summer 1904 ]
[ Begin letterhead ]
34 Beacon Street.
[ End letterhead ]
Dearest Catharine
I like to think
of you in Newport with the sun shining -- yesterday
was a dreary day for you to get there . .
Thank you from my heart, dear, for
this most beloved note! You dont know what a pleasure
it was to get it -- I always miss you so after I have
seen you! but indeed this
[ Page 2 ]
time you seemed nearer and dearer than ever -- we could
not (for one reason) [ help
corrected from keep
? ] from getting nearer because we made each
other think of dear S.W.* -- Frances Parkman* came to
see me after she had seen you, and I
knew that
seeing you had given her real comfort. No matter whether
life grows dark to
you -- I think you always
feel like sunshine to the rest of us! -- you left the
blessing of it shining after
[ Page 3 ]
you went away -- and I feel it yet, and see things in
the light of it --
It was quite wonderful that you spoke about the
photographs to Mrs. Cabot,* ^(She was
so
pleased!)^ for I had tried to keep it in my mind all the
day before to ask you if you would not send her one.
(She had been asking me if I ever saw the portrait) and
then I forgot it entirely. Not even our
[ Page 4 ]
talking about the little dear girl with the basket
reminded me. I often reflect that a mind may have so
many leaks as a basket . . . Do send me word about how
you got home -- not
too tired -- and how you
found Coolidge.* I felt that evening more than
once as if we were still together -- But dont write too
soon, you will find a heap of things waiting tonight
when you get back --
Notes
Loring: Whether Jewett's recipient was
Katharine Peabody Loring is not certain. However, Loring
is the only Jewett correspondent named "Katharine" whom
Jewett seems likely to have addressed by first name in a
letter and who would be acquainted with all of the
people mentioned.
1904: This date is speculative. As the recipient
is visiting in Newport, RI, it seems likely to be
summer. The letter suggests that Sarah Wyman
Whitman (S.W.) has died recently. She died on 25 June
1904.
See
Key to Correspondents.
While it is possible the letter was
written during any summer from 1904 to 1908, I have
chosen the earliest likely year.
Frances Parkman: See
Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Cabot: Susan Burley Cabot. See
Key to Correspondents.
Coolidge: Katherine/Catherine Scollay Parkman
Coolidge. See
Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the University
of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, Department of Rare Books
and Special Collections; Cairns Collection of American
Women Writers, Comprehensive collection of works by
Sarah Orne Jewett. Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Kate Douglas Wiggin (Mrs. George
C. Riggs)
Manchester-By-the-Sea
Sunday August 20th -- [ 1904 ]*
Dear Mrs. Riggs
You have arrived via Berwick in high
academic splendour and I am so glad to have your letter
and to follow your track of the summer. It strikes
me as a fine touch, the
gold tassel, with the
white hood -- I like a lot of colour! And I always love
Radcliffe Commencement* -- though I do wish that you had
happened to go once when dear Mrs. Agassiz* was the best
of all simple dignities -- and was quite unconscious of
it -- better still: you can imagine how lovely a part of
the scene her dear face alway made as one looked at the
platform. Thank Heaven she is better this summer
than she was last summer, but I suppose she will not try
to share any more in these great days ---- And I loved
the post cards -- your house, the little church!
My heart gave a sudden beat when I looked at the second
story window in the front and thought that there might
still be high "singing seats"* within. You have
been very kind in writing, and in making me these
pleasures beside the greater one of remembrance.
I am glad to say that I am stronger
than in the spring, and I have a sense of getting hold
of myself again at times which is very pleasant to feel,
but I have so little "capital" that to sit in the middle
of a company of five or six, and try to keep the talk
straight, or to write or read long, or to walk more than
a little way brings a quick punishment. I am
so
glad to have got here by the sea -- (and to Mrs. Cabot
before I began this visit to Mrs. Fields)* -- the sea
air is so good after being robbed of it for the last two
summers -- and in both houses I am at home, not a guest
exactly, which is delightful. Almost the best
thing about your photograph is the sight of your being
so much better than when I saw you last.
With many thanks and wishing that I
could drive from my river to your river once more
Yours most sincerely
Sarah O. Jewett
I was so glad to see the other day that Rebecca* was in
the
Tauchnitz Edition. She little thought
it once!
Notes
1904: Dating this letter is
problematic. It seems, with some ambiguity, to
refer to Mrs. Riggs receiving an
honorary degree from Bowdoin College,
which took place in June of 1904. However August
20 falls on Saturday in 1904, Sunday in 1905. I
have chosen 1904 as the more probable date.
Radcliffe Commencement ... Mrs. Agassiz:
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz was one of the founders of
Radcliffe College, which gave women access to programs
at Harvard University. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
"singing seats": Jewett's reference remains
unclear. Jewett seems to indicate that the
photograph Riggs has sent her shows a church with a
second-story window, suggesting to her that there is a
choir balcony or loft in the pictured church.
These would be the singing seats. The quotation
marks suggest that Jewett may refer to one of Rigg's
books, but the only one so far known to mention "singing
seats" is her 1913 novel,
The Story of Waitstill
Baxter.
Mrs. Cabot ... Mrs. Fields: Susan Burley
Cabot and Annie Adams Fields. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Rebecca: Wiggin's
Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm (1903) is her best-known work. That her book
has been published by
Tauchnitz (Liepzig, Germanyy) in
1904 means that it receives distribution in English
throughout Europe and that she is being paid for these
sales.
This transcription appears in Nancy Ellen Carlock's 1939
Boston University thesis,
S.O.J. A Biography of Sarah Orne
Jewett. Carlock says that she owned this
letter in 1939. Notes by Terry Heller, Coe
College.
David Douglas to Sarah Orne Jewett
DAVID DOUGLAS
PUBLISHER
10 Castle Street
Edinburgh Aug 26 1904*
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Miss Jewett,
Your interesting letter telling me
that you liked Miss Warrenders brief memoir* of her
ancestors has remained for too long unanswered. The
editor to whom I took the liberty of sending an extract
was [ most
? ] grateful. I have to thank you
also for the interesting photographs of your own dear
home{.} They have been made more interesting to me by
2
your former descriptions of home & garden -- I need
not say how we wish you had health [ & strength
?
] to enjoy them but He who has permitted this blow* to
fall on you will give you power to endure it. I
trust that you may soon be enabled to resume the pen you
have used to so much good purpose{;} meanwhile it is
terribly hard for you to be debarred from congenial
work. Pray forgive me for touching on this subject. I
have had the pleasure of a visit for a Sunday, from M
r
Howells
3
and he told me he had seen you sometime ago and walked
with you in the 'old garden'. I am glad to say he is
very well & also that I was able to show him
something of Old Edinburgh. Though I have now long
passed the [
unrecognized word ] limit, he is a
most pleasant companion.
I venture to send you a little book which came to me
last week: I see it embodies some of the writings of a
dear old & venerated friend{,} the saintly Thomas
Erskine of Linlathen.* If you like I shall
4
send you a copy of his letters & any of the works
you may desire: he was a [
unrecognized word ]
of another old friend now also passed from us [ D
r
? ] Noah Porter of Yale* -- --
I wonder if I gave you a copy of [ D
r ?
] Kers Letters? In case I did not I send one as I think
you will like them. They were addressed to [ the family
of Mr Crumb
? ] wife of Lord
Kelvin* --
--
I fear to weary you or I would write you more at length
but I shall spare your eyes with my bad hand. My wife
& I often talk of
[ Top margin of page 1 ]
of you & M
rs Fields -- *
I am yours very faithfully
David Douglas
Notes
1904: The underlined portions of the
letterhead were filled in by hand. Transcription of the
day number is uncertain.
Miss Warrenders brief memoir: Julian Margaret
Maitland Warrender (1855-1950). Warrender edited
Songs
and
Verses (1904) by her great aunt, Lady John Scott,
which included an extended memoir.
blow: Douglas refers to Jewett's
debilitating carriage accident of September 1902.
Howells: William Dean Howells. See
Key to Correspondents.
Thomas Erskine of Linlathen: Thomas Erskine
(1788-1870) was a Scottish lawyer and lay theologian.
Upon inheriting the estate of Linlathen, he retired from
the bar and took up travel and writing on
theology. Wikipedia.
Noah Porter of Yale: Noah Thomas Porter III
(1811-1892), American minister, author, and
abolitionist, President of Yale College (1871-1886).
Wikipedia.
Kers Letters ... Lord Kelvin:
This transcription is uncertain.
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
(1825-1907) was a British mathematician and physicist, a
professor at the University of Glasgow for most of his
life. He married twice. His first wife was Margaret Crum
(d. 1870). Her father was Scottish chemist, Walter
Crum (1796-1867), and she had several brothers.
It seems probable that Douglas refers
to William Paton Ker (1855-1923), who may well have
known Walter Crum and other members of his family.
However, I have discovered no published collection of
Ker's letters..
See Wikipedia for Kelvin, Walter
Crum, and Ker.
Mrs 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.
Douglas, David, 1823-1916. 5
letters; 1888-1906, bMS Am 1743 (48).
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Edward Garnett to Sarah Orne Jewett
[
Begin letterhead ]
DUCKWORTH & Co.,
Publishers |
Telegrams:
"DUCTARIUS, LONDON."
Cable Address: "GERWALDUCK, LONDON."
Telephone 3428 Central.
|
|
3. HENRIETTA STREET
COVENT GARDEN, W.C |
[
End letterhead ]
August 30. 1904
-----
Dear Miss Jewett,
You wrote to me "a most kind
letter on March10
th -- there are five
months gone before my answer! I have carried that
letter in my pocketbook -- that section reserved for
letters to answered
at leisure -- & now
I have no leisure, but snatch a moment in business
[ Page 2 ]
hours. You were about to read
Turgenev* when you
wrote to me. I wonder how he appeals to you. He is much
too fine in his art for most of us Anglo Saxons to grasp
how great he is. The French pretend to admire him, but
they are really cold over his quality. My wife's
translation of ^Tolstoy's^
War & Peace* will
appear, I think, in a month. Everything that the
Russians have in common with us, is to be found in that
colossal book, whereas
[
Page 3 ]*
the average Englishman or American
finds
nothing to suit him in Dostoievsky --
in
The Brothers Karamazov* for example.
I have been wondering
when [ Mssrs
?
] Houghton Mifflin are going to awake from their
long sleep, & busy themselves about the New
Edition of the Best Tales of S.O.J. From the
English point of view, the best way of
issuing
introducing such an Edition
[ Page 4 ]
would be to herald it with a
new volume of
stories.
Making Vol I. a new vol.
Vols II III & IV. Selected
Tales
Vol V. The Country of the P Firs.
/ I believe M
. Duckworth
would take a thousand copies of each vol if such an
Edition could be assayed. But of course you may have no
intention of issuing a new volume.
/ I cannot help feeling that you have
much to tell us yet that you have
as y
hitherto found no form for -- & that if you began to
put down [
two words deleted ] from week to
week, the ideas that appeal to you most,
[ Page 5 ]
you might give us something as [ long
?
] as Hawthorne's
Note Books. But it is almost an
impertinence for me to suggest this to you, when through
my negligence I am still ignorant whether you have
slowly regained your health, & with it your desire
to write.
This is a most perfunctory letter.
I wonder if you received a copy of
Green
Mansions* [
stray mark, a comma ? ] by my
friend
[ Page 6 ]
W. H. Hudson. I sent it you because I thought it
might
appeal to you -- but I daresay you would prefer "In
Downland" [ or
? ]
"Hampshire Days."*
(Longmans) which I hope you will have the curiosity
& inclination to read. Two other books I should like
you to read are
"The Descent from the Sun"
& "A [ Dijit so it appears ] of the Moon."
both by a man named Bain.
I will find you one of them, if you let me know that you
have ^keep^ a fresh appetite for work
^of great^ originality.
Believe me
yours very truly
Edward Garnett
Turgenev: Russian author Ivan
Turgenev (1818-1883). Constance Garnett (1861-1946)
translated many of his works into English between 1894
and her death, completing most between 1894 and
1899. Wikipedia.
War & Peace: Russian author Leo
Tolstoy (1828-1910) published
War and Peace in
1869. Constance Garnett's translation appeared in
1904. Wikipedia.
Page 3: Garnett has numbered each sheet of this
letter, which is another page of letterhead, so this
page has a circled 2 on the upper left above the
letterhead. The remaining odd numbered pages are
handled similarly.
Note Books: American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864). Posthumously, "passages" from his English
(1870), French and Italian (1871), and American
Note-Books (1879) were published. Wikipedia.
Green Mansions: William Henry Hudson
(1841-1922),
Green Mansions: A Romance of the
Tropical Forest (1904),
Hampshire Days
(1903), and
Nature in Downland (1900).
Days: Garnett seems to have written a
period here.
"
The Descent from the Sun" ... "A Dijit of the Moon":
British fantasy author Francis William Bain (1863-1940)
published
The Descent of the Sun: a cycle of birth:
translated from the original manuscript (1903)
and
A Digit of the Moon and other Love Stories from
the Hindoo (1901).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Miller
Library, Special Collections, Colby College, Waterville,
ME: JEWE.1. Associated with this letter is an
envelope addressed to Jewett in South Berwick, ME,
cancelled in London, UK, on 31 August 1904. The South
Berwick cancellation on the back is only partly
readable.
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz to Annie Adams Fields
[ Summer 1904 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
Quincy Street,
Cambridge.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear friend
I cannot* thank you enough for the
portrait of our dear Sarah.* If not absolutely perfect,
-- it recalls her, [ and
? ] as it stands by my
desk I look
[ Page 2 ]
up to have a glance from her. The world is a different
place without her, -- [ we need
? ] her
sympathy, her [ advice
? ], her infinite
kindness, -- she was a [ rare
? ] being.
Good-bye dear friend -- I am still
confined to the house but much better -- your loving
Elizabeth C. Agassiz
Notes
Summer 1904: This speculative date is based
upon the likelihood that the letter refers to the death
of Sarah Wyman Whitman and that the picture, therefore,
was sent not long after her death.
cannot: Agassiz may have written "canot."
Sarah: While one would assume this is Sarah
Orne Jewett, that is not the case, for Jewett died about
two years after Agassiz. Of the many Sarahs among
their mutual acquaintance, the most likely one to have
died at a likely time in the Agassiz-Fields
correspondence is Sarah Wyman Whitman, on 25 June 1904.
Whitman also is a strong candidate for fitting Agassiz's
description of her character. 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.
Willliam Osler to Sarah Orne Jewett
7 Norham Gadens
Oxford
[ September 1904 ]*
Dear Miss Jewett
On my return from a holiday I found
the Religio* you so kindly sent and your kind letter of
July 18th. Thank you so much; the little volume helps to
complete my set. We shall have at Norwich in Oct. a
celebration of the three hundredth an-
[ Page 2 ]
versary of the birth of Sir Thomas. Among its events is
to be an exhibition of all the editions of the Religio
-- & I think your little volume will be [ on
corrected
] view{.}
We have settled quietly in Oxford & the outlook is
hopeful -- for a peaceful studious life at least.
I hope to see Mifs Garrett* as she passes through from
Germany.
[ Page 3 ]
I think Sargents picture will be good. I do not [ like
Dr Halsteads
? ] face but Dr Welch is
splendid. I cannot judge [ poor
? ]
saturnine 'phiz{.}"
I hope you are having a good summer and that you are
gradually regaining your energies.
With best wishes & renewed thanks
Sincerely yours
Wm Osler
Notes
1904: Almost certainly this letter was composed
near the end of the summer in 1904, the year Sargent
completed his portrait of Mary Garrett and the year
before the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas
Browne. See notes below.
Religio: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was the
author of
Religio Medici (The Religion of the
Doctor, 1642). Wikipedia.
Garrett: Osler refers to American painter, John
Singer Sargent (1856-1925), who painted a portrait of
Jewett correspondent, Mary Elizabeth Garrett in
1904. See Wikipedia and "Celebrating the
Philanthropy of Mary Elizabeth Garrett" at the Johns
Hopkins University library website.
Garrett commissioned a portrait, "The
Four Doctors" (1906) for the Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine. The doctors were lead teaching
physicians at the founding of the school: William H.
Welch (pathologist and dean), William Osler (internist),
William S. Halstead (surgeon) and Howard A. Kelly
(gynecologist). Though the painting has a 1906
completion date, Osler, who sat for it, must have seen
the faces earlier.
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
171. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Louise Imogen Guiney to Annie Adams Fields
12 Sept.,
1904.
Dearest Mrs. Fields:
Your ^letter, the^ [postal ?
] and the charming happy book, are here: Mr.
Warner* would have loved it, and on my part, I
am as grateful as can be. Aren't you very
nice to keep on thinking of me, 'one that was a
woman, but (rest her soul!) she's dead?'*
Of course I shall joyfully attend to your order
for Mr. Tutin.* I wonder if you wished my
cloth-bound Orinda? I shall have it
send, as it is pretty and very cheap, instead of
the paper one; unless I get a cablegram curse!
It is the best news I have had for aeons that
Miss Jewett* will soon be
[ Page 2 ]
entirely well. Do please tell her so, with my best
love. We have cool sleepy weather always hereabouts,
and we keep very well. Mother, to my joy, but
without teasing, has put off going until November,
and says I am to settle before then in another
house. I have no book on hand* just now, but must
try to catch up with my vows in the matter of
magazine articles. The great difficulty of middle
age I find to be that other persons' affairs are so
much more interesting than one's own. I say to
divers and sundry, in my heart:
'Thou was the golden fruitage in my path,
Dropt to make vain my race'.*
[ Up the left margin of page
2 ]
* I really have five of them, piling up like cairns.
But I mean I am not setting to work on any
seriously, quite yet.
[ Page 3 ]
Apropos of things Greek, and your
commendation of Mr. Sturge Moore,* whom I must look
up, have
you run across Mr. Gilbert Murray?*
That's the Attic man. Just now, he is a bit talked
of, I fancy, (but I don't know, as I never get to
London or see plays!) on account of his pathetic
perfect translation of
Hippolytus; but when
I was in B.P.L., I catalogued a most lovely original
idyllic drama of his, called
Andromache,
with the scene laid long, long after the fall of
Troy, which took my heart, and laid up his name for
ever in my mind. Do read this, some day. You will
know!
When you see 'our dear Anne Whitney', tell
[ Page 4 ]
her I love her hard. I shall send Stanley,* when he
comes out, to both of you. I envy you at Manchester
1, The beaches, and 2, The peaches. There are none
of either in my world. But then, you haven't a
fourteenth-century tower of limestone which sucks in
colour from the sun and looks exactly like a ^tall^
rose begonia at sundown, -- you haven't that to look
at 'when life grows difficult and the lights dim'!*
So we're even. Do, please, keep ever so well. And
commend me, as the chance occurs, to Mr. Aldrich,
Mrs. Bell, Miss Longfellow, Mr. de Wolfe Howe, and
Mr. Whittemore.
Yours always,
Louise I. Guiney
57 S. John's Rd.
Oxford.
Notes
Mr. Warner: Fields's
Charles Dudley Warner
appeared in 1904. See
Key to Correspondents.
Tutin: Guiney edited
Katherine
Philips, 'The Matchless Orinda': Selected Poems (1904),
published
by
J.R.
Tutin.
This
may be
John Tutin (1863-1961), of
Bedale, a market town in Yorkshire, UK, north of
Leeds.
Katherine Philips (1631/2
-1664) was an Anglo-Welsh poet and translator.
Miss Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See
Key to Correspondents.
on hand: This is Guiney's asterisk.
It points to the text in the left margin of page 2.
vain my race: British author
William Hurrell Mallock
(1849-1923). The lines are from his "Aeneas to Dido" in
Poems (1880) pp. 95-7.
Sturge Moore:
Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944)
was a British poet, author and artist. In his poems and
plays, he often dealt with Greek classical subjects.
Mr. Gilbert Murray: British Australian classical
scholar, translator and author,
George Gilbert Aimé Murray
(1866-1957). "Attic" refers to Attica, the peninsula
upon which Greece is located. Among his writings and
translations were:
Andromache (1900) and
Euripides:
Hippolytus; The Bacchae (1902).
B.P.L. is the Boston Public Library,
where Guiney worked for several years.
Ancient Troy, in what is now Turkey,
was the site of the Trojan War, which was represented in
Homer's
Iliad and which provided materials for a
number of the classical Greek plays Murray translated.
Anne Whitney: American sculptor
Anne Whitney (1821-1915).
Stanley: This reference is somewhat
puzzling.
It may be significant that
Welsh-American journalist and explorer
Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841- 10
May 1904), most famous for his search for missionary
explorer David Livingstone, had recently died. Guiney
may be promising to forward to Jewett and Fields a copy
of a book about Henry Stanley. Published in 1904 in
London was
The Autobiography of Sir Henry
Morton Stanley.
It seems more likely, though, that
Guiney refers to her own work in progress:
Thomas
Stanley: his original lyrics, complete, in their
collated readings of 1647, 1651, 1657
(1907). However, this book was not published for 3
more years.
lights dim: From British poet, essayist and
critic,
Lionel Johnson (1867-1902), "
Upon a Drawing" (1890).
Mr. Aldrich, Mrs. Bell, Miss Longfellow, Mr. de Wolfe
Howe, and Mr. Whittemore: American scholar and
archaeologist,
Thomas Whittemore (1871-1950).
For Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
Helen Choate Bell, Alice Longfellow and Mark de Wolfe
Howe, see
Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington
Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields
collection Box 26: mss FI 1637. Transcription and
notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
East Gloucester Sep 13th
1904
Dearest
Emma* has tied up the books and they
will come today by Express p
re paid /* Will
you please thank Mrs. Cabot* for the loan of Sir Charles
Danvers{,}* a capital story capitally told -- "The
Better Part" I read quite through again, it was one of
the volumes [ dr
au
ne
d ? ]
in the fire which seems queer but is true -- Have you
see the portrait of Henry James* in this No of Harpers
Weekly, it is a marvel of good work{.} Do not fail to
get it. I wrote to our dear Lassies* yesterday or was it
Monday to tell them about the lovely week only
discounted by their absence, and my sorrow for the death
of my dear friend* these 45 years in Lexington. I dwell
on my week and your loving kindness through all the days
with a tender interest blended with the longing to be
quite worthy your love, and brought away with me the
treasure of sweet memories{.} It was so good for me also
to believe you are to be strong again and whole -- I
cannot
we cannot have you less than whole and I
dream already of a brief visit to Boston
[ Page 2 ]
some time in the winter when I shall find you ra
idiant
in
health
--
Emma
goes home on Monday and I go with her to Boston where
she takes the "Wabash* to Chicago -- We shall have time
for dinner or something in that sort and then I shall
drop down to Fair Haven to the Dedication* of the new
church on Tuesday -- Shall stay there it may be
some days and perhaps preach on the 25
th
but this will be as the Deacons and the folk think best.
I begin to feel forth home^ward^ { -- } am tired of
resting and am forgetting I have had to do a good stroke
of work {of} one sort and another but I am well and hope
to stay well { -- } while it
it be
otherwise I will not whine{,} leastwise I think so{.}
In perfect love always yours
Notes
Emma: Collyer's daughter. See Collyer in
Key to Correspondents.
paid: Collyer has written a slash as end
punctuation for this sentence. His punctuation
throughout this letter is odd and uncharacterstic.
Typically, he omits most periods, but in this letter, he
seems to use dashes and commas for most
punctuation. I have rendered these as they appear.
When he wrote "pre," he underlined
the final two letters, and he also placed a line over
them.
Mrs. Cabot: Susan Burley Cabot. See
Key to Correspondents.
Danvers: Probably, Collyer refers to
Sir
Charles Danvers (1889), a novel by British author
Mary Cholmondeley
(1859-1925).
The Better Part may refer to
a novel, probably published before 1884, by Scottish
author,
Annie Shepherd Swan (1859-1943).
James: American author
Henry James (1843-1916). Collyer
refers to the
cover photo of James in the 10
September issue of
Harper's Weekly (p. 1376).
See also the photo of James
that appears with the
Harper's Weekly article,
"Mr. Henry James at Home," by Sydney Brooke (8 October
1904) p. 1549).
Lassies: Sarah Orne Jewett and her sister, Mary.
See
Key to Correspondents.
dear friend: This may have been
Carlton Albert Staples (1827- 30
August 1904), who had served as pastor at First Parish
Unitarian Church in Lexington, MA.
Wabash:
The Wabash Railroad provided
passenger service in the east central United States
under several names from around the Civil War until the
1940s.
Dedication: Collyer plans to attend the
dedication of the Rogers Memorial Church in Fairhaven,
MA, now known as
Unitarian Memorial Church.
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 Annie Adams Fields
Saturday morning
[
September 1904 ]
Dearest Annie
I scuttled off a yesterday
afternoon postcard to you, and what I want to have
distinctly understood is, that I took it to the post
office myself! the first time I have walked
down street for more than two years! I had a good
cup of tea and it must have set me on my way! but I
felt as if I were alone on the open sea when I was
getting across the street! ---- And I had a
[
Page 2 ]
delightful little drive in the
afternoon when we got the wonderful gentians,
so
wide
open
and
so
blue,
like a bit of water in the meadows that looks so
bright -- such a bright steel blue in March.
I am afraid they will be all shut and you will think
that they are only good to throw away when you get
them this morning, but they are always so in the
morning and open wide in the sun later, dear
[
Page 3 ]
things. Miss O'Bryan* is off at ten
to Newport. I think she goes to Halifax Monday
or Tuesday night -- bless her! I hope she will have
a good holiday. Yesterday we had a dear little visit
from our two cousins -- Mary* enjoyed it very much.
I think everybody did. I send you Mary
Garrett's* little letter. I am so glad that the
portrait of her was really painted -- I think it
would have been a disappointment -- Good bye
[
Page 4 ]
darling Fuff.* I think and think of you -- I am going
over to have a word by telephone, one of these days.
With dearest love
Pin --
I wish you would give my [
deleted word ]
affectionate remembrances to Alice Goold -- I like to
think she is there -- isn't this moon a bright little
one in the sky?
Notes
September 1904: A penciled note in the upper left
of page 1 reads: "She is getting well! Sep
r
1904". Information in the letter supports this
note, especially Jewett's statement that she has not
taken a walk in her village for nearly two years.
While she did travel to Boston in the late spring of
1903 and after, her mobility remained restricted for
many months after the accident of September 1902.
Miss O'Bryan: Though little is known about
her, Miss O'Bryan served as nurse- helper to Jewett
after her serious carriage accident of September 1902.
Jewett mentions her again in a letter believed to be
from 14 December 1904.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mary Garrett: Mary Elizabeth Garrett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
American artist
John Singer Sargent's (1856-1925)
portrait of Mary E. Garrett was
completed in 1904.
Fuff: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields.
Jewett signs with one of her nicknames, Pin. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Alice Goold: This person has not been
identified. Assuming the transcription is correct,
she may be
Alice McClellan Roberts Goold
(1876-1955) of Portland, Maine. Her husband was
Allan Owen Goold (1872-1944).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington
Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields papers:
mss FL 5549. This manuscript has been damaged by water,
making parts of the transcription less than normally
certain. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe
College.
Grace Norton to Sarah Orne Jewett
17 September
[ 1904 ]*
My dear friend --
I accept gratefully on behalf of the
Misses Bailey,* and regretfully on my own behalf, your
kind cheque. I have had twenty minds to return it to
you, but I suppose I have no right
[ Page 2 ]
to distrust the wisdom ^of the result^ of your
"haggling" with yourself. (But I do !!)
How I wish you could give an account
of yourself that had no "discouragement' in it!
But it would be easy enough to bear with one's
troublesome body if our poor little minds
[ Page 3 ]
didn't have to submit to its tyranny
& make themselves troublesome too. But our
souls happily are big enough & strong enough to
master them both; & I trust yours [ dwells ?
] in its quiet home of Love & Beauty. -- But
none the less I wish your body would hurry
[
Page 4 ]
into good behaviour.
I shall have better
health when you do! -----
I am for the moment with my sister at
her charming [
deletion ] ' [ hired
? ]
house' at Readville;* but I go home today -- to welcome
(for the second time) Mr. James.*
So [ hastily ? ], but very
affectionately
G.N.
Notes
1904: Associated with this letter in the
Houghton folder is an envelope addressed to Jewett in
South Berwick, ME, and canceled in Hyde Park, MA, on 17
September 1904.
Bailey: These persons have not yet been
identified.
James: Probably Henry James, who was
visiting in the U.S. at this time. Key to
Correspondents.
Readville: A district in the Hyde Park
neighborhood of Boston, MA.
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
167. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Georgina Haliburton to Sarah Orne Jewett
60 Congress St
[
Begin letterhead ]
485 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE
[
End letterhead ]
Sep 19
[ 1904 ]*
Dear Sarah
The Gentians are still so beautiful
and spoke volumes of affection when I opened the box.
How I do love them and you. & thank Miss
O'Bryan.* I wonder if she picked them! I must see
them [ passing
? ] some time. I did so enjoy
[ Page 2 ]
your [
unrecognized word ] visit and long for
another.
This week Abby McLane comes -- also
Belle Butler --* a short visit I think{.} I hope you
& Mary* can give me a day next
[ Page 3 ]
week when all is quiet again.
With dearest love
Georgina.
Notes
1904: This date appears to be in another
hand. Associated with this letter is an envelope,
addressed to Jewett in South Berwick and cancelled in
Portsmouth, NH on 19 September 1904.
Miss O'Bryan: This may be the same Miss O'Bryan
who served as nurse-helper to Jewett after her serious
carriage accident of September 1902. Jewett mentions her
again in a letter believed to be from 14 December 1904.
Nothing more is yet known about her.
Abby McLane ... Belle Butler: These persons have
not been identified.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. 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.
Haliburton, Georgina. 2
letters; 1904 & [n.d.]. (88).
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.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
September 22 -- 1904*
[ Begin letterhead ]
FAIRHAVEN
MASSACHUSETTS
[
End letterhead ]
Dearest for
keeps
I hug yours of yesterday with a
tremor of gladness, it is right here under my
other arm as I write. How glad I should be to come
back like a bad penny as we were used to say when
I was at home so many years ago, but when I
suggested taking the road for New York on Tuesday
Mr Rogers* would not hear of it for a moment -- I
had made a half promise to preach for the folks
next Sunday in the new church.* Would I not stay
and so on. Well there is room enough for more
folks
[ Page 2 ]
here than would fill half a dozen ordinary "hausen"* and
no confusion but clock work time as it is on the hill,
so here I shall stay and preach D V* on Sunday and then
go home on Monday, come again in a week and a day if all
goes well, and help at the Dedication --
Mr Rogers is amending nicely and
expects to be up and about tomorrow, he has had a trying
time but the worst is over.
A note has just come from Robin and Gertrude.* They went
on the Providence boat on Monday night and eat their
breakfast on the own mahogany -- its chestnut -- They
feel good to be home again and I do for them. [
Unrecognized
word ] [ "bit
[ Page 3 ]
prayer"
? ] welled up in my heart on the 15
th
for the dear friends in Paris.* I gave them the five
hours start by the sun and guessed at the time. How I
would love to
bring* this screed of words and
many more this morning
In love as ever yours
Notes
1904: Collyer typically writes "th" in
underlined superscript after numbers in his dates. Here
he drew a curved line over "22" and a dash after.
Mr Rogers: Collyer participated in the dedication
of the Rogers Memorial Church in Fairhaven, MA, now
known as
Unitarian Memorial Church.
The church was founded and built by
Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840
-1909), an American industrialist, financier, and
philanthropist.
church: Collyer omits many periods in this
letter. I have supplied them wherever they seem
necessary.
hausen: German: houses.
What Collyer means here by "clock
work time" is not known.
D V: Latin: Deo volente, God willing.
Gertrude: Collyer's son, Robert and his wife,
Gertrude. See Collyer in
Key to Correspondents.
Paris: This transcription is uncertain. Collyer
seems to refer to the difference in time zones between
Paris and Fairhaven. However, it is not yet known to
what friends or events in Paris Collyer may refer.
bring: This seems to have been
underlined in pencil.
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 Ellen Chase
South Berwick, Maine,
Friday, 23 September, 1904.
My dear Ellen, -- I must
thank you, too, for your royal present of the Herbal,*
which was waiting for me when I got home from the
mountains. I am put on such short commons of reading
and writing, and can manage to do so little of either,
yet, that after the first delighted look I had to fall
back on the (after all!) deep joys of possession. But
I look forward to the day when I can quite live
between the covers of that great book. I have thought
of you many and many a time this summer, and always
with a true gratitude for your dear thoughtfulness and
kindness in so many ways.
Yours most affectionately.
Notes
the Herbal: An herbal that Chase might have given
Jewett could be that by John Hill (1714-1775),
The
Family Herbal, Or, an Account of All Those English
Plants Which Are Remarkable for Their Virtues, and of
the Drugs Which Are Produced by Vegetables of Other
Countries; with Their Descriptions and Their Uses, as
Proved by Experience (1754), which was reprinted
in 1900. Another candidate, also reissued in 1900 is
Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654),
Culpeper's Complete
Herbal : Consisting of a Comprehensive Description of
Nearly All British and Foreign Herbs; with Their
Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding
the Medicines Extracted from Them.
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 Messr. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
South Berwick
Octr 1st
[ 1904 ]*
Messrs. Houghton Mifflin &c --
Gentlemen
I thank you
for your kind messages during the summer to which I could
not make any answer -- in fact I have but lately begun to
look over the many letters &c which had accumulated.
I am still kept on short commons of
either writing or reading, but there are one or two things
which I wish to say . .
I find another long
[ Page 2 ]
letter from Mr. Edward Garnett* of London (the writer, as
Mr. Mifflin* will remember, of some letters on the part of
Messrs. Duckworth & Co. ^in the late winter^ )
inquiring again as to the prospect of a new edition of my
books, and* saying that they would take 1000 copies of
each volume, &c. I do not press for an immediate
decision but lay the matter again before you.* ^(I should
feel bound, in case of such a plan, to speak also to
Messrs. Smith & Elder.)*
And I have noticed among the
letters that I have been going
[ Page 3 ]
over, a good many from young persons who seem to have
taken my stories of Betty Leicester much to heart! This,
with the remembrances of Mr. Garrison's* writing me last
spring of these books having done noticeably well in the
last six months, makes me feel that we might do well to
put them in some way freshly before the public this autumn
and take advantage of the wave of new interest which seems
to exist, -- and in a way that really surprises me.
But will you please
[ Page 4 ]
give directions at the Press that the old binding should
be restored to Betty Leicester? -- the scarlet
and white -- for it is an ugly little book at
present; the die does not sit well ^sidewise on one
corner^ and this green and red cloth are very far from the
beauty of Mrs. Whitman's* charming design. Even if the
original cloths are no longer in market I should think
they might be approached ^in colour^ without much trouble.
Believe me, with kindest
regards and thanks, especially to Mr. Mifflin & Mr.
Garrison for their letters,
Yours most truly
S. O. Jewett
Notes
1904: See below, note on Edward Garnett.
Garnett: Edward Garnett. Key to
Correspondents.
In Jewett's letters to Garnett of 12
October 1903 and 2 October 1905, there is discussion of a
possible new selection from Jewett's published short stories
along the lines of
Tales of New England (1890).
Richard Cary describes the project as proposed in Garnett's
letter of 31 August 1904: "Garnett specifically proposes
that Houghton Mifflin publish an edition of
The Best
Tales of Sarah Orne Jewett, the first volume to be an
entirely new work; volumes II, III, and IV,
Selected
Tales; volume V,
The Country of the Pointed Firs.
'I believe that Duckworth would take a thousand copies of
each volume if such an Edition could be arranged.' (Colby
College Library)."
Mifflin: George Harrison Mifflin. Key to
Correspondents.
Garrison: Francis Jackson Garrison. Key to
Correspondents.
Richard Cary notes: "No formal
edition of Jewett
Works was ever published. In 1910
Houghton Mifflin reissued seven volumes in uniform bindings
but from the original plates, which were called collectively
Stories and Tales. The books included:
Deephaven,
A
Country Doctor, Tales of New England, A Native of Winby,
The Life of Nancy, The Country of the Pointed Firs, The
Queen's Twin. An English edition was brought out by
Constable & Company (London, 1911)
."
and: Sometimes Jewett writes "a" with a long
tail for "and." I render these as "and."
Betty Leicester: Jewett began her Betty Leicester
stories with "A Bit of Color" in
St. Nicholas
(April, May, and June 1889). These were
incorporated into her novel,
Betty Leicester, A
Story for Girls (1890). In 1894, she published a sequel:
Betty
Leicester's
English Xmas: A New Chapter of an Old Story.
Whitman's: Sarah Wyman Whitman. Key to
Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Colby College
Special Collections, Waterville, ME: JEWE.1. Richard Cary
included his transcription in
Sarah Orne Jewett Letters.
New transcription and notes by
Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Frances Parker Parkman
Poland Spring
October 2
d
[
1904 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
Dearest Frances
I am writing to you just from
thrift to save an envelope all stamped and written for
North East, that lies on my writing table -- I ought
to be [ clearing ? ] it off because I am going
to-morrow to Intervale where I shall meet my sister
Mary* who goes [ up ? corrected ] today.
-- I quail a little for I know that
I shall find pieces of my sorrowful last summer
[ Page 2 ]
left about -- but I am glad not to put it off any
longer on the whole -- the house and place were always
dear to my heart.
-- And (this is really the matter
in point:) I wish to tell you that I was not unmindful
of what you said about Mrs. Lawrence* and the letters.
I waited, thinking I was sure to see her, and then
they went back to Doylestown rather suddenly and I
missed them both{,} Mrs. Lawrence & Mifs
Chapman{,}
[ Page 3 ]
by a day or so, when I [ went
corrected ] to
York the first possible day of my return from
Manchester.
Now, Mrs. Lawrence writes that she
will be looking over her letters, and bring on any
possible ones when she comes to Boston later on in the
autumn.
I suppose I am better for this
fortnight, but in such a slow ascent a fortnight's
climb doesn't show unreasonably. I felt
very
fine last Friday and went off to walk feeling like new
-- and the
[ Page 4 ]
consequence is that my head took to aching, and
sprained ankle-ing and so continues! Never mind !!
things aren't so bad as they were !! and now, this
letter having come to nothing but exclamation points
it had better end -- Give my love to dear M
rs
Wolcott* if you are with her, and take my love for you
dear Frances -- I think we shall be meeting soon now.
Notes
1904: This date is probable, because Jewett
presumably speaks of gathering together letters of Sarah
Wyman Whitman (see
Key
to
Correspondents), who corresponded with Elizabeth
Chapman Lawrence. The sorrowful event of the previous summer
was Whitman's death on 24 or 25 June (sources disagree).
Jewett's report on her slow recuperation likely also refers
to the carriage accident of September 1902, from which she
never fully recovered.
In the lower left of page 1 is the
penciled and circled number: 218, the Houghton Library item
number for this ms.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mrs. Lawrence: Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence
(1825-1905), the second wife of Timothy Bigelow Lawrence of
Doylestown, PA. See notes for Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara
Norton, September 16, 1908, and
E.L., the Bread Box
Papers: The High Life of a Dazzling Victorian Lady: a
Biography of Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence (1983) by
Helen Hartman Gemmill. Daughter of Henry Chapman
(1804-1891), a Pennsylvania congressman, she was a popular
and cosmopolitan woman who, after her marriage, moved in the
same circles as Annie Fields and Jewett and corresponded
with Sarah Wyman Whitman.
Mifs Chapman: Probably, this is Elizabeth Chapman
Lawrence's youngest sister,
Frances Chapman (1846-1924).
Mrs Wolcott: Perhaps she is
Edith Prescott Wolcott. See
Key
to
Correspondents. It seems likely she is a relative of
Frances Parkman's mother, Elizabeth Wolcott Stites, but no
family connection between E. P. Wolcott and Frances Parkman
has yet been established.
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.
Willliam Osler to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
1 West Franklin Street
[ End letterhead ]
[ 3 October 1904 ]*
Dear Miss Jewett
Pardon the delay in answering your very
kind letter, but I have been overwhelmed with work since
my return. It is nice to learn that you are really better
-- 'tis an up-hill road but I am sure you {are} reaching a
point [ ahead
? ]
[ Page 2 ]
when the grades are less steep. I felt sure you would like
Miss O'Bryan* -- a true Teresian. By the way, I am sending
you a copy of my Ingersoll lecture, rather a rash
production I fear. The last paragraph at any rate is true.
It may interest you, all the same, for the sake of the
writer,
[ Page 3 ]
if not of the subject.
You will be glad to hear that Miss Garretts picture by
Sargent* is an extraordinary success.
With kind regards & best wishes
Sincerely yours
Wm Osler*
Notes
1904: In the upper right corner of page 1 is
penciled this note: "X. 3. 04". I interpret this to
refer to an envelope that appears in the folder with this
letter and that may be associated. The envelope is
addressed to Jewett in South Berwick, ME, and was
cancelled on October 3.
in 1904, on the 3rd day of a month. I find no
readable year on either the front or back of the
envelope. However, 1904 almost certainly is the
right year. See note below on Miss O'Bryan.
O'Bryan: Though little is known about her, Miss
O'Bryan served as nurse-helper to Jewett after her serious
carriage accident of September 1902. Jewett mentions her
again in other letters from 1904.
Osler's reference to Teresians is now
somewhat obscure; he may refer is some way to Saint Teresa
of Avila (1515-1582).
Sargent: Osler refers to American painter, John
Singer Sargent (1856-1925), who painted a portrait of
Jewett correspondent, Mary Elizabeth Garrett in
1904. See Wikipedia and "Celebrating the
Philanthropy of Mary Elizabeth Garrett" at the Johns
Hopkins University library website.
Osler: Sir William Osler (1849-1919), a
Canadian physician and medical educator, was one of the
founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Of his
published lectures, probably the one that appeared in
Jewett's lifetime and was most likely to interest her and
Fields was his Ingersoll Lecture,
Science and
Immortality (Houghton Mifflin, 1904). The
Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality took place at
Harvard University, beginning in 1896.
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 171.
I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry
Heller, Coe College.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Sarah Orne Jewett and
Annie Adams Fields
This letter was
composed in French; a transcription follows the
translation.
Editor's note*
[ 1904 ]*
7 October (from the 6th to the 14th, the
most painful anniversary of my mother's final illness)
My very dear Annie, you will forgive my taking so long to
reply to your letter when you understand why. I return to
the unfortunate translation of The Tory Lover,* for which
the Maison Hachette requires cuts. The novel presented
many difficulties, and I was happy to labor on behalf of
our dear Sarah. What you say about her imminent arrival in
Boston delights me; nothing would do her more good than
the trip to France that I wish to see hinted at the end of
your letter. Oh! That would instantly resurrect me. What a
balm for everyone! -- My trip to England*
[ Page 2 ]
did me so much good; I returned
strengthened by pleasant meetings and the charming country
life that I experienced at the home of my friend, Ouida*
(Mr. Henry James* will give you some news.) But
great suffering awaited me as I returned, and already the
fruits of rest, distraction, and a relative peace of mind
are lost. It is evident to me that only some boost to my
morale can make me feel better and therefore that is why I
will be sure to recover if you both come here. That is why
I also believe that nothing could be worse for Sarah than
to remain in South Berwick, without the ability to work,
to suffer from idleness, especially
[
Page 3 ]
with her sad thoughts after the death of
Mrs. Whitman*, which I also still feel. What a loss for
Boston! I believe that Mrs. Ward* will come to Paris
soon, and I am delighted that I will see her again,
having chosen to spend only two or three days at Stocks,
given the pressing work that absorbed her then. I read
from proofs half of William Ashe, and I didn't
care much for what I read, but since you are of a
different opinion, I'm probably wrong. You know that
except Robert
Elsmere, part of Marcella, part of Eleanor,
and Lady Rose I am not a great admirer of this
[ Page 4 ]
very remarkable, very interesting woman –
about whom I could only feel comfortable talking to you in
person. Still, I hope that the great success of her
previous work will determine her continued acceptance by
reviews and editors. You will see from the mouth of A
Frenchman the objections I had made to Mrs. Ward and
an answer to the objections from the mouth of Mr. Ward
(this in future issues). This is the chapter where this
archangel, Lady Kitty, innocently spends a night with a
man on the [ unrecognized name ], without arousing
the slightest suspicion in her husband, which
provoked my vocal derision. I am back from Acosta,* where
on 28 January, the music festival was still more brilliant
than last year, with a very rich and magnificent program,
but the poor mistress of the house was worn out by
evening, despite her great courage and inexhaustible
hospitality. Just think of it! There were 105 at lunch,
and a big lunch
[
Page 5 ]
and a dinner for which the arrival of
hundreds of oysters from Brittany, sent by my nephew
Louis,* was just another worry, because they had to be
opened, and the servants were in a frenzy. With the two
hours of music in the morning, three in the evening, and
a crowd of guests, who all left with regret that this
Adoration would be the last. We had not realized that
before. This crumbling castle, this beautiful abandoned
park, all that served as a setting for a woman of 85,
who is no longer fully herself, except by the great
effort of her strong will -- this is pathetic and sad.
She has the comfort of having insured the future of [ unrecognized
word ], who is now M. de Cay,*
[ Page 6 ]
a well-chosen chapel master. And her last
years have been charmed by a new friendship, one of your
compatriots, Mrs. van Vorst,* the author of The Woman
Who Toils, to whom I introduced her and who now
manages everything for her at home. (Also a story I will
tell you when we meet; it is a most unusual one.)
Please do not repeat this to anyone, even what little I
tell you.
There are people predestined to be taken advantage of, and
your servant is among them, but there are others so clever
that it all balances out!
As soon as I'm definitely back in Paris (this will not be
before November), I will see your friends and I will talk
about them with M. Brunetière,* who only just returns from
Dinard. I don't know how I will spend the winter, probably
deciding day to day; perhaps I'll spend December near a
friend in Biarritz. But everything is so uncertain! I am
at the mercy of so many people! And so indifferent to
myself. This life of continuous effort -- which
would seem incredible to anyone who could know everything
-- will last as long as it can. I will see it come to an
end without regret, while enjoying as much as ever the
pleasant moments.
Good-by dear Annie, love to both of you.
Th B
[ Cross-written down the left
margin of page 6 ]
You didn't tell me about your
health. Since my return, Mrs. Ritchie*
[ Cross-written up the right margin
of page 6 ]
was quite unwell. I love in her the
memory of my dear old friend, Mr. Milsand* -- talking
about him with her -- in addition to their personal
sympathy. We speak often of you, and about the portrait of
her father. "Good-bye Fields. Goodbye Mrs. Fields,"
says the little framed note, speaking of the return to his
children. I suppose you speak of your Manchester neighbors
who had tea with me at her house. We also had lunch, she
and I, at the home of Emerson's daughter,* with whom I was
able to visit at length about the happy days spent under
your roof. Thank you once again{.}
God bless you dear.
ThB
[ Cross-written up from the left of
page 5 ]
You never told me what you thought of the
most intimate book that M. Delzant* gave me for you, and
which I sent you.
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.
1904: The date is supported by
several references to events of 1904, notably the death of
Sarah Wyman Whitman. See notes below.
anniversary: According to Geneanet, Blanc's mother,
Adrienne Olympe de Bentzon died on 14 October 1887.
The Tory Lover: Jewett's final novel,
The
Tory Lover, was published in 1901. The history
of its French translation is not yet fully understood. The
first translation,
Le Roman d'un Loyaliste,by Mlle.
Douesnel, was published by Hachette & Cie, by 1905.
Blanc either revised the original translation or
retranslated for a 1906 publication, also by Hachette. See
also, Jewett to Blanc of February-March 1903.
At the time of this letter, Jewett
continued to struggle to recover from her carriage
accident of September 1902. She remained unable to
write fiction for the rest of her life.
Mrs. Whitman: Sarah Wyman Whitman. See
Key to Correspondents. Whitman died
on 25 June 1904.
England: Blanc published "Impressions d'Été à
Londres" in
Revue des Deux Mondes, January 1905.
Ouida: This transcription is uncertain, but it
seems likely that Blanc refers to British novelist Maria
Louise Ramé (1839-1908), whose pen name was Ouida.
Wikipedia.
Henry James: See
Key to Correspondents.
Mrs Ward: British novelist, Mary Augusta Ward
(1851-1920). See
Key to Correspondents.
Her residence in England was at
Stocks. Blanc mentions several of her novels:
Robert
Elsemere (1888),
Eleanor (1900),
Lady
Rose's Daughter (1903), and
The Marriage of
William Ashe (1905). Politician William Ashe marries
Lady Kitty Bristol, a woman notorious for reckless
behavior, not an angel. She eventually deserts him for
another man.
In "Impressions d'Été à Londres," Blanc
gives attention to Ward's writing and to the serial
publication of
The Marriage of William Ashe in
Harper's.
However,
a
discussion
of Ward's failures of verisimilitude seems not to appear
in
Revue des Deux Mondes before Blanc's death in
1907, though Blanc seems to imply that it will.
Acosta: The estate of author, Sophie de Castellane,
Marquise de Contades, then Beaulaincourt, Countess Marles
(1818- 25 December 1904). French Wikipedia.
There is a problem of dates here.
Blanc seems to have written 28 Janvier, but clearly, if,
as she says, she has just returned from Mme. de
Beaulaincourt's music festival, then it must have taken
place around 28 September.
Louis: Blanc's nephew. See her entry in
Key to Correspondents.
M. de Cay: This person has not yet been identified.
Mrs. van Vorst: It is not perfectly clear which of
two American writers has befriended Mme.
Beaulaincourt. Probably, Blanc means Bessie McGinnis
Van Vorst (1873-1928), she 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).
For that book, according to Wikipedia, the two "went
undercover at a pickle factory in Pittsburgh; a textile
mill outside Buffalo, New York; a variety of sweat shops
in Chicago; a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts; and a
Southern cotton mill to learn about working women's
lives." Theodore Roosevelt wrote the introduction.
M. Brunetière: Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906),
editor of
Revue des Deux Mondes. Wikipedia.
Mrs. Ritchie: British writer Anne Isabella
Thackeray, Lady Ritchie (1837-1919). Wikipedia.
The portrait of her father mentioned
here, presumably, is that of William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811-1863), remembering a time when she spent time with
Fields and husband, the publisher of James T. Fields.
Milsand: Joseph Antoine Milsand (1817-1886),
French critic, philosopher, Protestant theologian, and a
close friend of British poet, Robert Browning (1812-1889).
Blanc's essay "A French Friend of
Browning -- Joseph Milsand" appeared in
Scribner's
XX (July 1896), 108-120.
Emerson's daughter: Either Ellen Tucker Emerson or
Edith Emerson Forbes. See
Key to Correspondents.
M. Delzant: Author Alidor Delzant (1848-1905),
widower of one of Blanc's closest friends, Gabrielle
Delzant (1854-1903). In 1904, he published
Gabrielle
Delzant: Lettres, Souvenirs.
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."
7 Octobre ( du 6 au 14 mes plus douloureux anniversaire
la dernière maladie de ma mère.)
Bien chère Annie, vous me
pardonnerez d'avoir laissé
partir ce courrier sans vous
répondre quand vous saurez
pourquoi. Je reprends entièrement
la traduction mal faite du
Tory Lover pour laquelle la
maison Hachette exige des
coupures. Ce roman a eu
bien des vicissitudes et j'ai
été heureuse d'avoir à
travailler pour notre chère
Sarah. Ce que vous me
dites de sa prochaine arrivée
à Boston me ravit; rien
ne lui fera plus de bien, si
ce n'est le voyage en France
que je veux entrevoir à la
fin de votre lettre. Oh! cela
me ressusciterait du coup.
Quelle panacée pour
tout le monde! --
Mon voyage en Angleterre
[ Page 2 ]
m'avait fait le plus grand
bien; je revenais fortifiée par
d'agréables rencontres et par
la charmante vie à la campagne
que j'ai menée chez mon [ Ouida ? ]
( M. Henry James vous en donnera
des nouvelles.) Mais de gros tourments
me guettaient au retour et déjà
tout le fruit du repos, de
la distraction, d'une relative
tranquillité d'esprit est perdu{.}
Il est évident pour moi qu'une
cure morale peut seule
m'être salutaire et voilà
pourquoi je serai sûre de guérir
si vous veniez toutes deux.
Voilà pourquoi aussi je crois
que rien ne peut-être plus
mauvais pour Sarah que
[ de rester ? ] à Berwick sans la
ressource du travail, à souffrir
de son inaction, surtout avec
[
Page 3 ]
les pensées douloureuses que
doivent lui [ lainer
? ] la mort de
M
rs Whitman à laquelle je ne
puis encore me faire! Quelle
perte pour Boston! --
Je pense que M
rs Ward viendra
prochainement à Paris et je
me réjouis de la revoir, n'ayant
voulu passer à Stocks que
deux au trois jours, vu les
travail pressant qui l'absorbait
alors. J'ai lu sur épreuves la
moitié de
William Ashe
et je n'ai pas ^beaucoup^ aimé ce que
j'ai lu, mais puisque vous
étes d'un avis diffèrent c'est
sans doute moi qui ai tort.
Vous savez que sauf Robert
Elsmere, une partie de Marcella
^une partie d'Eleanor,^ et Lady Rose je ne suis pas
grande
-- [ admiratrice
? ] de l'oeuvre de cette
[ Page 4 ]
femme très remarquable, très
intéressante -- dont je ne pourrais
vous parler à mon aise que de
vive voix. -- Néanmoins j'espère
que le grand succès de son précédent
ouvrage décidera de l'acceptation
de celui-ci par les Revues et par
les éditeurs. -- Vous trouverez dans la
bouche de
A Frenchman les objections
que je lui avais faites et une réponse
à ces objections de la bouche de
M. Ward (ceci dans les futurs numéros).
Il s'agit du chapître où cet archange
lady Kitty a passé innocemment
une nuit sur la [
unrecognized name ] en tête
à tête avec un homme ce qui n'excitait
pas le moindre soupçon chez son
mari, quand j'ai
poussé les hauts cris.
Je reviens d'Acosta où le 28 Janvier
la fête musicale a été plus brillante
encore que l'année dernière, avec
un programme plus magnifique
et plus chargé, mais la pauvre
maîtresse de maison était, malgré
son grand courage et son intarissable
hospitalité, bien fatiguée le
soir. Pensez donc 105 déjeuners
seulement, et un grand lunch
[
Page 5 ]
et le dîner pour lequel l'arrivée
de centaines d'huitres de Bretagne
envoyés par mon neveu
Louis n'a été qu'un souci
de plus car il a fallu les
ouvrir et les domestiques
étaient sur les dents! Avec cela
deux heures de musique le
matin, 3 heures le soir, une
foule d'invités qui tous sont
partis avec le sentiment attristé
que cette Adoration serait la
dernière. Jamais nous
n'avions pensé à cela auparavent.
Ce château croulant, ce beau
parc abandonné, tout cela
servait de cadre à une
femme de 85 ans qui n'est
plus elle-même que par
un effort de son énergique
volonté, c'est pathétique et
attristant. Elle a la consolation
de voir assuré l'avenir de [ unrecognized word
]
lequel est maintenant M. de Cay,
[ Page 6 ]
maître de chapelle bien posé. Et
ses dernières années ont été charmées
par une amitié nouvelle, une de
vos compatriotes, M
rs van Vorst,
^l'auteur de The Woman Who Toils^ que
je lui ai fait connaître et qui maintenant
mène tout chez elle. (Encore une
histoire que je vous conterai quand
nous nous verrons;elle est des plus curieuses.{)}
n'en répéter à qui que ce soit, même
le peu que je vous dis. Il est des
personnes prédestinées au rôle de dupe
et votre servante est du nombre,
mais il en est d'autres si habiles que
cela fait compensation! --
Aussitôt que je serai revenue définitivement
à Paris, -- ce ne sera guère avant
Novembre, -- je verrai vos amis et
je vais parler d'eux à M. Brunetière
que rentre seulement de Dinard.
Je ne sais comment je passerai
cet hiver, je vivrai probablement
au jour le jour; peut-être passerai-je
Décembre à Biarritz près d'une amie.
Mais tout est si incertain! Je suis à
la merci de tant de gens!
Et si indifférente
à moi-même. Cette vie de lutte
qui semblerait
invraisemblable à qui pourrait tout [ savoir
?
]
durera tant qu'elle pourra. Je la verrai
finir sans regret, tout en jouissant autant que
jamais des instants agréables.
Au revoir, chère Annie, bien tendrement à vous deux
ThB
[
Cross-written down the left
margin of page 6 ]
Vous ne me parlez pas assez de
votre santé. M
rs Ritchie depuis mon
retour
[ Cross-written up the
right margin of page 6 ]
a été très souffrante. J'aime en elle le
souvenir de mon cher veil
ami M. Milsand, [ intimement ? ] lui avec elle, [ autre ?
] ce qu'il les a
[ Cross-written up from the left of
page 5 ]
personnellement de sympathique. Nous
avons beaucoup
parlé de vous, du portrait de son père. Good
bye
Fields. GoodBye Mrs Fields, le petit billet
encadré parlant du retour
près de ses enfants. Je suppose que vous me parlez
de vos voisins de Manchester qui ont pris le thé chez
elle avec moi. -- Nous avons déjeuné aussi elle et moi
chez la fille d'Emerson avec laquelle j'ai pu
causer tout à mon aise du temps heureux passé
sous votre toit{.} Je vous en remercie une fois de
plus{.}
God bless you dear.
ThB
Vous ne m'avez jamais dit ce que vous
pensiez
du livre si intime que M. Delzant m'a donné
pour vous et que je vous ai envoyé. ----
Sarah Orne Jewett to Charles Miner Thompson
South Berwick, Maine, October
12, 1904.
My dear Mr. Thompson, -- I wish
that I could have written sooner to tell you how deeply I
feel the kindness and sympathy for my stories in your
"Atlantic" paper.* Perhaps you may know already that I
have not yet recovered from a bad accident and long
illness that followed it, and that I find it very
difficult now to read or to write, and so you will not
have thought me unmindful of such friendliness as you have
shown to me and to my work. If you felt the difficulty, of
which you speak in your first paragraph, in writing about
a writer, I feel, too, as one might who heard some one
begin to speak frankly of one's self in the next room.
This has been an innocent sort of eaves-dropping, and not
without profit and suggestion, as well as happy
reassurance for me. Indeed, I understand that "The Country
Doctor" is of no value as a novel,* but it has many
excellent ideas, for which I must thank not only my
father's teaching, but my father himself. It only makes me
wish to see you some day, when we can talk together as
much as we wish, now that I am trying to write this letter
to you; indeed, there are many points in your paper that
give one something to think about and to say. I was
looking at a translation of one of Turguenieff's stories,
"Rudin," not long ago, and came upon something in
Stepniak's preface to the book which struck me deeply with
its likeness to some of your own words about -- not a
Master by any means, but a story-writer of certain
instincts! "But there was in him such a love of light,
sunshine, and living human poetry, such an organic
aversion to all that is ugly, or coarse, or discordant,
that he made himself almost exclusively the poet of the
gentler side of human nature. On the fringe of his
pictures, or in their background, just for the sake of
contrast, he will show us the vices, the cruelties, even
the mire of life. But he cannot stay in these gloomy
regions, and he hastens back to the realms of the sun and
the flowers, or to the poetical moonlight of melancholy,
which he loves best because in it he can find expression
for his own great sorrowing heart."
I find myself copying the whole
of this, -- but you would like the whole preface: it is in
an edition lately republished here by Macmillan, edited by
Mr. Garnett.* I did not know much of Turguenieff in
earlier years, but there is all the greater pleasure in
making one's self familiar now with all his work. I
remember Mr. Howells asking me with great interest long
ago when I had written the story of a "Landless Farmer,"*
if I knew Turguenieff's "Lear of the Steppe";* but I did
not then or for a few years after. I confessed to Mr.
Perry that I never was a Hawthorne lover in early life!* I
am afraid now that it was a dangerous admission to have
made to my kind essayist editor! but I tell this also to
you, since after what you said, it will not be without
interest; we come to our work by strange paths -- we
hardly know how. It was hard for this person (made of
Berwick dust) to think of herself as a "summer visitor,"
but I quite understand your point of view; one may be away
from one's neighborhood long enough to see it quite or
almost from the outside, though as I make this concession
I remember that it was hardly true at the time of
"Deephaven."*
I must not try to write longer,
but I shall be looking forward to seeing you. I hope that
this may be when winter comes, for I hope to be well
enough then to get to town. I can seldom think at all
about the affairs of writing, of which my mind used always
to be full. Once lately something made me turn to one of
my stories -- "The Only Rose";* I read it to a young
friend who wished to hear it, with a very strange feeling,
because there it was, quite alive and well, even if its
writer was no longer good for any writing at all. You will
see by this what pleasure I could get from your serious
and interested talk about all the stories; I liked to
think that they were so alive to some one, and had given,
or could still give pleasure.
Believe me, with my best thanks
and regards to so kind a friend,
Yours most sincerely,
S. O. Jewett.
Notes
your "Atlantic" paper: Charles Miner Thompson
(1864-1941), "The Art of Miss Jewett," appeared in Atlantic
Monthly in October 1904 (94:485-497).
"The Country Doctor": Jewett's A Country
Doctor was published in 1884.
Turguenieff's stories ... "Rudin" ... Stepniak's
preface ... lately republished by Macmillan, edited by
Mr. Garnett: Rudin was Ivan Turgenev's
(1818-1883) first novel, published in 1856 and translated
into English in 1873. Jewett was reading the W. Heineman
(London) / Macmillan (New York) The Novels of Ivan
Turgenev volume 1, Rudin (1894). This
Constance Garnett (1862-1946) translation includes an
introduction by S. Stepniak (Sergei Mikhailovich
Kravchinskii, 1852-1895). Editor of the series was Edward
Garnett (1868-1937); he corresponded with Jewett and
promoted her work in England.
Howells: William Dean Howells. See
Correspondents.
"Landless Farmer": Jewett's "A
Landless Farmer" appeared in Atlantic Monthly
(51: 627-37; 759-69) in May and June of 1883, and was
collected in The Mate of the Daylight (1883).
Turguenieff's "Lear of the Steppe": Ivan
Turgenev's A Lear of the Steppes, and Other Stories
appeared in an English translation by Edward and Constance
Garnett in 1898.
Perry: Bliss Perry. See
Correspondents.
Deephaven: Jewett's Deephaven
was published as single book constructed out of previously
published sketches in 1877.
"The Only Rose":
Jewett's
story appeared in
Atlantic Monthly (73:37-46)
in January 1894 and was collected in
The Life of Nancy
(1895).
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
[ Begin letterhead ]
201 West 55th Street
New York
[ End letterhead ]
Oct 13th 1904*
Gentle reader
I send you the last lot
of the "memories" to day. I may take up the thread again
when I feel ready along later in the fall. The story of
the fire* 33 years ago last Sunday remains untold and the
restoration of the church and the home. They are nagging
at me for some more and I wish they may get 'em. Do you
hear good tidings of a tempered joy from South Berrick*
and are ye weel as
Yours ever [ deleted mark ]
: This date appears to have been added in pencil,
probably by Collyer.
fall: Collyer omits several periods in this letter. I
have supplied them where they seem necessary.
fire: In the
great Chicago fire of 8-10 October
1871, the Collyer home and his Unity Church were lost.
Collyer's book,
Some Memories, appeared in
1908.
Berrick: Collyer probably intends a Scots or
Yorkshire pronunciation of Berwick, the home town of Sarah
Orne Jewett and her sister, Mary. See
Key to Correspondents. Jewett remarks
on this pronunciation (Berrik) in her historical essay, "
The Old Town of Berwick" (1894).
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 Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Saturday Evening
Octr 15th 1904
148 Charles St.
Dear friend:
How good you and Lilian were to think of
me on the 13
th ! And how glad I would have
been to be with you!
Next to all this personal pleasantness came the good report
of the true success of the play* from the public's point of
view. From the poetic point of view, so to speak{,}
one could never have a doubt but a play is
[ Page 2 ]
such a new factor for many a writer (though it has not been
to you) that it is like venturing into a new world. All
doubt seems to be dispelled tonight!
I am at home rejoicing. You would have smiled at the old
trick of my mind on the 13
th wondering how
I could get flowers to you and wondering who would select
them, standing outside of the old life in a strange
[ Page 3 ]
body and yet feeling a part of it -- They were ghostly
garlands indeed, save to my own affection and imagination.
Believe me
affectionately to you both
Annie Fields
I go to South Berwick on the 18
th for a
few days
Notes
the play:
Judith of Bethulta, Aldrich's
dramatization of his poem, "Judith and Holofernes,"
premiered on 13 October 1904. Though well-received in
Boston, it fared less well in New York. See
Greenslet's
The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich
pp. 228-31.
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.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Monday eve
g
[ Fall 1904 ]
Dearest Annie
I have been thinking about you so
much today -- Thank you for your dear letter.
Helen* will have a cold bright night under the stars at
Intervale. I often think about the place and the trees
-- some of the trees I hated last summer = I
used to feel as if they were coming at me! but at last I
went out in the dark by myself before I came away and
got over that!
-- I laughed a little laugh
[ Page 2 ]
-- with a little tear in my mind's eye too -- over your note
on the back of the envelope. When I had read the brief
^Atlantic^ paper* as I had not done before. My Fuff* must
have been a little tired! --
but I am going to give
her a hug, and tell her it is beautiful to take things in
large -- only not to tell
the accurate that
they*
are wrong ^in details^ !! Fuffy to gayly say sometimes, --
"Oh I daresay you are right!" and
still possess the
field! Details are good in
their place too!
Later -- I am writing the rest
[ Page 3 ]
of my poor remarks while your dinner is going on -- it is a
few minutes before nine and I have just come upstairs. Dont
forget to tell me who were there beside the two dear guests
I already know. ---- I am so glad that it is cool and fresh
weather -- you aren't half so likely to be too tired. --
I wish to ask you before I forget it,
whether the
Spectators* have been coming regularly
-- I shouldn't have any fears -- for you might easily wish
to keep some numbers a little longer, but you know we
thought one had missed just before I came away -- We must
speak
[ Page 4 ]
with the Corner Bookstore* if they haven't come would you
just write my name and the
Spectators! on a piece of
paper and ask John* to stop someday as he goes [ to
changed
from by ] that neighbourhood??
I was thinking about John tonight, -- [
telling
corrected ] Mary* that we must convey a
sample of the browntail moths* for him to see = when he goes
to Manchester in the early visitation; he can see if there
are any about the place.
Good-night dear -- this hasn't been a
very
good day for me. I was convinced that I did well not to try
to get to town, but tonight I have got "straightened out."
Tomorrow Mrs. Walden* is expected but she sent a note to
Mary to say that she shouldn't come until half past three
& go away at half past six! -- I cant think
[
Manuscript breaks off; no signature.]
Notes
Fall 1904:
Fields
penciled "1904" in the upper right of page 1
. There
is
little
evidence
for
or
against
this date within the letter, though it seems likely to be
close. Jewett mentions Intervale, where she spent
parts of the summer often from 1896 until her death.
In the absence of more conclusive evidence, I have accepted
Fields's dating.
Parenthesis marks in this
manuscript also were penciled by Fields.
Helen: There are several Helens among Fields and
Jewett's friends. Probably, but not certainly, this is
Helen Bigelow Merriman, who had a home in Intervale, NH. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Atlantic paper: Fields is not known to have published
anything in
Atlantic Monthly after March 1903, when
her essay "Saint Theresa" appeared. Perhaps Jewett refers to
a current "paper" Fields had commended to her attention.
Fuff: Nickname for Annie Adams Fields. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
they: Jewett has underlined this word
twice.
Spectators: Probably the
British weekly public affairs
magazine, which began publication in 1828.
Corner Bookstore: A major Boston bookstore of the
time, at the corner of School and Washington Streets.
John: Almost certainly an employee of Annie Fields.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
browntail moths:
Wikipedia says that the brown-tail
moth is native to Europe, and nearby Asia and North Africa.
Accidentally introduced into North America in the 1890s, it
was found in New England and neighboring Canada.
Mrs. Walden: Probably Grace Gordon Treadwell Walden.
See
Key
to
Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University. Jewett, Sarah Orne,
1849-1909. Annie Fields (Adams) 1834-1915, recipient. 194
letters; 1877-1909 & [n.d.] Sarah Orne Jewett
correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (255). Transcription
and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Wednesday morning
[
Late October 1904 ]*
Dearest Annie
I have been thinking that I should
like it if I could be there to open the door for you*
when you get home today! . -- but you must make
believe as I shall, that I am there and think of many
happy times that nobody can rob us of -- I hope you will
let Margaret* offer a portion of cocoatina!* It is so
"staying and resting" a good drink! -- I had a
nice letter from Mary*
[ Page 2 ]
yesterday -- yesterday must have been a beautiful day at the
mountains with its rainy morning coming up so suddenly and
the splendid clear afternoon{.}
-- I hope it was so there, but ^perhaps^
the clouds didn't "blow out of the mountains" as Helen*
says, as quickly as they did here. Today is windy and gray
-- a day when it isn't so hard to leave dear Manchester. I
am thinking about it as if I were there.
I am sorry about Alice* for all reasons.
I wish that
[ Page 3 ]
I felt Dr. Goldthwaite* to be a better
doctor than
maker of appliances -- he doesn't seem to succeed in either
direction with our poor friend. ^but there are some things
that cant be done.^* Oh darling how I wish you were
going to feel as if the change of coming here for a little
while would be good for you, we would do every thing we
could to have it pleasant and comfortable -- we are sure to
have better weather. October has been more like
December so far, and presently it will be still and sweet
and windless. My beloved Early November is yet to come, too!
[ Page 4 ]
Katy* has held to it from the first that she
must
have a visit!
I meant to keep that little book of Dr.
Osler's,* dear. I see that St. Timothy's belongs to Mark
Howe,* so I shall send it back by first conveyance. I own it
-- Russell Greeley* gave it to me -- it is a beautiful piece
of work. -- I saw Mrs Doe* yesterday -- I am going to lend
her the Osler lecture ----
With dearest love, your
Pinny*
Notes
Late October 1904: This tentative date is
supported by Jewett's report of reading a lecture by Dr.
William Osler that is probably his Ingersoll Lecture of
1904. See notes below.
Penciled in the upper right corner of page 1,
probably by Annie Fields: "October". Parenthesis marks
in this manuscript were penciled by Fields.
you: A blot appears before this word; it may be a
deleted insertion.
Margaret: Presumably a Fields employee.
cocoatina:
Powdered chocolate beverage.
Presumably Jewett quotes advertising copy.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Helen: Probably Helen Merriman. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Alice: Presumably, this Alice suffered from rheumatic
illness, as she was likely treated by a specialist in such
diseases. Which Alice this is has not yet been
discovered. Likely candidates are Alice Longfellow and
Alice Greenwood Howe. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Dr. Goldthwaite: This may be Dr. Joel Ernest
Goldthwaite (1866-1961) an orthopedist at the Harvard
Medical School, who specialized in part in the treatment of
rheumatoid illness. Little more had yet been learned
about him. Born in Boston and educated at Harvard, he
married Jessie Sophia Goldthwaite. Their son Joel
Addison Goldthwaite also became a physician.
be done: Jewett has not indicated exactly where she
wishes to place this insertion.
Katy: Probably Katy Galvin. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Dr. Osler's: Probably this is
Sir William Osler (1849-1919), a
Canadian physician and medical educator, one of the founding
professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Of his published
lectures, probably the one that appeared in Jewett's
lifetime and was most likely to interest her and Fields was
his Ingersoll Lecture,
Science and Immortality
(Houghton Mifflin, 1904). The
Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality
took place at Harvard University, beginning in 1896.
St. Timothy's ... Mark Howe: Mark Antony De Wolfe
Howe. See
Key
to
Correspondents. Which book Jewett is returning is not
yet known.
Russell Greeley: Richard Cary identifies
Russell Hubbard Greeley (1878-1956), a classmate of Theodore
Eastman at Harvard College. Eastman is Jewett's nephew. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
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.
Mrs. Doe: Edith Bell Haven Doe. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Pinny: Pinny Lawson (Pinny / Pin) was an
affectionate nickname for Jewett, used by her and Annie
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.
Francis Jackson Garrison to Sarah
Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
Publishers
4 PARK STREET: BOSTON
[ End letterhead ]
Oct. 31, 1904
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett,
Dear Miss Jewett: --
The
gratifying feature of the half-yearly account which we send
you to-day is the jump in sales of "The Country of the
Pointed Firs" from 126 copes for the corresponding period a
year ago to 1001 copies now, and it affords good evidence,
we think, that the recent Outlook and Atlantic articles* on
your work have been read and heeded. Let us hope that the
new readers of the "Pointed Firs" will not be satisfied
until they have purchased all your other books!*
Always, with warm regard,
Yours faithfully
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
[ Handwritten initials: F.J.G. ]
[ Page 2 ]
P. S. We take pleasure in sending you a copy of the new
edition of our Portrait Catalogue,* which we have endeavored
to make better than any of its predecessors. Most of the
portraits have been re-engraved, and especial care has been
taken in the printing.
Notes
Pointed Firs: Jewett's
The Country of the
Pointed Firs appeared in 1896.
Outlook and Atlantic articles: In fact, Jewett's work
had received considerable attention in 1903-1904, mainly in
books about American literature, with smaller readership
than the major magazines. Garrison refers to Elisabeth
McCracken's "The Women of America: Eighth Paper -- The
American Woman of Letters," from
The Outlook of 9
April 1904, and to Charles Miner Thompson's "The Art of Miss
Jewett," which had just appeared in
The Atlantic in
October 1904.
books: The exclamation point has been completed by
hand.
Portrait Catalogue: Jewett appears on p. 79 of
A Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton,
Mifflin and Company (1905), which may be viewed via
Google Books.
The typescript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett
Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., firm,
publishers, Boston. 6 letters; 1891-1904.. (101).
This transcription is from a
photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection,
University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett,
1875-1890, Box 2, Folder 99, Burton Trafton Jewett Research
Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Miss Louisa P. Loring
South Berwick, Thursday, November
3, 1904.
My dear Louisa, -- If you knew
how much pleasure your note and the exquisite photograph
gave me yesterday, you would never forbid my writing a
word to say so! I only wish you would come flying down
like one of your own pigeons, out of the blue sky, so that
we could talk as much as we wish about the Hermes. I find
in the note that you felt there at Olympia just as I
felt!* The light on the face in this photograph is
nearest the real thing of any picture or copy of any sort
whatever that I know.
Thank dear K. for her last
note.* I hope to see you both before winter gets very far,
but my last grind of "headaches" and "the prevailing fall
cold" on top of it have sent this slow patient down hill
again. Never mind! there ought to be time enough for
everything, taking this world and the next together!
Yours lovingly.
Notes
Hermes ... Olympia: Karl Baedeker's Greece:
Handbook for Travellers 2nd Revised Edition, 1894,
indicates that Louisa has sent Jewett a photograph of the
statue of Hermes by Praxiteles, which stood in the Museum
at Olympia.
dear K.: Almost certainly this is Katharine Peabody
Loring (1849-1943). See
Key
to
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.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mary Frances Parker Parkman
Friday
[ Autumn 1904 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
My dearest Frances
What made you think about that gray
coat?* -- It really startled me in a strange way for
last summer at the mountains I thought of it one day
with such longing, just to have it and keep it in my
closet here where I could see it and just put my face
against it sometimes! As if it were more a part of her
than almost anything! And this feeling was so strong
that now and then it would come back: -- that dear
[ Page 2 ]
gray coat -- She had another almost like it years ago.
I never should have asked about it -- I
might
have begged you to take care of it or make an end of
it, or something, if I had seen you; I dont feel sure,
but here you
know! Oh yes dear,
do let
me have it -- if only that I shall know where it is --
I wish I
could wear it now and then. One has a
kind of shame about ^caring so much for^
things
sometimes -- but after all aren't they bodies too to
which
[ Page 3 ]
our association or sentiment or whatever it is, makes
the soul? I wish
you would keep her little
straight umbrella. I wish _____ ! oh
Frances,
how lovely this is that you say about the streets and
the sky! ---- I half dread to go back to town and yet
some days I feel as if I were with you there and
closer than ever we have been before.
But dont put by
by
for other people the things
you care*
about. I wish I were there to know, and keep you
from
[ Page 4 ]
[ from
repeated ] doing little things like that that
give you pain -- She would not like it -- Sometimes I have a
sense of her being very near -- one
feel ghosts much
{more} often than one sees them! -- but once; it was not
long after she died, she
was there ^beside me^ and
said so eagerly, "
Oh, Frances was so tender and so brave!"
--- that was all, except I remembered suddenly a talk we had
had three years before coming up from Newport -- She was
remembering it too -- and someday I am going to tell you
dear . . . Do not keep this letter -- it is only for
[ Up the left margin and across the
top margin of page 1 ]
you and me, isn't it -- No. I did not know about Mr. [
Boncamp
? ]. I
did ^do^ not know
of anything, but Radcliffe and the Childrens Hospital* --
nobody could write to me, you know, in the summer* -- and
for a long time I saw no newspapers &c -- but Oh what
time I had to think about her! I shall
[ Up the left margin and across the
top margin of page 2 ]
tell Mrs. Fields* (who is at 148 now) about the maid and the
glass.
with dear love always
S.O.J.
Notes
Autumn 1904: Penciled beneath the letterhead on
page one: [ 1904 ]. This date is supported by the apparent
references to the recent death of Sarah Wyman Whitman and by
Jewett's reporting that she knows little of the news of the
previous summer. see notes below.
At the bottom left of this page is
penciled and circled: 224, the Houghton Library item number
for this ms.
gray coat: Almost certainly, this coat belonged to
Sarah Wyman Whitman, who died in June 1904. See
Key
to
Correspondents. Parker was a close friend and
correspondent of Whitman as well as Jewett.
Presumably, then, Jewett's report of experiencing a ghost
also refers to Whitman.
wish you: Jewett has underlined "you" twice.
you care: Jewett has underlined
"you" twice.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mr. [ Borncamp ? ] ... Radcliffe ...
Childrens Hospital: The transcription of "Borncamp" is
uncertain. Possibly Jewett refers to
Edward Borncamp (1868-1912), an
Episcopalian clergyman who served in Boston at about this
time.
Parkman seems also to have written of
Radcliffe College, then serving female
students and associated with Harvard University, and of the
New England Hospital for Women and
Children. Whether Rev. Borncamp was associated with
either institution is not known. Perhaps all three
were connected with Whitman.
in the summer: Jewett's health in 1904 remained
precarious after her September 1902 carriage accident.
Paula Blanchard reports in
Sarah Orne Jewett (1994)
that Jewett underwent a rest cure in New Hampshire during
the summer of 1904 (p. 350-1). As a result, there are
few Jewett letters from this year.
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 Sarah Cabot Wheelwright
148 Charles Street
Wednesday [ November 1904 ]
Dear Sarah
You will be glad to know that Mrs. Fields is getting on
well and begins to look like herself though she is still
very weak. It is a great comfort and stay to have
your good Katy* and we begin to feel as if we were put
together again. Mrs. Fields gains a little every day but
there came a time when after such worry and fatigue I felt
each day a little worse than the day before, and thought
the pieces of me weren't worth the trouble of picking up.
Alice Howe* has been a great good friend as always and I
have had luncheon with her tui [so transcribed ]
twice and the last time I went off alone and saw two acts
of The Admirable Creichton at the Easton
Square.* I have always wished to see the play
and could quite get the run of it before I felt too tired
to stay any longer. I thought almost as much of you as of
the play! I sat way over the other side -- there was a
little Cuban woman in front as usual, and much the same
congregation -- It does change one's wearing thoughts like
nothing else, and I could come home and tell Mrs. Fields
about that too funny first scene when they all come in to
the party!
Good night with love to you and Mary.
S. O. J.
Notes
November 1904: This letter is
speculatively dated based upon a known performance of
The
Admirable Crichton in Boston in November of 1904.
However, as the notes below indicate, several details in the
letter cast doubt upon this choice.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Fields. See
Correspondents.
Katy: Presumably this is not Katy Galvin, a
long-time employee of the Jewett family. Assistance is
welcome.
Alice Howe: Alice Greenwood Howe. See
Correspondents.
The Admirable Creichton: The
Admirable Crichton by J. M. Barrie was first
produced in 1902 in London. It opened on 16 November
1903 at New York's Lyceum Theatre, played there for four
months, and toured the United States after this run.
Wikipedia summarizes the first act:
Act One is set in Loam Hall, the household of Lord
Loam, a British peer, Crichton being his butler. Loam
considers the class divisions in British society to be
artificial. He promotes his views during tea-parties
where servants mingle with his aristocratic guests, to
the embarrassment of all. Crichton particularly
disapproves, considering the class system to be "the
natural outcome of a civilised society."
A
production of The Admirable Crichton with
William Gillette ran for at least two weeks at the Hollis
Street Theatre in Boston, beginning approximately on 2
November 1904. While it is not certain that Jewett
attended one of these performances, the inference is
plausible.
The location of the theatre Jewett
attended is problematic. There is no longer an
Easton Square in Boston. Stoddart says that Easton
Square was renamed Bowdoin Square, the location of the Bowdoin
Square Theatre. However, no record has yet
been found of a production of The Admirable Crichton
at the Bowdoin Square Theater before 1909. Nor is it
established that the Hollis Street Theatre was near or in
a location named Easton Square.
Mary: Mary Cabot Wheelwright. See
Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is in the
collection of the Miller Library of Colby College,
Waterville, ME. The transcription first appeared in
Scott Frederick Stoddart's Ph.D. dissertation at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Selected
Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, copyright by Stoddart,
1988. Annotation is by Stoddart, supplemented by
Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Mary Rice
Jewett
148 Charles Street
Saturday.
[ 1904 ]*
Dear Mary,
Your letters from your cousins have given
me a delightful picture of seaside life in winter of which
we know too little. My cottage* is so essentially a
summer perch that I never ever dream of it after November
until June.
I was just about to write you about our
visit next week from you to which we are looking
[ Page 2 ]
forward when the Mrs Tyson* at the telephone, after speaking
of an appointment here for M
me Massenbach* etc., said
she wanted
you to make
her a little visit,
but the time was [
unrecognized word] etc., and she
had not been able to induce you to come.
Now, do be good to us both and prepare
for a little longer stay by going first to Mrs Tyson
[ Page 3 ]
for a couple of days from Tuesday until Thursday night or
Friday morning and then coming for a week here. I
think Sarah* is comfortable and quiet now and I fancy it
will be as well for her to stay where she is for a week
longer.
Pray think this proposition over
formally. Give my love to Katy* and thank
[ Page 4 ]
{
her }for wishing me to go back with you. Tell
her that I am of no great use surely, but such as I am,
having been away all last winter, I must stay now until
April and attend to my little ship and its cargo.
Mrs Tyson is to have cousins to stay
^for^ some time the last of next week, ^Saturday^ but that
is just the moment for a bit of a visit between now and then
-- so arrange for this "spree" dear Mary and please us both.
Affectionately yours
Annie Fields.
Notes
1904: This date is speculative. Annie
Fields seems to have had a telephone already in 1884, as
indicated in her 19 September 1884 letter to Eben
Horsford. Emily Tyson became a regular contact
in about 1899. The letter hints that Jewett's health
has been poor, pointing toward 1903 or later. If
Mme. Massenbach is correctly identified in the following
notes, then 1904 would be a likely date for this letter.
my cottage: Fields refers to her Gambrel
Cottage on Thunderbolt Hill in Manchester-by-the-Sea, where
she resided most summers.
Mrs. Tyson: Emily Davis Tyson. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mme Massenbach: This
transcription is quite uncertain. If it is correct,
this may be the Dutch Baroness de Massenbach, who is known
to have visited the United States in 1904.
"Baroness de Massenbach of Holland, whose
home is at The Hague, was in the city yesterday on her way
from the Yellowstone park to St. Louis. She was with a
party of twenty-two travelers who are "doing" the United
States. Among the places visited was Minnehah Falls,
which the baroness admired very much."
Minneapolis
Journal 25 July 1904, p. 7.
However, this is uncertain and no
confirming information has been discovered. Assistance
is welcome.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Katy: Probably Katy Galvin. See
Key
to
Correspondents. However, Sarah Cabot Wheelwright also
seems to have had a Katy working for her at this time.
The manuscript of this letter is held by Historic New
England in Letters from Annie Fields to Mary Rice Jewett,
Jewett Family Papers: Transcribed and annotated by
Terry Heller. Coe College.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Annie Adams Fields or
Sarah Orne Jewett
This letter was composed in French; a
transcription follows the translation.
21 November [ 1904 ]*
La Ferté sous Jouarre
My darling, often I come to you at the happiest and saddest
times in my life, and by some occult influence, it seems as
if you have felt them with me. Your letter comes just
as my little Lili* has gone with her mother, who winters in
the south to restore her always fragile condition. To lose
the presence of this little flower of health and joy causes
genuine grief. But you write to me: "My sisters and I talked
about you with warm feelings,"* and
[ Page 2 ]
this is like a spreading balm. God bless you dear benevolent
souls!
We also have had our Indian summer, and the colorful foliage
made me remember the end of October in the West. The whole
image remains in my memory, painted in red and gold. Mr.
Blanc,* despite his obvious frailty, goes hunting six hours
a day, so I am able to shorten evenings under the pretext of
fatigue and arise in the morning to work -- I'll not long
feel up to staying here now that Lili and her mother have
gone away. Besides, I need to care for my poor Édouard,* so
ill
[ Page 3 ]
with bronchitis. On 19 November, I went to hear him
speak at the Geographical Society about his comrade,
Dietrich of [ Ahises
? ], who was assassinated by
the Chinese at Kashgar, where Édouard, the only Frenchman,
had been before him. His presentation was perfect in its
simplicity and dignity, and he made himself heard clearly,
thanks to hot drinks, grogs and others, he took before
speaking. Afterwards, my nephew, Jeanne and I heard
people who didn't know us say: "But he looks scary.
[ Page 4 ]
What's wrong with him? The man is very sick." You can guess
how that affected us. The doctor reports his bronchial tubes
are better now, but his liver, despite {his stay in} Vichy,
is on the verge of failure. As soon as his doctor permits,
he will seek a change of air. This separation from the
household, probably until March, frightens me; perhaps,
though, it is better this way -- God watch over them! Why
must it be that missing between these fine people is the one
essential, the agreement of their souls? They are two, when
they should be one. I hold on to the hope that their son,
with his face so much like his father's, will accomplish a
miracle.
Truly,
[ Page 5 ]
from the point of view of public spirit, philanthropy, and
serious scholarship, your dear nation is a revelation {to
the French}, as is shown in the weighty letters and
newspaper articles that I'd like to show you. In those
pieces it is clear that we in France have failed to
appreciate the United States before this humble Parisienne,
who offers little more than her point of view on the little
she has seen of the many wonders of America. I am
greatly honored, but I truly believe Mr. Bourget* writes
dazzling pieces, filled with dry notes and statistics, and
often containing nothing else, whereas I put my heart into
mine, which are eagerly received by the Revue des Deux
Mondes.
I send you kisses. Th
Notes
1904: Dating this letter is problematic.
Huntington folder 547 appears to contain two letters mixed
together. This letter seems to be complete, and the
likely date is November 1904, though it may be from 1905 or
1906. In this letter Blanc mentions her nephew, Joseph and
his wife, Jeanne, who married in 1904.
Lili: For more on Lili and on other family members
Blanc mentions, see Blanc in
Key to Correspondents. As
explained in the correspondents entry, the identity of
"Lili" is ambiguous. Probably in this letter Blanc refers to
the younger of the two girls she seems to have called
"Lili," her grand-niece, Alice de Solms.
feelings: Presumably, Blanc quotes from the
letter to which she is responding. The recipient of this
letter is not yet known, though it almost certainly is
either Annie Adams Fields or Sarah Orne Jewett. In
1904, Jewett had only one surviving sister, Mary.
Fields, however, had several surviving sisters. If she
quotes accurately and if "sisters" is meant literally, then
it would seem more likely that this letter is addressed to
Fields.
M. Blanc: Blanc refers to her estranged
husband, who regularly came to La Ferté sous Jouarre to
hunt.
Édouard: Édouard Blanc is Mme. Blanc's son. See
Blanc in
Key to Correspondents. The identity of
his comrade Dietrich is not yet known. M. Blanc had traveled
in western China, and visited
Kashgar, a Uighur city on the Silk
Road.
Mr. Bourget: French novelist and critic,
Paul Bourget (1852-1935).
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
21 Novembre [
1904 ]*
La Ferté sous Jouarre
Ma chérie, c'est souvent vers
vous que je me tourne aux moments
agréables comme aux moments
douleureux de ma vie et
par l'effet de [ q. q.
for quelques
or quelque
chose ] magnétique
influence, il semble que
vous les sentiez. Votre lettre
est arrivée à l'instant même où
ma petite Lili est partie avec
sa mère qui va passer
l'hiver dans le midi pour
reétablir ses forces toujours
chancelantes. Ne plus voir
cette fleur de santé et la
joie est pour moi une
vrai chagrin. Mais vous
m'écrivez. "Mes soeurs et
moi nous avons parlé de
vous avec amitié" et
[ Page 2 ]
c'est comme une [ baume
? ] qui se répand.
Que Dieu vous bénisse
chères âmes bienfaisantes!
Nous avons eu aussi notre
été indien et des colorations
de feuillage qui me faisaient
penser à cette fin d'octobre
dans l'Ouest{.} Toute l'image
m'est restée dans l'esprit
peinte en rouge et an or.
M. Blanc, malgré sa fragilité
apparente chasse six heures
par jour; de sorte qu'il
m'est possible d’abréger les
soirées, ^sous prétexte de fatigue{,}^ et de me lever matin
pour travailler -- Mais
je n'aurai pas le courage de
rester bien longtemps maintenant
que Lili et sa maman ont
disparu. J'ai d'ailleurs à soigner
mon pauvre Édouard très souffrant
[ Page 3 ]
d'une bronchite. Je suis allée
le 19 Novembre l'entendre parler
á la Société de Géographie de
son camarade Dietrich de [
unrecognized word Ahises
? ]
assassiné par les Chinois à
Kashgar où, seul français,
Édouard est allé avant lui.
Il a fait un discours parfait
de simplicité et d'élévation
et trouvé moyen de se
faire entendre de la façon
la plus claire, grâce aux
boissons chaudes, grogs et
autres, qu'il avait prises
auparavant; mais autour
de nous, mon neveu, Jeanne
et moi, nous entendions
les gens, qui ne nous connaissaient
pas, dire: "Mais il est effrayant [ de nature
?
].
[ Page 4 ]
Qu'a-t-il donc? Cet
homme est très malade."
Jugez de nos impressions.
Le médecin trouve que les
bronches vont mieux maintenant,
mais le foie, malgré
Vichy est toujours prête á
faire des [ rienne ? ]. Dès qu'il
pourra en obtenir la permission
du docteur, il changera d'air.
Cette séparation du ménage
jusqu'au mois de mars probablement
m'effraye; peut-
être est-ce mieux pourtant(,)
A la garde de Dieu! Pourquoi
faut-il qu'entre les êtres excellents
l'essential manque, l'entente
des âmes. Ils sont deux quand
il faudrait n’être qu'un. Je l'espère
toujours que l'enfant si drôlement
pareille á son père de visage fera
le miracle.
Vraiment votre cher pays est { -- }
[ Page 5 ]
point de vue de l'esprit
public, de la philanthropie,
des études sérieuses --
comme une découverte
que m'attestent des lettres très
sérieuses et des articles des
journaux que je voudrais
vous montrer, l'où il ressort
qu'on se trompait du
tout au tout sur vous
autres avant le voyage
d'une humble Parisienne
qui n'a d'autre mérite que
de dire sincèrement à son
point de vue le peu qu'elle
a vu de beaucoup de grandes
choses. C'est un grand honneur
pour moi, mais je crois que
vraiment les éblouissants
articles de Bourget tous completés
par les notes sèches comme des
statistiques et qui souvent ne
sont que cela quoique j’y mette
mon coeur, que la Revue des deux
[ Down the left margin of page 5
]
Mondes reçoit avec tout l'empressement aimable {.}
Je vs embrasse Th
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Annie
Adams Fields
This letter was composed in French; a
transcription follows the translation.
Editor's note*
Paris 28 [ November 1904 ]
Dear Annie,
This letter will be delivered to you by a very charming
traveler, son of my oldest friend, of whom you have often
heard me speak: Madame de Fouquières.* He is a
diplomat and, in his spare time, a painter. But his trip
to America is as an inquisitive visitor. Of your country,
he knows nothing
[ Page 2 ]
but what one sees of it in the districts
of the Rue Scribe and the Arc de Triomphe. This is too
much or not enough. I count on you to show him the "very
best." That is to say, the society of Boston such as can
be met only in your home. Since I was there, there have
been many losses. I am so sorry that M. de Fouquières
cannot meet Mrs. Whitman,
[
Page 3 ]
nor Sarah in full health, nor Mrs. Howe
a little younger, nor the delectable, incomparable
little doctor!* But Bostonians still remain, thank God!
I beg you to introduce our young friend in particular to
Mrs. Gardner,* for, as a Parisian artist, he is worthy
of her museum and her conversation. Also, send him to
[ Page 4 ]
Cambridge, among the denizens of the
university which is home to Mr. Wendell,* whose success
here in Paris surpassed all that one could expect, with
1000 attendees at his first lecture. I dined with him and
his wife at the Doumics.* His news last Monday regarding
your health pleased me. I conveyed your greeting to M.
Delzant.* I will ask Mademoiselle Berger,* but I'm afraid
I cannot make the decision. As for the Life of Voltaire by
Tallentyre,* I had heard in England about it being most
remarkable. I will get it. A thousand tender
[
Cross-written down the left side
of page 4 ]
greetings from the Brunetiéres.*
He is much better. Mme. de Beaulaincourt* is well
and sends you her love.
All the best. Th B
[ Page 2 ]
Do you know where Octave Thanet* is? if
she resides in Cambridge, send my young friend to her.
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.
28 November 1904: This date is supported by Blanc's
reference to the course of lectures of Barrett Wendell at
the Sorbonne, which began in November of 1904 and by the
fact that Mme. de Beaulaincourt is reported to be living
However, this makes Blanc's handwriting
of the date problematic. She seems to have written
either an elongated "S" or a "9." As her references
in the letter so firmly establish the composition in
November of 1904, we remain puzzled about her script.
See notes below.
Madame de Fouquières: Marie
Françoise Hélène de Groiseilliez (1836-1825) was the
sister of the painter Marcellin de Groiseilliez. Her
husband was Louis Aimé Victor Becq de Fouquières
(1831-1887), a French man of letters. Among their three
sons was Augustin Pierre Becq de Fouquières (1868-1960), a
diplomat and minister plenipotentiary. Their
youngest son, André, also was a man of letters, the author
of several books. (French Wikipedia)
Whitman ... Sarah ... Mrs. Howe ... little doctor:
These all are mutual acquaintances of Blanc and Fields:
American artist, Sarah Wyman Whitman,
who died in June 1904;
Author, Sarah Orne Jewett -- she
suffered poor health after her carriage accident of 1902
until her death in 1909;
Activist and author, Julia Ward Howe
(1819-1910);
Author and physician, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Sr., who died in 1894. He was affectionately known
among his friends as "the little doctor."
See
Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Gardner: Isabella Stewart Gardner. She was a
wealthy American art collector and philanthropist, who,
with her husband, made her Boston home into an important
art museum. See
Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Wendell: American academic at Harvard
University, Barrett Wendell (1855-1921). He was the editor
and author of literature and composition textbooks and, in
particular, of literary histories. In 1904-5, he traveled
and lectured in Europe, including at the Sorbonne in
Paris. His wife was Catharine Scollay Curtis, a
national leader in historical preservation. According to
the New York
Times (19 November 1904, p. 4), he
gave his opening lecture on about 19 November. (Wikipedia)
Doumic: French critic, René Doumic (1860-1937), a
regular contributor to and then editor of
Revue des
Deux Mondes. He had visited the United States and
spoke at Harvard University in 1898. (Wikipedia)
M. Delzant: Author Alidor Delzant (1848-1905) was
recently widowed. His wife was one of Blanc's closest
friends, Gabrielle Delzant (1854-1903).
Mademoiselle Berger: This person's identity is not
yet known.
Tallentyre: British author, Evelyn Beatrice Hall
(1868-1956), under the pen name of Stephen G. Tallentyre,
published
The Life of Voltaire in 1903.
(Wikipedia)
Brunetiéres: Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906),
editor of
Revue des Deux Mondes.
Mme de Beaulaincourt: Sophie de Castellane,
Marquise de Contades, then Beaulaincourt, Countess Marles
(1818- 25 December 1904). See also Geneanet. Blanc
traveled to Russia in 1901, where she researched the
conditions of women. See Mme. Paul Fliche,
Mrs. Th.
Benzon p. 122.
Octave Thanet: Pen name of Alice French, who
befriended Blanc during her first visit to the United
States. French's usual residences were in Davenport, IA
and Clover Bend, Arkansas. 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 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."
Paris 28 9
bre
Chère Annie,
Cette lettre vous sera
remise par un très charmant
voyageur, fils de mon
plus ancienne amie,
dont vous m'avez souvent
entendu parler: Madame*
de Fouquières. -- Il est
diplomate -- et peintre
à ses moments perdus --
Mais le voyage qu'il
fait en Amérique est
un voyage d'amateur
et de curieux. De votre
pays il ne connaît rien
[ Page 2 ]
que ce qu'on en voit
dans les quartiers de
la rue Scribe et de l'Arc
de Triomphe. C'est trop ou
ce n'est pas assez. Je
compte sur vous pour
lui montrer the very best.
C'est à dire la société
de Boston, telle qu'on
ne peut la voir que
chez vous. Depuis que
Je l'ai quittée, bien des
brèches s'y sont faites.
Je ne me console pas
que M. de Fouquières ne
connaisse ni Mrs Whitman,
[ Page 3 ]
ni Sarah en pleine
santé, ni Mrs Howe un
peu plus jeune, ni le
délicieux, incomparable
petit docteur! Mais il
reste encore des Bostoniens,
Dieu merci! Je vous prie
tout particulièrement de
recommander notre
jeune ami à Mrs
Gardner, car il
est digne le son
Musée et de sa conversation
de parisienne artiste.
Envoyez-le aussi à
[ Page 4 ]
Cambridge chez les
représentants de cette université
d'où sort Mr Wendell dont
le succès a dépassé ici tout
ce qu'on pouvait attendre
1000 personnes à sa première
conférence! J'ai diné avec lui
et sa femme chez les
Doumic. Les nouvelles
qu'il m'a données de votre
santé lundi dernier en
venant me voir m'ont
fait plaisir. -- J'ai envoyé
votre mot à M. Delzant. Je
[ soliciterai ? ] Melle Berger
mais
J'ai bien peur de ne pouvoir
la décider. Quant à la Vie
de Voltaire par Tallentyre on
m'en avait déjà parlé en
Angleterre comme étant
des plus remarquables
Je me la procurerai. -- Mille tendres
[
Cross-written down the left side
of page 4 ]
greetings from the Brunetiéres{.}
He is much better.
[ unrecognized marks ] Mme de
Beaulaincourt va
bien et vous envoie her love.
amitiés Th B
[ Cross-written up the right side
of page 4 ]
Savez-vous où est
maintenant Octave
Thanet? Si elle
habite Cambridge
envoyez lui mon jeune
ami.
Note
Madame: Over this word, someone has penciled
what appears to be "M."
Kate Douglas Wiggin to Sarah Orne Jewett
Bronxville N.J.
Nov. [ 30th ? ]
[ 1904 ]*
Dear [ Miss
? ] Jewett
I have long wanted a book of yours to add to my autograph
library. Today in the face of the financial depression* I
have purchased No. Two hundred and
[ Page 2 ]
something of the heavenly "Deephaven"* book & boldly
sent it to you for a written [ morsel
? ] to add to
its charm. I have tried to think how I can least
trouble you to send it back. Will it be easiest to
leave it with H.M. & Co.* sometime when you are there,
[ Page 3 ]
or can you post it? I trouble to ask you to do up a package
for fear you may dislike it as I do. With many thanks in
advance & sincerest admiration.
Ever sincerely yours
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Notes
1904: To the date of this transcription, all
other datable correspondence we have between Jewett and
Wiggin is from 1904 and 1905. I have guessed that this
letter is from 1904.
depression: Wikipedia notes an economic
recession in the U.S. from September 1902 though August 1904
(List of Recessions in the United States). This
information suggests that the guessed date of this letter
may be incorrect. Also within the potential time-frame
of this letter is the Panic of 1907.
Deephaven: Jewett's 1878 novel. Weber and Weber
in
A Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sarah
Orne Jewett (1949) note the following about editions
of
Deephaven:
Large-Paper Edition (250 numbered copies),
illustrated by Charles and Marcia Woodbury; with a new
Preface by Sarah Orne Jewett dated October 1893:
Cambridge, Printed at the Riverside Press, 1894. 305 p.
22.5 cm. White cloth spine, light-green paper-covered
boards; white paper label on spine; all edges untrimmed.
H.M. & Co.: Houghton, Mifflin &
Company, Jewett's and Wiggins's publisher.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am
1743.1 Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence I.
Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett, Box 4 (108).
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz to Annie Adams Fields
[ Begin letterhead ]
Quincy Street,
Cambridge.
[ End letterhead ]
[ Before December 1904 ]*
Dear friend
I have been passing the Sunday
morning with you reading the Galton Index* & re-reading
your note which brought it to me. It is a deeply interesting
& important line of research, -- so it seems to me, but
one most subtle & difficult -- [ one set
? ] of
evidence contradicting
[ Page 2 ]
another until it sometimes it seems as if there were no
fixed order of mental or moral heritage{.}
I should like very much to talk of these
things with you sometime{.}
I have lately read a volume that
interested me, -- "Myer's Fragments"* -- it will be [
familiar
? ] to you I dare say. The experience of
one of the early "Psychic Research" people who
[ Page 3 ]
[ passed
? ] through the doubts & materialism of
one century through agnosticism and all the rest of it, --
until having started with a deep piety based upon inherited
Christianity, he finds himself where he first started &
closes with the prayer of profound belief --
But for these subjects we must wait till
we [
deletion ] can talk instead of writing -- since
you say that I need not return the Galton Report
[ Page 4 ]
I shall put it on my Hospital
Report
^file^, -- they absorb [ an
? ] immense amount of
reading and sometimes [ of
corrected ] quite serious
reading.
I long to hear of dear Sarah* as quite
regaining her power in every way. Give her my love
& tell her she is often in my thoughts with my most
affectionate love & sympathy.
Always your
faithful old friend
Elizabeth C. Agassiz
Notes
1904: Sometime near the end of 1904, Agassiz suffered
an illness that affected her handwriting. Almost
certainly, this letter was composed before that event, but
still in 1904, the year of the publication of Myers, "
Fragments
of
Prose
and
Poetry.
Galton's index: Wikipedia describes Sir
Francis Galton (1822-1911) as "an English Victorian era
polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist,
anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor,
meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician and a
proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific
racism."
It would seem likely that Agassiz refers
to his
Physical index to 100 persons, based on their
measures and fingerprints : (set up in two parts as an
experiment) (1894). However, it is difficult to
imagine either Agassiz or Fields being particularly
interested in this volume, given that Galton authored
several other books more likely to be of interest to both
women. It would seem more likely, given Agassiz's
reference to "mental and moral heritage" that they were
looking at his work on biological inheritance, perhaps one
of his books on anthropometrics and eugenics.
"Myer's Fragments": British poet, Frederic
William Henry Myers (1843-1901). See Wikipedia.
His posthumous collection
Fragments
of Prose and Poetry appeared in 1904.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to
Correspondents.
Jewett suffered a serious carriage
accident in September 1902, from which she never fully
recovered.
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 Fanny Huntington Quincy (Mrs. Mark
Antony DeWolfe) Howe
[ November/December, 1904
]*
My dear Fanny
I am so very sorry,
but Thursday the 7
th is one of the very few days this
winter when I have promised to do anything! -- this is a
small Fair at which I am bound to help, and to which for
many reasons I am affectionately bound; Mrs. Whitman's
Class's Fair at Trinity.* I have not tried to go out to dine
being still a kind of retired soldier --
[ Page 2 ]
but indeed if I had been free I should have found it
impossible to refuse, and to lose such a real pleasure of
hostess and host and fellow guests as you offer me.
With many thanks for such kind
remembrance
Yours always
Sarah O. Jewett
148 Charles Street
Wednesday afternoon
Notes
November-December,
1904: The year is a
guess, based on Jewett describing herself as a retired
soldier. Late in 1904 would have been the first
Trinity Church fair Jewett could have attended after her
1902 carriage accident, and the last she could have attended
in Whitman's lifetime.
Mrs. Whitman's Class's Fair at Trinity: Sarah
Wyman Whitman. See
Key
to
Correspondents. Jewett has written "class"s."
For many years, Whitman led a Bible study class at Trinity
Church (Episcopal) in Boston. Her class fund-raising
fairs typically took place after Thanksgiving, in late
November or early December.
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.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
Friday
[ November/December 1904-1908
]*
Dearest: Such good jackets and warm kimonos as they make at
our work rooms! They will be the best things for our
servants at Christmas and vary from 1.50 to 2.50 in price
(long or short){,} Tell Mary.* She will like them too I
think -- Yesterday soon after twelve came Hally Spofford*
and stayed by an accident (not being called for agreed)
.an
until 4 P.M.-- She goes with Katherine* to Washington today
and said goodbyes to you -- Then came Georgie* for a brief
call and to show me some things. By the way, haven't we some
small frames laid up somewhere such as would do for Mr
Carlyle's* head I wonder -- At dusk a little later came Mrs
Greenslet.* I liked her better than when she was here less
well and a little
[ Page 2 ]
[
unrecognized word ] perchance, so much for [
suffering
? ] -- I was rather tired and so made
cheques for bills and went quickly to bed in good season --
The morning has gone I know not where -- Now I am struggling
to get [ dressed
? ]. Dear heart! [ Soon quiet
?
] will set in today -- If you were here we would take
the air perchance --
I hope you too are finding strength for your affairs and
your thoughts. The quiet spaces are good for us. Maud
Eliott* rang the telephone yesterday to send love to you --
had hoped to see you -- she leaves today -- I hear John* {
-- } this is only to tell you that I am with you nearly all
the time --
Your own Annie --
Notes
1908: This date is a guess based on a slight
foundation. Speaking of gifts for the "servants," indicates
Fields wrote in the weeks before Christmas. Among her
callers was Mrs. Greenslet. If she is correctly
identified below, then this letter must have been composed
after her 1903 marriage, and probably after Mr. Greenslet
began working at
Atlantic Monthly in 1902.
I have placed the letter in 1904 as the
earliest likely year of its composition.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. Key to Correspondents.
Spofford: Harriet Prescott Spofford. Key to
Correspondents.
Katherine: Which this is of the several
"Katherines" of their mutual acquaintance is not yet known.
Georgie: Probably Georgina Halliburton. Key to
Correspondents.
Carlyle: Scottish historian and author, Thomas
Carlyle (1785-1881).
Greenslet: American editor and author Ferris Lowell
Greenslet (1875-1959) authored
Life of Thomas
Bailey Aldrich (1908). He and Ella Stoothoff Hulst
(1874-1965) married in 1903. See the Willa Cather Archive.
Maud Elliot: Probably Maud Howe Elliot, sister of
Laura Howe Richards. Key to Correspondents.
John: A Fields employee.
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.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz to Annie Adams Fields and
Sarah Orne Jewett
Dec 5th [ 1904
]*
My birthday
(82
[ Begin letterhead ]
Quincy Street,
Cambridge.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear friend ---- or if Sarah* is with you as I hope
she may be, -- it should be
friends. The book you
sent me "Life after death" has been frequently in my hand
but anything of the psychological or metaphysical kind is
difficult for me. Now I am reading it with my daughter [
deletion
] Pauline* to whom subjects of that kind
[ Page 2 ]
come more easily. We enjoy it together, -- still I
sometimes think that one's own experience teaches us more
than meditations of this kind{.}
The experience I mean such as you told me
about the other day, something which touches on our [
deletion
] ^human sense^ and is perceived by it.
It is a beautiful
[ Page 3 ]
day and you will be glad to learn that I am about to take my
third [ drive
? ] --
Good bye dear or dears --
From you old friend
With much love
E C Agassiz
I have not recovered 100% [
unrecognized word ]
writing but I hope this [ is
? ] legible.
Notes
1904: Huntington Library archivists believe
that the "82" in Agassiz's date refers not to the year of
composition, but to her age on this birthday. That
choice is supported by the fact that the assumption of
Jewett's presence with Fields in Boston would be more likely
in 1904 than in 1882, when Fields and Jewett still were
fairly newly acquainted. See also Agassiz to Fields of 5
February 1905, in which Agassiz mentions reading the
recently received book on life after death.
"Life after death": German physicist and
philosopher Gustave Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) authored
Büchlein
vom
Leben
nach
dem Tode (1836), translated as
The Little Book of
Life After Death (1904). See Agassiz to Fields of 5
February 1905.
Pauline: Pauline Agassiz (1841-1917) was Louis
Agassiz's daughter from his first marriage. She married
Quincy Adams Shaw. See Find a Grave.
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 Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Friday Decr
8th [1904 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
My dear T.B.
It is such a pride and pleasure to have
a book* from a live author especially when I feel just
like a dead one! I think that I never wrote you before
before [
repeated ] I read the book. I
wish I could see the Play, but I shall hear all about it
when I see you and Lilian* again. With love to you
both, and a thousand good wishes for the Book and Play
both
Yours always affectionately
S. O. J
[ 2 ]
I hope to get to town before long. Mrs. Tyson* has
been gone a fortnight and we miss her so much.
I should not have written you before I
could read your Judith, but it has only just reached me
after some delays, and I wished to say it had come, and how
much I thank you, without writing{.}
Notes
1904: As the notes below indicate, Jewett
refers to an autumn 1904 production of an Aldrich drama
based on his poem
Judith and Holofernes.
a book: Probably, Aldrich has given Jewett a
copy of his dramatization of
Judith and Holofernes: A
Poem (1896). Aldrich draws upon the
Book of Judith, which Protestants
place in the Apocrypha, as a non-canonical biblical text.
The widow, Judith, delivers her Jewish people from their
Assyrian conquerors by gaining the trust of General
Holofernes and then beheading him.
According to Greenslet's
The Life of
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, his dramatization of his poem
-- commissioned by the American actress
Nance O'Neil (1874-1965) opened in New
York on 13 October 1904 (pp. 228 ff).
Lilian: Lilian Woodman Aldrich. See
Key
to
Correspondents.
Mrs. Tyson: Emily Davis Tyson. 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: 2766.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Grace Norton
December 8th
1904*
[
Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Miss Norton, you were so very kind
to remember me! -- Only the day before yesterday, when
your book* came, I was thinking about it and* saying to
myself that it could not be published now before Spring
-- one must wait now for Spring! I forget sometimes that
I do not watch the booklists as I used when I could read
all day and all night . . . This will make me wish
even more for
[ Page 2 ]
those winter mornings that I loved so much ^then^, and
always love to remember now -- The walk in the snow, the
bright fire; listening to things that set one thinking and
wondering in the most delightful way; -- looking out at the
winter trees and sky and hearing you read! ---- oh it was
very pleasant -- one of the pleasantest things I ever had --
I am getting stronger again, but I can do
so little that it is still a good deal
[ Page 3 ]
like being dead and gone, only you can watch the world going
on while you take up as little room as you can. I hope to
get to town before long for a short [ stop
corrected
] as they say at cricket* -- and if I find that I can drive
I shall surely see you.
I wish that I could say how much I thank
you for the book, but I wish I knew enough to know how much
I ought to thank you! Which is an Involved Sentence indeed,
but you will remember I was only
[ Page 4 ]*
in your primary school -- those lovely Friday mornings --
Yours most affectionately
Sarah O Jewett
You cannot think how sorry I have been
to miss seeing Mr. James! --* ^I could not even write
him to say so! ^ and all the autumn it has been growing
harder and harder to write notes even while I was better
in other ways -- ones pen seems to lose its tongue
altogether and get absolutely speechless for days at a
time.
: Jewett seems to have corrected the "8"
from a "7."
book: Norton published two volumes in 1904:
Studies
in Montaigne and
The Early Writings of Montaigne.
and: Jewett sometimes writes "a" with a tail to
indicate "and." I render these as "and."
cricket: Short stop is a position in the field game
of cricket. According to Wikipedia: "When the wicket
keeper stands upfront, the fielder placed right behind the
wicket keeper is called a Short Stop. When the fielder
stands outside the 30-yard circle, he is called a Long
Stop."
It is not immediately clear how Jewett's
prospective brief trip to town illustrates a short stop in
cricket.
Page 4: Penciled at the bottom right of this
page is the following note.
Harvard College Library
July 15 1914
Collection of
Dr. Rupert Norton, AB. 1888
Baltimore
Mr. James: Almost certainly this is expatriate author
Henry James, who visited the U.S. in 1904. 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 269.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Thomas Bailey Aldrich
148 Charles Street
Decr 10th
[ 1904 ]*
Dear friend
Your play in its
perfection,
has has dawned upon me from
the printed page.
It was very good of you to send it!
Full of the ripe perfection which only you can give, there
is no feeling to me in it of lack of vigor or movement. I
speak of this because sometimes in a thing so perfectly
wrought the very [ nicety
? ] retards the action
----
[ Page 2 ]
but not with you!
The ending is to me full of noble
characterization. She ^Judith^ walks away into the shadow in
which her great deed has enveloped her -- not to unrest or
repentance but up to a higher level and high resolves.
Thank you again!
Affectionately yours
always
Annie Fields.
, Aldrich's
dramatization of his poem, "Judith and Holofernes,"
premiered on 13 October 1904. Though well-received in
Boston, it fared less well in New York, where it opened on 8
December 1904. It is possible that Fields has seen New York
reviews. See Greenslet's
The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich
pp. 228-31.
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.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Alice Meynell
South Berwick, Maine, December 14, 1904.
My very dear Friend, -- I have
been thanking you in my heart all this time for the letter
which came in the summer, just when I was most grateful
for such pleasure of getting hold of your hand again. The
letter and the beautiful Cowper preface came together:* I
was in retreat at the Mountains, staying alone in a
journeying-friend's big country house with my nurse for
many weeks, -- the doctors had forbidden both writing and
reading; but on a long day it happened that by an odd
chance, this letter of all letters, being
forwarded with other things, dropped into my hands! I had
to read it and read it and hold it fast to my heart, --
the nurse looking on with true sympathy. One of the first
things when she came, a stranger, and we were a little
uncertain of each other's claws (!) I was fretting because
I hadn't brought at least two or three books that I loved.
I wished for your poems and almost cried as I said so. --
"I've got that book in my trunk!" said dear Miss O'Bryan *
with shining face, and we feared each other's claws no
more! She used to read to me a little now and then; I
never knew how I loved you, either in your work or out of
it, before that summer brought me a long way further into
the country of our friendship. It is very strange to go
through this long time of silence; a strange loss of
balance followed the terrible blow on my head, and I am
not yet free from its troubles or from the attacks of pain
in the back of my head. People say, "Can't you write a
little?" but in nothing can that sense of balance count as
it must in writing. I am stronger, I am even going to town
presently. I am so often thinking of you in the long hours
when I crochet instead of reading everything as one used!
I do read a little every morning now, in Santa Teresa's
Letters,* -- and I pick up other things now and then for a
little while, but my wits get blurred over, easily. Say
that you and Mr. Meynell are coming over in the spring,
when you write again! And take all my heart's wishes for a
happy Christmas for you and for those you love, dear.
Notes
Rita Gollin in Annie Fields (2002) says of this
letter, "After Sarah suffered a carriage accident in 1902,
she entered into an even deeper friendship with Meynell
than Annie's [Fields]. Forbidden to read or write,
she longed for Meynell's poems ... as Sarah confided two
years later.... Annie included that letter to "My
very dear friend" in her edition of Sarah's letters,
although Mrs. Meynell had hesitated to send it because it
seemed 'too much about me and not enough about her'"
(297).
Cowper preface: Alice Meynell (1847- 1922)
published an edition of William Cowper's (1731-1800) Poems
with her preface in 1900.
Miss O'Bryan: Jewett's nurse has not been
identified. Assistance is welcome.
Santa Teresa's Letters: Jewett may have read
The
Letters of St. Teresa by Saint Teresa of Avila
(1515-1582) in a 1902 edition from T. Baker of London,
though it is possible she had an earlier edition.
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 Dorothy Ward
South Berwick, Maine, December
14, 1904.
My dearest Dorothy, -- I have
been looking through our dear Mrs. Whitman's letters to
me, -- of many years, -- much beloved letters! and this
morning I happened to find one of yours which had strayed
among them.* You can hardly think with what true pleasure
and delight I have read it, a letter written just after
you had left Levens. You will remember the afternoon on
Cartmell Fell,* of which you and Sally* both told me; I
wish that I could find her letter too, for I love
to go back to it all.
You should be here now, so that
we might talk about that day and many other days. I wish
very much to hear from you and to know what you are doing,
as I did know then, dear. It is a very long time since I
have seen Sally, -- not since one afternoon last May,
which I dearly love to remember because I believe she was
never closer to one's heart. This long pull of illness
makes one feel a little like being dead! -- for many
months I could not read or write, and even now I find
neither very easy; but things are mending slowly, and this
week I am making the great adventure of going to Town for
a little while.* The temptations of Town are much greater
than the temptations of dear Berwick, but it is good to
have the change I am sure. And I shall see Sally just as
soon as I can and tell you about her. Everybody is reading
William Ashe and Lady Kitty as if they were alive and
behaving nobly and excitingly before one's very eyes.* The
story is quite splendidly talked about even here in little
old Berwick, and there is that pain when the new "number"
is read and there must be a whole month's waiting for
another one, which is the highest tribute to a great
novelist. In the summer I was a long time in getting a
"number" read, -- by little pieces with sometimes days
between, -- and that taught me its quality, I can tell
you. Please give my love, and my pride, too! to your
Mother. I feel sometimes as if nobody knew as well as I
what a noble piece of work she can do! Perhaps this isn't
true, but nobody takes greater pleasure or pride.
Yours ever lovingly.
Notes
our dear Mrs. Whitman's letters: Sarah W. Whitman
died on 25 June 1904. Jewett wrote the preface for Sarah
Whitman, Letters of Sarah Wyman Whitman (1907).
Levens ... Cartmell Fell: Levens
is an estate where Mrs. Humphry Ward, Dorothy Ward's
mother, sometimes wrote, and "a village and civil parish
in the South Lakeland district of the English county of
Cumbria." Nearby, Cartmel
Fell "is a hill, a hamlet and a civil parish "about
9 miles by road from Levens.
Sally: Sarah Norton. See
Correspondents.
Town: "Town" for Jewett in 1904 is Boston.
William Ashe and Lady Kitty:
The
Marriage
of
William Ashe (1905) is by Dorothy's mother, Mrs.
Humphry Ward (1851-1920). Kitty Bristol is the novel's
heroine. The novel was serialized in
Harper's Monthly
beginning in volume 109, June 1904, continuing through March
1905. Ward adapted it to the stage, where it had a
successful run in the United States in 1905.
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 to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dec. 23rd
[ 1904 ]*
[ Begin letterhead ]
165 WEST 58TH STREET
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Sarah Jewett.
It was good to see your handwriting &
hear your voice in it. I have just been in Boston from Dec.8
th
to 17
th & a heavenly visit I had too. I hope
you weren't there -- I was told you were still in Maine.
Here is a little [ holder
? ] for your afternoon tea
pot, made by my dear mother -- When perched on its handle it
is delightfully "sassy," [ poignant
? ] -- &
birdish. Better health to you dear friend in the New Year.
Ever yours affectionately
Kate W. Riggs
Notes
1904: To the date of this transcription, all
other datable correspondence we have between Jewett and
Wiggin is from 1904 and 1905. I have guessed that
Christmas 1904 is the probable date of this letter.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton
Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am
1743.1 Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence I.
Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett, Box 4 (108).
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller,
Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Elizabeth McCracken
148 Charles Street, Boston, December
28. [1904]*
My dear Miss McCracken, -- My
last copy of your delightful book* was just going to my
friend Madame Blanc-Bentzon in Paris when you put this one
into my hand! You see that I have -- unconsciously, too!
-- been behaving with it as some one else did with a
certain book called "The Country of the Pointed Firs"!*
And this I shall keep, with a great pleasure of
thankfulness in remembering your kind thought of me. I
wish to say what an excellent piece of work I believe "The
Women of America" is: it has insight, which is a far rarer
gift than the gift of observation, and I am sure that it
will help many a reader to understand things better. I am
always saying to myself and often to my friends -- I may
have already repeated to so kind a friend and reader as
you -- Plato's great reminder that "the best thing we can
do for the people of a State is to make them acquainted
with each other."*
When I wrote to you before, I
must have complained of being ill, and now I have the same
hindrance still, -- else I should beg you to come to see
me some day very soon. I hope, however, to stay on in town
for some little time and I am going to ask, at any rate,
that if you should be in this neighbourhood on a winter
day you will not pass the door. I am not able yet to say
that I am sure to be equal to seeing any one at this hour
or that, -- and put them to the trouble of refusal, -- but
now there are many afternoons as early as one chooses when
I need not send the pleasure of a friend away, -- and once
within this door I could show you many things you would
care to see!
Believe me, with my best thanks
and best wishes for a Happy New Year.
Notes
1904: While Fields groups this letter with
those of 1907, it seems more likely to come from December
of 1904, soon after the publication of The Women of
America (see next note).
your delightful book: Elizabeth McCracken
(1876-1964) seems to have given Jewett a copy of her The
Women of America (November 1904), which
included praise of The Country of the Pointed Firs
and recounts giving away several copies.
Madame Blanc-Bentzon: See
Correspondents. Note that she died on 5
February 1907.
"Country of the Pointed Firs": Jewett's novel was
published in 1896.
Plato's great reminder "... make them acquainted with
each other": The Plato quotation comes from Book
V of "Laws," in which Socrates does not appear: "for there
is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should
be known to one another." (Research: Jack V. Wales, Jr. of
the Thacher School, Ojai, CA.)
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
201 West 55th St
New York Dec 29th
1904
Dear Sweetheart
I am as proud of my cap as a king of his crown!* And it is
above my crown as I write. I wanted just such a protection!
Cold pencils would steal in unawares and set me sneezing,
this will defy them, they must choose some other ingress --
And it is so fine beyond my thought of such a boon -- Did
you say Mary* had a hand in and on it -- Yes here is your
note-let.* I will give her also a piece of my mind -- my
cold has vanished and I am ready to sing the tarter [ te
corrected
] Deum.* Praise be -- The Lord has arisen{,} our enemy has
vanished and we are free from the headache{,} not that I had
a headache but I might get one you know. We had a nice
Christmas on the day after{,} nine
all told to
dinner and ever such a nice dinner.
With all the good wishes for the new year
Your loving friend
Notes
crown!: Collyer has written what appears to be a
slash ( / ) for punctuation here and after "protection." I
have guessed he intended exclamation points.
note-let: Collyer omits some periods in this letter.
I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Mary: This may be Sarah Orne Jewett's sister, Mary.
See
Key to Correspondents.
Deum:
Te Deum is a Latin Christian
hymn in praise of God. "Tarter" may refer to people of
Tartary, a historical name for central
Asia, and in Collyer's time, presumably associated with
pagans, as opposed to Christians.
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.
Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc to Annie Adams Fields and
Sarah Orne Jewett
This card was composed in French; a
transcription follows the translation.
[ 31 December 1904 ]*
Dear Friends, these last lines I write to you this year
are very sad. Yesterday, I accompanied our poor dear
friend* to her final resting place in the small Acosta
cemetery. She was carried off by bronchitis in a few days.
The day before, as usual, she heard her newspaper. She
didn't suffer, only in the [ evening before ? ].
On Christmas morning her maid came at 4 a.m. She was
sleeping. At six o'clock it was all over. I thought of you
often during the sad ceremony. Now there is a deep
emptiness in my life. She loved both of you very much.
Notes
1904: This postcard is addressed to Mrs.
Fields and Miss Jewett at 148 Charles Street, Boston. The
cancellation is very difficult to read, but it appears to
have been mailed from Paris in 1904. The message side is
imprinted with a diamond, possibly in gold ink and taking
up much of the middle, within which is the lettered
message: "Bonne année." Around this message is a
colored illustration of flowers, probably lilies of the
valley, with green stems and leaves. This illustration may
be hand drawn rather than printed. Blanc has arranged her
message so as to minimize writing over the illustration.
dear friend: French Wikipedia says that
Sophie de Castellane, Marquise de
Contades, then Beaulaincourt, Countess Marles (1818- 25
December 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.
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 "vous" to "vs." Such
instances in this card are rendered as "vous."
Chère Amies, ces lignes les dernières que je vous écris
cette année sont bien tristes. J'ai accompagné
hier à son dernière demeure dans le petit
cimetière d'acosta notre pauvre
amie. Elle a été enlevée en peu
de jours par une bronchite{.}
La veille encore on
lui lisait le journal.
Elle ne souffrait
pas qu'en la [
unrecognized word looks like
veillot ]
Le matin de Noël sa
femme de chambre
est entrée chez elle à
4 h. Elle dormait. À six heures
tout était fini.
J'ai beaucoup
pensé à vous
pendant la triste cérémonie.
Voilà dans ma
vie, un vide profond. Elle vous aimait beaucoup toutes
les deux.