148 Charles Street
Boston 3d Jany
[ 1908 ]*
Dear Mifs Paget
I have been waiting too long before
sending my acknowledgment of your letter* which brought me
true pleasure -- perhaps the best thing of all is that you are
letting me try to do something for you! I cannot send word yet
of any decision about the papers -- The Atlantic is
just now printing some French sketches (rather
more like useful tanks than hillside springs!!) by Mrs.
Wharton,* and I am waiting to hear from one New York editor,
and failing him I shall wait until I can see another myself.*
Mr. Perry,* of the Atlantic,
spoke with the most true appreciation of your work -- you have
had few better or more affectionate readers -- but he has had
some difficulties in following his personal
choice -- how little young, beginning writers are
aware of this! -- and* I suppose too that the late difficulty
in financial affairs makes the magazines careful about new
ventures --
But I am full of hope about these English sketches,* only do
not be impatient if it seems to take longer than is
reasonable.
I am just ready to thank you for The
Sentimental Traveller* volume -- it
is delightful -- The Bead-Threader and La
Ferté first in my heart. You do not know your group of
readers here as I do -- They are at any rate the ones you
would choose and wish to have.
Mrs. Fields would send you a message
of most friendly remembrance -- we are looking for Miss
Cochrane* presently on her way back to Rome -- This note must
be but an eager forerunner of a later letter but I must say
before I end
it that I am following you in Greece which
with sheer joy! I bless the friend who won you to go just now
-- only I hope next time that you will go in March as I did
and see the Greek flowers.*
Sarah Orne Jewett
Notes
1908: See Paget to Jewett of 25 October
1907, the letter to which this is a reply.
Wharton: Edith Wharton (1862-1937). Wikipedia.
Cary notes that her four-part series, "A
Second Motor-Flight through France," began in Atlantic
Monthly in January 1908.
myself: It is not clear that Jewett intended a
new paragraph here, for she has merely slightly lowered "Mr."
at the end of a line. I have accepted Richard Cary's belief
that she did intend to begin a new paragraph here.
Carl Weber, in "Three More Letters of Sarah
Orne Jewett," Colby Quarterly 3 (1952), note p. 3,
speculates that Jewett probably had contacted William H. Ward
of The Independent. Key to Correspondents.
Perry: Bliss Perry. Key to Correspondents.
and: Sometimes Jewett writes "a" with a long tail,
meaning "and." I have rendered these as "and."
English sketches: Cary explains:
"An English Writer's Notes on England" had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, LXXXIV (July 1899), 99-104, and LXXXVIII (October 1901), 511-519. Miss Jewett, now inoperative for over five years, was unable to place the others, but Miss Paget ultimately succeeded in disposing three of them to Scribner's, which presented them under the same title, with the following subheads: "Things of the Past," LIV (August 1913), 177-194; "Things of the Present," LIV (November 1913), 609-619; "The Celtic West," LIV (December 1913), 712-724. Neither the sixth essay, titled "Some Cathedrals and Oxford," nor the projected volume was ever published.
Sentimental Traveller: Lee's The Sentimental Traveller (1908) included "The Bead-Threader's Funeral and the Church of the Greeks" and "La Ferté-sous-Jouarre," the latter recalling the country home of Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc, who had died about a year earlier, on 5 February 1907. Key to Correspondents.
Fields ...Miss Cochrane: Annie Adams Fields; Jessie Cochrane, an amateur pianist from Louisville, Kentucky, and a frequent guest in the Boston and Manchester homes of Mrs. Fields. Key to Correspondents:flowers: Jewett had traveled to Greece in March of 1900.
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.
Isabella Steward Gardner to Sarah Orne Jewett
Fenway Court*
[ End Letterhead ]
Dear,
Novelli* has decided that he must give a play in my music room, Wednesday (this very next.) at 8 p.m. Will you come -- & thereby give me much
Affy
Isabella.
Notes
6 January 1908: See note below on Novelli.
Fenway Court: Gardner's Venetian style palazzo in Boston's Back Bay, now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, opened on 1 January 1903, according to Wikipedia, but other sources have her occupying the building as early as 1901 (see Clarendon Square).
Novelli: The Italian actor and playwright, Ermete Novelli (1851-1919). According to a letter of 9 January 1908 (Gardner to Bernard Berenson), Novelli performed in her music room on Wednesday, 8 January 1908. She wrote, "It ended in his giving 2 plays, short delightful ones with his whole troupe.... It really was perfection. Everything went together so well." She reported that her room was filled with distinguished guests. See The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Part II) p. 419.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 1743 (73). Transcribed and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
201 West 55th Street
New York
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Friend
I am wondering how you are and what you are doing so the wonder has got into my pen. Also I want to say that I am better in myself and the doctor lets me use the lame eye some for which I am glad. He will not let me read by lamp (gas) light so the evenings from dinner to bed time were so full of well I may say misery that I must needs have a reader who comes from half past seven to half past nine{,} a nice young fellow who is as much interested in what he reads as I am.
We have gone through the big autobiography of Senator Hoar{,}* the very interesting volume of the Ros^s^ettis and are now well into the second volume of Conways auto. So I am not unhappy and am hopeful for all but this eye which the doctor says will never be as good as the other -- left one -- but I shall get along fairly well with care. This brings all the
good wishes for the new year.
I think you will like to read the note I enclose from Mr Carnegie.*
Notes
pen: Collyer often omits periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Hoar ... Rossettis ... Conways: American politician George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904) of Massachusetts served in the United States Senate from 1877 to 1904. His Autobiography of Seventy Years was published in 1903.
Collyer refers to the British poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and his sister, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), and perhaps as well to their author siblings, William and Maria. While several books about the pair of poets were available in 1908, I failed to find in WorldCat a single volume on both of them or about their family.
American clergyman, author and noted abolitionist, Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907) published his Autobiography: Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway in two volumes in 1903-4.
Carnegie: Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who funded a library, in part honoring Collyer, in Ilkley, Yorkshire, UK.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 11: mss FI 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sister Saint Andrew* to Sarah Orne Jewett
IHS with a cross behind it;
a Crown;
a decoration with a drawing of a tree,
and a hand reaching out of a cloud holding a flaming heart;
a banner reading:
Qui coronat te in midericordia
Latin: Who crowns you in mercy. ]
Québec, 18 janvier, 1908.
South Berwick.
Maine.
I would never be able to recall in mind how many times I have thought of you and of writing you since your two last and beloved letters have reached me. I can say that since a month and more, not one day has elapsed without making me
sorry for being prevented of giving my heart this so just satisfaction and pleasure, on account of my extraordinary occupations. The last year has been indeed for me a year of work, of unceasing work, on account of our undertakings, of our communications with the Dominion Authorities in order to recover a tract of land exacted from our Institution in the last age for military views -- on account of our Correspondence* with the hospital of Montreal and other places, either to prepare the way before our Mother
Superioress and two of our Sisters, who wanted to leave the cloister, according to the Bishop's desire and also to the Medical Staff's desire, in order to go and see from their own eyes all the modern ameliorations established in the other cities hospitals and introduce them after into our Hôtel-Dieu, either to thank for their gracious reception{.}
They made that trip in October last,and then has followed a numerous correspondence with all those establishments where our Mother and Sisters have been so splendidly received and instructed. ---- Thanks be to God, my health is better and has allowed me all that writing without too much fatigue though I often take on my sleep for that work.
[ Page 4 ]
I have found a great advantage since long in leaving aside all kinds of meat and in taking but two meals per day -----
I am so happy to hear that you are getting stronger! And to think that I shall have once more the pleasure of seeing you in this world, as you let me hope in your dear letter. How often I have longed for that precious time where we shall speak freely and fluently on the great and so interesting point of our belief! My whole life is concentrated in that desire of seeing you and me or ^rather^ you with me in the right path, in the path marked on earth by the Lord Himself for the souls who want to go to heaven! -- And
what can be said in such a grand affair on bits of paper!! -- -- If we were talking quietly, you would tell me your objections and I would answer them; and they would vanish before my answers, which would be the holy doctrine of Christ Himself, who, in establishing his Church said to the Chief whom he named for his representative on earth: ----- "Simon, thou art Peter, (stone) And over that stone I shall build my Church. And the doors of hell (the devil, or falsehood) will never prevail against it. ----- My Spirit shall be with it until the end of ages."* ----- After such words
spoken by Truth itself, how can one doubt any longer in his choice of the true Church? You can go up directly from Pius the Xth,* actually Vicar of Jesus Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, and the [ file ? ] of the popes leads you to Saint Peter and by him to our divine Saviour. How can we prefer to the Roman Catholic and apostolic Church which has produced our great Doctors in Faith, which has been established by Christ Himself, which has kept firmly to the same dogmas from the beginning through all ages until today ----- how can we prefer
to such a divine Church one of those churches which are divided in their belief in nearly as many [ times ? ] as there are individuals in them? ----- Let us go up to the origin of those different churches ----- If I except the Jewish, the disciples of Mahomet, ^the [ perhaps 2 unrecognized words ]^ and the pagans, the oldest of the protestant religions -- if I am not mistaken -- does not count more than four ages of existence. And how were those religions builded? Let us take Luther* as an example. That unhappy monk belonged to the Augustinian Order. He had entered into the religious life with sentiments
of pride which always lived in him, so much that he would never submit himself to the different priests who were his confessors. As to the rest he lived regularly in appearance; but he wanted to be out of the obligatory celibat imposed on the monks. It would have been hard for his pride to return in the world for such a vulgar motive. Let us wait. He shall find the way. Alone amidst thousands and thousands of learned men who had [ illustrated corrected ] the catholic Church, he -- choosing an occasion in which the Pope had charged another order than his own of a pious mission -- raised his voice to condemn the belief of our holy Church, and with her all the Doctors who had taught and were teaching it. Having so raised the standard of rebellion, and
being no more engaged in his Order, he was not long without taking a wife as he had wished to do. ----- When I think of those events and of the hundreds and thousands who have followed the steps of that ignorant monk, of that poor and despicable fool, I often ask to myself how this can have been done? ---- Luther himself knew that he was wrong in his teaching. One splendid evening, as he was admiring the skies in his wife's company, she remarked: How splendid is heaven! ----- What a pity, said Luther, that it be not for us. She continued frightened: Well, let us leave our way and return on our steps, ----- It is too late, said Luther sadly. The carriage is too deep in the mud!"* No, the carriage was not too deep in the mud. God would
[ Page 10 ]
have forgiven ----- but Luther was too proud to leave before his adepts the reputation of a deceiver.
Henry the [ Eight so spelled ], King of England, felt a great indignation against Luther and wrote a book to fight against his pretended reform of the Roman Catholic Church. That book brought him the title of Defensor of Faith, of which his dependants honor themselves again; but the poor King could not fight against his passion, when, wanting to have his marriage broken by the Church with his legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry after that the woman he loved, Ann of Boleyn; and receiving from the Pope a firm answer that he was obliged to Keep his legitimate wife, he followed the errors against which he had written, and declared himself Chief of Religion of English authorizing himself by that means to satisfy his passion. ----- When we consider the origin of the different churches detached from the immovable and majestic Roman Catholic Church,
[ Page 12 ]
Oh! how much I wish that, as you so gently say, "you shall never let anything that belongs to the profession* of belief come between us", and how much I pray and ask prayers at that precious end! ----- Do you say again that little prayer I told you once: "Jesus, be with me, enlighten my mind, touch my heart, and [ strenghten so spelled ] my will?" Our divine Saviour cannot resist it and if you are faithful to ask Him that grace, I am sure that soon or late you shall be convinced that "the only thing is not to follow the path wherein our feet are set," but to be sure that such path is the one traced by our divine Saviour, who came on earth purposely for that after the purpose of saving us from hell ----- That such path will lead us to the gate of heaven. =* I have been so long writing on that matter that I should cease now; but my love for your dear and so noble soul is so great, so intense, that I shall send you a little book, very old, but very instructive in the same time, where
I cannot close without telling you the use ^I made^ of your first bill of five dollars. Through it, I have assured to our dear friend Mrs. Blanc two masses each week for the rest of her saintly soul, as I had done before for your dear self, for your beloved and lamented parents, for your sister and nephew. With the four other dollars I have associated with Mr. Blanc, in order to please her, the son and the father -- it must be her ardent desire to see those two souls with her in heaven, and they must have a strong help from God to get there ----- She
[ Page 16 ]
Another sheet! Do not be vexed, it will be the last one, surely. Had I not many reasons to tell you that small bits of paper are not sufficient to me when I talk with you. But I hope you shall come to see us next summer -- and then! -- -- -- Prepare all your objections, your difficulties, your reluctances, [ etc. ? ] ----- All that will melt like snow under the eyes of God, at the heat of grace, at the light of truth, and under the [ strenght so spelled ] of my love for your dear soul.
[ Page 18 ]
Mrs. Blanc has much responsibility toward you. I charge her to obtain from God all what you want now and ^[ for ? ]^ later ^days^. You are perhaps the only one who thinks of ordering prayers and sacrifices for her dear soul. She must be grateful! And she is -- we Know! so grateful, so loving and good!
I send you to day my photograph, dressed in white. The one you received from my sister has been taken from a group of us three, which was made nearly ten years ago, with the permission of the Bishop; and I had my choir dressing.
I have deceived you unwillingly,
when I told you that I could not give you my photograph. I had heard that it was forbidden to give them to the persons of the world, but no. ----- I shall tell you how it was said. One sister being in a group, had heard that her photo was distributed out of the cloister and, as she complained of that to our Mother Superioress, our Mother ordered that this group where she was would never be given outside. It was but later that I Knew the history as I Know it now. ----- Since that time, one of my Sisters who has a [ Codack for Kodak ], has offered me to take my photo. She has even asked me that as a favor. I have agreed, always thinking of you, of your desire to see me dressed in white; and I send it to you as it is, very common, but very much like me after a night spent without sleep.
Our Mother Superioress and Sister Saint Patrick join
[ Page 20 ]
me to thank you for your Kind remembrances of us and to wish you and your dear sister and nephew, à la Française or à la Canadienne, "une bonne, sainte et heureuse année, suivie de plusieurs autres semblables, et d'une belle place au paradis à la fin de nos jours."* I send the same wishes to my friends of South Berwick, who love you so much, and whose visit left in my soul the most agreeable souvenir.*
Take care of yourself and let your first work be "My reception into the Roman Catholic Church." I taste it from here --- --- particularly your pages on holy Communion!!! Oh! the day where our sweet Lord and your dear soul will make but one! How you will regret to have enjoyed so late such a divine happiness!! But grace is at your door. That day will soon shine! Then I will sing
[ Up the left margin of page 20 ]
my nunc dimittis,* as the old man Simeon.* Farewell, farewell, and pray for me as I do for you. A thousand thanks for your thousand acts of Kindness -- Yours truly Sr. St. Andrew.
Notes
Sister St. Andrew: Probably because of my limited knowledge of French, I have not been able to learn much about Sister St. Andrew. She apparently was one of les Soeurs Adoratrices du Précieux-Sang, who established a convent in Montreal, Canada, in 1885, and who served at the Hôtel de Dieu hospital. In 1888, there appear to have been four nuns at the convent: Sister Julie-Émélie Lamarre of Saint-Gabriel, Superior. Sister Marie des Anges, assistant, and Sister St-Elzéar, Sister St Léandre and Sister St. André (Andrew). Whether this Sister St. André is the same one who corresponded with Jewett in 1908 is not certain.
Correspondence: Presumably it is clear that Sister St. Andrew's English style is influenced by French being her primary language. Also, it appears that Sister St. Andrew used 19th-century French conventions for capitalization, perhaps inconsistently. She regularly used very long dashes. Some of these may indicate paragraph divisions. Occasionally, she used irregular spellings and vocabulary derived from French. I have attempted to present her text as she wrote it, noting only a few of these oddities.
Pius the Xth: Pope Pius X (1835-1914) served as pope 1903-1914. Wikipedia.
four ages: Presumably Sister St. Andrew means four centuries.
Luther: Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German priest and Augustinian friar who broke from the Roman Catholic Church in 1516-17, becoming a leader in the Protestant Reformation in Western Christianity. Wikipedia.
mud: There seems to be no opening quotation mark.
This story appears in Histoire de la Vie, des Ouvrages et des Doctrines de Luther, Volume 3 (1856) by Audin (M., Jean Marie Vincent), p. 111.
Henry the Eight: The English King Henry VIII (1491-1547) reigned 1509-1547. He published two works critical of Martin Luther: The Defence of the Seven Sacraments (1519-1521) and an open letter to Luther, The answere of the most mighty and noble prince kyng Henry the viii. kyng of Englande and of Fraunce, defensor of the fayth and order of Ireland unto the letters of Martyn Luther (1526). Wikipedia.
profession: Sister St. Andrew alters her script in the quotations of this page, so these sentences stand out from the rest.
=: Sister St. Andrew has written three parallel lines here.
Blanc: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. Key to Correspondents.
Theodore Eastman: Theodore Jewett Eastman. Key to Correspondents. Also mentioned are his deceased parents and his aunt, Mary Rice Jewett.
Montligeon: Presumably she refers to Notre-Dame Basilica in La Chapelle-Montligeon, Department of Orne, France. Wikipedia.
Saint Anne de Beaupré: The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is near Quebec City, Canada.
Mr Brunetiére: French author and critic, Ferdinand Vincent-de-Paul Marie Brunetière (1849 - 9 December 1906). Wikipedia.
jours: The French translates: "a good, holy and happy new year, followed by many more like it, and a beautiful place in heaven at the end of our days."
souvenir: French: a memory.
nunc dimittis: Latin: Wikipedia says this is the "Song of Simeon," a canticle taken from the Bible, Luke 2: 29-32, which in the King James version begins: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word...." Simeon, in the Gospel of Luke, was a just and devout "man of Jerusalem" to whom it was revealed that "he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ."
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 191. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Katharine Loring
January 1908.
[SOJ decorative letterhead in upper left corner of card stock, approximately 3 x 5 inches]
Sent letter.
148 Charles
Street
Oh yes, Dear Katherine, with great pleasure! I do hope that nothing will prevent my having such a pleasure.
And you will let me know which night. I have
got something to show you. The first volume of Mr. H. J.'s new edition!* -- but it now occurs to my mind that you may have it to show me.
With much love to you and Louisa{.} (Thank her for a dear letter --)
[In another hand bottom center of page 2: Sarah Orne Jewett]
Notes
first volume of Mr. H. J.'s new edition: Volume 1 of the New York Edition of Novels and Tales of Henry James was Roderick Hudson, which appeared in December 1907. If this is what Jewett refers to, then the date of this letter seems likely to have been late 1907 or early 1908. The note at the top of the letter may then be in error. See David Bruce McWhirter, Henry James's New York Edition: The Construction of Authorship (1998), p. 278.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Beverly MA Historical Society in the Loring Family Papers (1833-1943), MSS: #002, Series I: Letters to Katharine Peabody Loring (1849-1943), Box 1, Folder 3, Letters 1897-1910. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Thursday noon. [ Winter 1908 ]*
I have finished "Ivanhoe"* and also a story of Ouida's which is called "A Village Commune"* -- a most powerful, harrowing story of the wrongs put by greedy officials on the Italian peasants. There is not a trace of her vulgarity in this; it is as powerful a story, and strikes as straight at wrong-doing as Tolstoi's best -- with all the knowledge of human nature and a lovely descriptive gift thrown in. Ouida is a great writer -- when she is at her best, there is no getting over that fact. If she didn't lose her head, and -- perhaps -- were she not a woman, we should hear much more of Ouida! particularly of her "Village Commune."
Katie just brought up the "Herald,"*
which comes earlier than the Post-office things, and I see
that Owen Wister has been Telling the Truth!* Hurrah! for they
see what the matter is, when all sorts of facts are being
expensively crammed into boys' and girls' minds without making
those minds grow, or enlarging the thoughts of the individual.
I think the processes of exams are at the bottom. There is
something out of gear about graded schools and all that.
Memory is developed at the expense of what in general we are
pleased to call thought and character.*
Notes
1908: This is a composite letter, which appears in
Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), p. 209.
The date of the first paragraph is not yet
known, and its manuscript has not yet been located.
The second paragraph from 1908, as
indicated by the reference to the Owen Wister address, is a
transcription of a letter fragment 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).
A second partial transcription
appears in transcriptions from mixed repositories in the Maine
Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters
from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, Folder 72, Burton Trafton
Jewett Research Collection. For more information about the
individual transcription, contact the Maine Women Writers
Collection.
This second transcription (digital file by
Linda Heller) is different in several details from the one by
Fields. One main difference is that it includes at the
beginning, a list of three people, the significance of which
is unknown. The references would appear to be to Frances
Morse, Alice Longfellow, and Josie Dexter.
Josephine Anna Moore (1846-1937) was the
second wife of Chicago lawyer Wirt Dexter (1832-1890). She returned to
her Boston home after her husband's death, where she died,
though she was buried with him in Chicago.
For Morse and Longfellow, see Key
to
Correspondents.
Ouida ... "A Village Commune": The English author Ouida was Marie Louise de la Ramée; she published her novel A Village Commune in 1881.
Katie ... Herald: Katie Galvin. See Key
to
Correspondents. Jewett subscribed to the Boston Herald
newspaper.
Owen Wister has been telling the truth: Jewett almost
certainly refers to Owen Wister's December 1907 address at
Sanders Theater, Harvard University, "American Inferiority in
Scholarship." An account of the address appears in Outlook
88 (January 11, 1908): 67-69. This Outlook
summary says that Wister addressed the question of why the
United States has so few world-class scholars in 1907 and
attributes this to a general failure to treasure and support
scholarship.
For Owen Wister, see Key
to
Correspondents.
Partial Transcription from the Maine Women Writer's Collection,
University of New England
Mrs. Morse
Alice L
J. Dexter
Dearest Annie
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Katie just brought up the Herald which comes earlier than the Post Office things and I see that Owen Wister has been Telling the Truth. Hurrah! for they must see what the matter is when all sorts of facts and truths are being expensively crammed into boys and girls minds without making those minds grow or enlarging the thoughts of the individual. I think the processes of Exams are at the bottom. There is something out of gear about graded schools and all that. Memory is development at the expense of what in general we are pleased to call thought and character. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Transcription of manuscript fragments in the Houghton
Library Collection that may be associated.
Mrs Morse
Alice L --
J. Dexter --
(Please forgive this much worn piece of paper. It seems to have made a journey in my bag or had some strange experience -- but it will do for
[ The rest of the page is torn away ]
[ Page 2 ]
[ Page 3 ]
[ The rest of the page is torn away ]
Notes for this transcription
In the Houghton folder, the pages are separated and out of order, pages 1 and 3 appearing together earlier than page 2. Here they are re-ordered, accepting that the list of names on the first page, as shown in the MWWC transcription, identifies this page as part of the same letter.
Fields has penciled a green line though the list of names at the upper left of page 1. All of the parenthesis marks were added by Fields
The first and third half-pages seem likely to belong together because Fields has added the parenthesis marks on both pages in blue ink.
On the second page, Fields has drawn a vertical line through the first three lines, preceding "Katie just brought."
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Robert Underwood Johnson
148 Charles Street
Febr 17th
1908
Dear Mr Johnson
Mrs. Fields* gives me your letter:
the date of Madame Blanc's* death was February 5th 1907.
We
have
been thinking of her very often in these last days, especially
as we happened to have a friend staying with us who was also
her friend and* had seen her much within a year or two of her
death.
Yesterday I happened to come upon
this biography-in-brief, and
I put ^it^ into my envelope, as you may like to make sure of
some other points, though it is not exactly infallible! I
should like to have it back again.
I miss dear Madame Blanc's constant
letters; it was delightful to know about France ^or Paris^
through her, and in every way I miss her more and more. I hear
once in a while from her good nephew Comte Louis de Solms, and
last year I used to get letters from Miss King,* but I have
never seen her and of course
our only reason for writing was not to last always... I
believe that she is still in France.
Mrs. Fields sends all her
affectionate messages with mine to you and to Mrs. Johnson. We
are going on in usual winter ways -- that is, winter ways of
these late years! [ deletion ] We are so much
interested about your son's play.* I had heard already about The
Comet and I wish it and its author all good
fortune.
Notes
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Correspondents.
Blanc's: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. See Correspondents.
Richard Cary's note: Johnson appended the following footnote to Th. Bentzon's "Literary Rolls of Honor in France," Century, LXXVI (May 1908), 3-17: "Madame Thérèse Blanc, author of this article, died in February, 1907. She was one of the few women admitted to the Legion d'Honneur. Aside from her writings, chiefly novels, some of which had the distinction of being crowned by the French Academy, she appealed to Americans by her interest in our literature, the knowledge of which in France she greatly promoted, and by her sympathetic regard for American ideals. She followed especially the progress of women in this country, and wrote a volume on the subject. In The Century for May, 1903, will be found an appreciative article regarding her by Mrs. James T. Fields. -- The Editor."
and: In this letter, Jewett sometimes writes an "a" with a tail for "and." I have rendered all of these as "and."
Miss King: Richard Cary's note: Grace Elizabeth King (1852-1932) was a writer of local color stories of Creole life in New Orleans. She recreates her warm association with Madame Blanc in Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York, 1932). While down South during her 1897 sojourn in the United States, Madame Blanc stayed at Miss King's home. Miss King lived in the same house as Madame Blanc in Meudon during the last few months of her life.
play: Richard Cary's note: Owen M. Johnson (1878-1952) is best remembered for his novel Stover at Yale (1911). The Comet, starring exotic Alla Nazimova, opened at the Bijou Theatre in New York City on December 30, 1907, and had a run of fifty-six performances, which ended two days before this letter was written.
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.
Sara Norton to Sarah Orne Jewett
March 17.
[ 1908 ]*
Could I persuade you to come to lunch here, on Thursday March 26th at half past one o'clock to meet Mrs. Schofield? It would be a great pleasure for me, if you would come, & I want to introduce Mrs. Schofield to the
It is a hundred years since I saw ^you^ & dear Mrs. Fields but Lily's* illness -- & now my father's condition (he is far from strong) have kept me so busy & so tied at home that I have given up much I wanted to do. Tell me how you both are?
Lily is now away at Lakewood trying to pick up -- & my days are not less busy for being the only able bodied Norton at home!
Did you know dear Mrs. Ward, Dorothy & Mr. Ward* arrive tomorrow in New York? I am longing to see D. as you may imagine.
S.N.
Notes
1908: This was the year of Mary Augusta Ward's only visit to the United States, when she arrived in March, with her husband and her daughter, Dorothy Ward. It appears, therefore, that Norton has mistaken the date of her invitation, for in 1908, March 26 fell on a Tuesday, not a Thursday. For Ward, see Key to Correspondents.
Associated with this letter is an envelope addressed to Jewett at 148 Charles Street. Penciled on the front, in another hand: Miss Norton. Without stamp or cancellation, this note probably was delivered by hand.
Mrs. Schofield: Mary Ward Lyon Schofield (1868-1943) of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Her husband was Professor William Henry Schofield (1870-1920), Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard. They married in 1907. Wikipedia and Find a Grave.
Mrs. Fields ... Lily's: Annie Adams Fields and Norton's younger sister, Elizabeth. Key to Correspondents.
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 168. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward to Annie Adams Fields
March 26. 08
NEW YORK.
My dear Mrs Fields
It is very dear & kind of you to have asked us to come to stay with you when we come to Boston. I need not say that we should love to be with you -- but are you quite sure that we should not be a trouble to you? my husband, alack, will not be with us, as
he has to sail for England just then, to get back for his summer art-work. Dorothy* & I & one maid hope to get to Boston late on Monday evening April 20th -- Dorothy that is, will be, she hopes, with the Nortons* for the few days previously, while I am at Newport, but she will come
Thursday 23d for [ some ? ] days? I am sure that it would be inconvenient to you to put up my maid too, but I would take a room for her at a near hotel, & you would not mind her coming round to help me during the day, as I am a little dependent on her. But that would do perfectly.
How delightful it will be to have some talk with you and Mifs Jewett* again! --
I am keenly looking forward to my visit to Boston, & everyone is being so kind! -- The skies included! I am delighted with what you say about Diana{.}
Notes
Nortons: See Sara Norton in Key to Correspondents.
Twentieth Century Club ... Authors' Club: Boston's Twentieth Century Club, founded in 1894, promoted "civic and social usefulness."
The Boston Authors Club was founded in 1899, with Julia Ward Howe as a founding member. Jewett and Fields declined membership three times between 1899 and 1902.
Jewett:: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Diana: Ward's 1908 novel, Diana Mallory in the U.S., The Testing of Diana Mallory in the U.K.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda: mss FI 5637, Box 64, Ward, Mary Augusta (Arnold), 14 pieces. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
Dear Friend
Mr Grew* ^who^ was at the church yesterday morning came up to speak to me after the benediction and told me you had been quite unwell but believed you were amending.* I trust this is true that you are amending but may I hear by just a line from not your hand but Sarah's* or any other that this is true{?} After all these years of your loving care for me any word that you are not well goes to my heart.
You will be glad to know to hear that I am almost rudely well and the bad -- not evil -- eye gives me no trouble. I can read with ease and pleasure and
Robert Collyer
Notes
Grew: Mr. Grew has not yet been identified.
amending: Collyer omits several periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 11: mss FI 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Ellen Tucker Emerson to Annie Adams Fields
I thank you for the kind remembrance of your invitation, and I should like to see Mr. Arnold's sister,* but today I am going to Virginia for a month so I shall not be able. I found when I came home and looked for the pho-
tograph I had of that daguerreotype of me that it was gone. I must have given it away. I am sorry. It was taken so long ago that I have not even the negative. I shall send you today the life of the other Catholic priest who turned Protestant that I told you of.
Notes
Mr. Arnold's sister: It seems likely that Emerson is mistaken about the identity of this person. Probably Fields has invited Emerson to meet British novelist, Mary Augusta Ward, who was Matthew Arnold's niece. See Mrs. Humphry Ward in Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda, Box 16: mss FI 5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick.
Maine.
[ End letterhead ]
I was on the point of telling you something and forgot it as we were speaking about the house in Portsmouth.* When we were lying in harbour at Portland we went ashore one morning and went to see the old Longfellow house* which I have never been able to do before though I was much interested when they were putting it in order.
= I think the plan they followed of giving special interest to
each room is excellent. You would find it easy to follow in most those classic chapters of The Bad Boy* in a delightful way. Someday do go to Portland and look at the old place there.
= You would have your own plans and ideas, but I think you could come to your decisions more easily for seeing that successful result. It is doing such a beautiful thing for an old town to give it a shrine of its own and a place
of pilgrimage.
You* cant think how pleasant it was to see you and dear Tal.* Do come as often as you can -- Here is my sister Mary* just coming -- I shall have to call her to account!
"Sadie"*
Notes
1908: While it is possible this letter was composed in 1907, a year longer after T. B. Aldrich's 1907 death would seem more likely.
house in Portsmouth: The Bailey House in Portsmouth, NH was the home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich's maternal grandparents. After Aldrich's death in March 1907, Lilian Aldrich oversaw turning the house and garden into a memorial for her husband. Today, it is a part of the Strawbery Banke museum complex.
Longfellow house: The Wadsworth-Longfellow House was the childhood home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). It became a museum open to the public in 1902.
The Bad Boy: Aldrich's memoir, The Story of a Bad Boy (1897).
You: This paragraph is enclosed in parentheses, in pencil, apparently added later.
Tal: The Aldriches' twin sons, Talbot and Charles were born in 1868. Charles was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1902, and he died two years later in March 1904.
sister Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Sadie: One of Jewett's nicknames. With the Aldriches, this would have been Sadie Martinot, after the actress of that name. See Key to Correspondents.
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: 2759.
Willa Cather to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Letterhead]
Hotel & Pension Palumbo
Ravello
Golfo di Salerno
Dear Miss Jewett;
Do you, I wonder, remember what an extravagantly beautiful place this is? The camelias are all in blossom in the Rufolo gardens and our hotel is over run by yellow roses. I have one of the rooms on the terrace which hangs above Minori and the sea. You probably remember what a magical aspect the sea presents from that terrace -- very much like hot green porcelain whose flow has been ^ [checked or chalked?]^ by those jagged cliffs along which runs the Salerno road. From here it is certainly the sea of legend -- nothing else, and it glimmers centuries away from you, like the opaque blue water that Puvis de Chavannes* painted. When I was little I knew a funny old lady in Nebraska who had some water from the Mediterranean corked up in a bottle, and when you looked at the bottle for a long time and suddenly shut your eyes you saw the sea itself for a moment, and this was the way it looked -- a color and a remoteness that exist in legends and nowhere else. But the color one does find elsewhere, after all. I have seen this turquoise kind of green in Japanese porcelain, haven't you?
Seven hundred years ago yesterday a gally [galley] from the Holy Land first brought St. Andrew's skull* to Amalfi in Amalfi's time of sea-sovereignty. Every hundred years the arrival of the skull is celebrated. On Wednesday the skull was taken up from the crypt and sent down to Sorrento. It was
brought back to Amalfi yesterday by a fleet of forty-seven vessels, and the cardinal from Rome was down at the marina to receive it. The bells in Ravello rang all day long and the whole countryside trooped down to Amalfi. I fell in with a priest and a lot of old people who were hurrying down the footpath that outruns the carriage road. We were all feeling gay and tramping hard, and all wore our best things -- except the priest who wore his old cassock and carried his best one in a handkerchief. But just as we were hurrying over the one place where the wood path winds out a hundred feet above the carriage road, yes, just at that identical instant, some people from Nebraska, whom I had not seen for years & years, swung into the carriage road, and by some diabolical presbyopy* recognized me and shouted and gesticulated and haled me from that glad company. I shall probably not see those good people for a dozen years to come, but I had to go back to Ravello with them and lose the festa and my pleased companions. I have felt as if I were being put through the world by some awfully complicated kind of clock-work ever since.
The volume of Mrs. Meynell's essays* you gave me has been an inexhaustible delight. Do you remember the one which she calls "The Lesson of Landscape"? It seems to me about the only truthful writing I have ever read about Italy -- in English. I cannot, alas, feel that Vernon Lee* is altogether, or even measurably, truthful. Surely
^she^ is capricious and self-conscious and she takes liberties with things and places to get her effects. But Miss Meynell tells the truth -- How beautifully truthful she is about all this pale-colored lovely earth, and how [deleted word] her words ^show^ [deleted letters or a blot] the frugality and temperance that it ought to teach one. What a coarse and stupid conception of Italy we have all been reared upon! A tufted Monte Carlo palm garden sort of country.
But Mrs. Meynell has a fellow in the truth. Housman -- A. E. --* did a little poem which rings in my ears all day when I tramp about the gray terraced mountain sides and go in and out among the fields, so little and precious and dear-bought. It is not in "The Shropshire Lad",* but he gave me a copy of it, and I must quote it to you here, at the risk of misquoting it. My copy is in Pittsburgh, and I have never seen it ^(the verse)^ anywhere else. I never cared about it much until I left Naples three weeks ago, and then it rose out of the limbo of forgotten things and smote me full in the face.
The olive in its orchard,
If man could plant it sure,
The olive in its orchard
Should flourish and endure.
So deep among the trenches
Its dressers digged and died,
The olive in its orchard
Should prosper and abide.
Thick should the fruit be clustered
And light the leaf should wave,
So deep the roots are planted
In the corrupting grave.
That's the Italy I have found -- just about all of it. And how miraculously true the truth is! This morning when the cardinal visited the church here and all the children for miles about came up
Betsey Lane has gone sprinting on to Rome in my other trunk, but the "White Heron" and the Dulham Ladies abide with me always*. Ah they are like the olive leaf -- "si triste, si gai."
Notes
Puvis de Chavannes: Wikipedia says: "Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 - 24 October 1898) was a French painter, who became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts...." Cather may be thinking of his "Young Girls by the Seaside" (1887).
Puvis de Chavannes
Young Girls by the Seaside,1887
Courtesy of Wikipedia
St. Andrew's skull: Wikipedia says: "In 1208, following the sack of Constantinople, those relics of St. Andrew and St. Peter which remained in the imperial city were taken to Amalfi, Italy, by Cardinal Peter of Capua, a native of Amalfi. A cathedral (Duomo), was built, dedicated to St. Andrew (as is the town itself), to house a tomb in its crypt where it is maintained that most of the relics of the apostle, including an occipital bone, remain." It is not certain that Cather is correct about the procession she describes happening once each century, as opposed to annually, or as currently, twice annually in June and November. But it is the case that 1908 was the 700th anniversary of arrival of the relics of St. Andrew at Amalfi, and one would expect there would have been a special observance.
The walk from Ravello to Amalfi is about four miles.
presbyopy: Presbyopia according to Wikipedia "is a condition associated with aging in which the eye exhibits a progressively diminished ability to focus on near objects."
Mrs. Meynell's essays: "The Lesson of Landscape" appears in The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays (1905) by Alice Meynell (pp. 83-8); see Key to Correspondents for more and for Vernon Lee, pen name of Violet Paget.
Monte Carlo palm garden: Cather compares Lee's view of Italy to Monte Carlo, Monaco, located on the French Riviera.
Housman ... The Olive: The British poet A. E. Housman's (1859-1936), whose best-known collection of poems is A Shropshire Lad (1896).
"The Olive" was collected in 1939 in the "Additional Poems" (XXIII) section of The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman" (p. 240). Notes for a Housman letter to Witter Bynner (14 December 1903) say that the poem first appeared in Outlook (7 June 1902), p. 227 (The Letters of A. E. Housman, 2007, p. 158).
Cather's quotation from memory is close, but still quite different:
XXIII -- THE OLIVEBetsey Lane ... the White Heron ... the Dulham Ladies: To keep "A White Heron" and "The Dulham Ladies" with her, Cather would have to carry either A White Heron and Other Stories (1886) or Tales of New England (1890). "The Flight of Betsey Lane" was collected in A Native of Winby (1893).
The olive in its orchard
Should now be rooted sure,
To cast abroad its branches
And flourish and endure.
Aloft amid the trenches
Its dressers dug and died
The olive in its orchard
Should prosper and abide.
Close should the fruit be clustered
And light the leaf should wave,
So deep the root is planted
In the corrupting grave.
The phrase "abide with me always," though it sounds biblical, is not; however it appears frequently in devotional literature at least since the 19th century, and so suggests Cather's spiritual connection with these stories. See, for example, "Abide with Me" (1847) a popular Christian hymn by Henry Francis Lyte.
"si triste, si gai": French. "so sad, so gay."
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930, MS Am 1743.1, (15) Cather, Willa, 1873-1947. 3 letters; 1908 & [n.d.]. A transcription appears in The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013) by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, pp. 111-3.
This new transcription and the annotations are by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Miss Palfrey*
My dear Mifs Palfrey
I read the story before I left town but I have not had the right moment in which to write you until today. I saw at once what you meant about it being too long for a young peoples' magazine number, and yet not long enough for a book -- but I also saw many delightful qualities, the bright sayings and quick turns of face among the
young people -- a real spring story! ---- and even the young heroine's death does not seem exactly sad, but more like a spring flower's going out of bloom. You must have had a great deal of deal of pleasure in writing it -- and I think it would be even better were it longer, -- the characters follow each other so rapidly; this of course it so show the effect of little 'mortar's' influence, but it makes a good many new acquaintances
to carry in ones mind! I really wished to see more of the nice old aunt who comes in on the very first afternoon!
I am sure that the lilacs are in full bloom this morning in Cambridge; they are coming out very fast here. It was very pleasant to see you twice last week. And Mrs. Fields* was very glad to hear about you and the lilacs when I returned -- she is looking forward now to going to Manchester on the 1st of June --
Sarah O Jewett
Notes
Palfrey: Jewett and Fields were acquainted with Sarah Hammond Palfrey (1823-1914), a novelist and poet, the daughter of Massachusetts clergyman and politician, John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881). She often published under the name of E. Foxton.
However, it seems odd that such an experienced author would consult Jewett about a story for young readers, except that perhaps Jewett had more experience in this field.
The text Jewett has read remains unidentified.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. 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 Annie Adams Fields
[ 19-20 May 1908 ]*
Dearest Annie
Will you please send me Mrs. Ward's letter if, or when, Mrs. Bell sends it back? I send you Dorothy's* -- full of dear things that bring us still nearer them -- I wish we knew more about the play -- I think they must have all the "press notices" but perhaps not from the weekly papers -- I know they will like the Athenaeum,* [ a meaning and ] wasn't it nice that I hadn't brought it away so that you could send it right off? -- We have been gathering up some things today to send in the Grenfell schooner.* I mended up my old grey cloak
This is Wednesday morning -- and I have just been reading over your two dear letters both so full of interest. The Sunday one about Rose & Eva & the Tullivars coming [ a meaning and ] Francis Burnett. I think you saw him justly -- you give me a clear picture of him -- but I am sure that he got out of tune with his engagement and worried
[ Page 3 ]
-- Dear little heart I think of you and love you dearly
[ Page 4 ]
and I keep thinking of getting back and getting all my hidy holes clear and out of your way -- I have been taking some quinine too and already I feel better -- I wish I had done it before, but one knows so much better what to do for others! It certainly has suited you -- Today is nice and cool { -- } the grass being cut in the yard and I think that rain will fall upon it -- Did you see the fine notice of your cousin by Dr. Emerson in the Transcript last night? How Aunt Harriet would have loved it! The last sentence quite noble. I shall write to Arthur* whom I know best --
Pin*
Notes
19-20 May 1908: This date is confirmed by Jewett's mentioning the recent death of Rev. Frederick May Holland, which took place on 17 May 1908. See notes below.
Mrs. Ward's ... Mrs. Bell ... Dorothy's: Mary August Mrs. Humphry Ward, Helen Choate Bell, and Dorothy Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
Athenaeum: The Athenaeum was British literary magazine, founded in 1828 and publishing until 1921.
Jewett refers to a dramatization of Mrs. Ward's novel, The Marriage of William Ashe (1905), which was reasonably successful in the United States, but afterwards did poorly at Terry's Theater in London. See The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward (1923) by Janet Penrose Trevelyan (1879-1956), p. 179.
The positive Athenaeum review of the London production of The Marriage of William Ashe appeared in No. 4201 (1908) pp. 550-1.
Grenfell schooner: Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell (1865-1940) was a British medical missionary to Newfoundland and Labrador. The Grenfell Mission, which began in 1892, provided medical care for poor coastal communities, serving them mainly by sea.
Fanny Kemble: Fanny (Frances Anne) Kemble (1809-1893) a British actress and playwright, a member of the acting Kemble family, who published a volume of poems in 1844 and an autobiography in 1882. She also is remembered for her short marriage to an American slave-owner before the Civil War.
Rose & Eva & the Tullivars: Probably Jewett refers to Rose Lamb and Baroness Eva von Blomberg. See Key to Correspondents.
The transcription of "Tullivars" is uncertain, and these persons have not yet been identified.
Francis Burnett ... Dr. Putnam: Probably Jewett refers to Dr. Francis Lowell Burnett (1878-1965), son of Mabel Lowell and Edward Burnett. See Key to Correspondents. Dr. Burnett married Helen Read (1888-1985) in 1913.
It appears that prior to his marriage, he was engaged to Dr. Helen Cordelia Putnam (1857-1951), who completed her medical training in 1889 at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, followed by an internship at the New England Hospital for Women in Boston. See The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z pp.1059-60.
The identity of Esther has not yet been discovered.
wouldn't he?: This passage seems confusing. Probably Jewett meant to write "wouldn't she?" That would, at least, provide one way of clarifying the passage.
notice of your cousin by Dr. Emerson in the Transcript ... Aunt Harriet ... Arthur: Aunt Harriet is Harriet Newcomb Holland (1809- 19 January 1897), spouse of Annie Adams Fields's maternal uncle, Rev. Frederick West Holland (1811-1895).
Their sons, living at the time of Aunt Harriet's death were: Rev. Frederick May Holland (1836 - 17 May 1908), like his father a prominent Unitarian minister, Henry Ware Holland (1844-1909), and Arthur Holland (1850-1926), a successful businessman. Arthur married Jewett correspondent, Sarah Ormsby Burgwin Holland (1859-1940). See Key to Correspondents.
Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson (1844-1930), youngest son of American poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, authored an extended obituary of Frederick Holland that appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript on 19 May 1908 (p. 13). For the full text see the notes for Sarah Orne Jewett to Arthur Holland, 20 May 1908; the final sentence reads: "It is pleasant to think that he lived to see the world come round to many of the reforms which, in their dark days, he championed."
Pin: Pinny Lawson, a Jewett nickname. See 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 5565. This manuscript has been damaged by water, making parts of the transcription less than normally certain. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Arthur Holland*
[ Begin letterhead ]
South Berwick, Maine
[ End Letterhead ]
I must send a word of sincere sympathy* to you and yours. If I had been near I should have seen you all today. I am so glad that you and Sara were not far away -- it will be so much to the others to have you there. I have read Dr. Emerson's beautiful letter about your brother in the Transcript* -- I could not
Sarah O. Jewett
Notes
Arthur Holland: See Sara Ormsby Burgwin Holland in Key to Correspondents.
sympathy: Rev. Frederic May Holland (1836-1908), Arthur Holland's brother, died on 17 May in Concord, MA. Note that the spelling of Rev. Holland's name varies in different sources. It is spelled without the final "K" on his tombstone.
Transcript: Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson (1844-1930), youngest son of American poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, authored an extended obituary of Frederick Holland that appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript on 19 May 1908 (p. 13):
Died in Concord, May 17, Frederic May Holland, aged 72 years.
A quiet, but brave life ended on Sunday afternoon, a release from long suffering, patiently borne. Mr. Holland was the son of the late Rev. Frederic West Holland, well remembered as an active, zealous clergyman, much employed in missionary work by the Unitarian Association, and at one time its secretary. The son was a Boston boy, and graduated at Harvard in 1850, and from the Divinity School in 1862.
He was a youth of high ideals, from his childhood interested in all ethical reforms. Cruelty, injustice, bigotry called on him personally to work for their redress. Like his friend, the late Dr. Francis Ellingwood Abbot, he chafed against all bonds of dogma and creeds. The courage and humanity of Theodore Parker stirred him, and he was his outspoken follower when most Unitarians shrank from his fellowship.
Mr. Holland's first ministry was at Rockford, IL., where he married Miss Anna M. Bicknell, who survives him; then he preached for a year at Marietta. Ill health forced him to leave his work for farming, for a time. His strength restored, he took charge of a society of liberal New England settlers in Baraboo, Wis., where he remained as pastor for six years. His delicate constitution, however, could not stand the strain, and in 1877 he came to the East, and chose Concord as a quiet and congenial home. Here he found good friends, and, as a layman, continued his work for social and intellectual elevation.
Mr. Holland's first book, "The Reign of the Stoics," was published in 1870. His "Stories from Robert Browning" attracted notice in England and were collected and published there. Then followed his "Rise of Intellectual Liberty, from Thales to Copernicus," and his "Life of Frederick Douglass."
Mr. Holland was most kindly and courteous. Delicate and sensitive and with no love for controversy, his entire courage, when conscience called, in declaring his opinion and standing always for what he thought right, however unpopular that might be, was notable. It is pleasant to think that he lived to see the world come round to many of the reforms which, in their dark days, he championed.
E. W. E.
Concord, Mass., May 18.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Small Library, University of Virginia, Special Collections MSS 6218, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ May / June 1908 ]*
Did you feel the heat and general good for nothingness of the thunder storm which was gathering all the P.M -- yesterday? I really had to go to bed an hour earlier -- In the night the lightening was [ fine ? ]. Mr. Hellman* came in the P.M. but went away without seeing or bringing anything. He says Mrs John Hay* has got the original of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech which no money will buy. He has just bought Lowell's [ ms. corrected ] on a "Certain Condescension in Foreigners{.}" Osgood* sold it to someone in Cambridge who yesterday sold it to him -- Mrs Wheeler Keith* came later, brought by Georgie who is most kind to her. She comes to the Children's Hospital once a month with a young daughter who developed a lateral curvature of the spine -- She brought a huge pot of blue forgetmenots all in bloom,but your yellow Florentine tulips are the most lovely things imaginable. Mary* should have a little corner devoted to them --
Loulie* is bigger and more disastrous than ever! She is happier and kinder than ever, too{.} She is truly much loved by Carmela who
has found in her [ a ? ] kind of protecting goddess. Everhard Meynell has just written a book on Corot which is said to be good -- also he is a painter.
But goodbye for today, dear!
Notes
1908: This date is supported by Fields's mentioning E. Meynell's 1908 book. See notes below.
Mr. Hellman: George Sidney Hellman (1878-1958) was an American author and editor in New York City. He was a collector of rare books, manuscripts, and art. The New York Public Library's George Sidney Hellman papers overview notes "He amassed collections of his own and helped secure major acquisitions for the Pierpont Morgan Library."
Mrs John Hay ... Lincoln's Gettysburg speech: John Milton Hay (1838-1905) was an American author, statesman and government official, serving in various cabinet and diplomatic positions under presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. He married Clara Stone (1849-1914) "daughter of Cleveland multimillionaire railroad and banking mogul Amasa Stone."
Beginning his law career in Illinois in the late 1850s, he became a friend and advisor to President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Lincoln gave his famous "Gettysburg Address" on 19 November 1863, commemorating the dead in the American Civil War's most deadly battle.
Wikipedia and Find a Grave.
Lowell's ... on a "Certain Condescension in Foreigners": James Russell Lowell. Key to Correspondents. His essay "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners" appeared in Atlantic Monthly in January 1869.
Osgood: James Ripley Osgood. Key to Correspondents.
Mrs Wheeler Keith ... Georgie: Georgie Halliburton. Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Keith probably is American artist Dora Wheeler Keith (1856-1940). Her daughter was Lois, who married Clyde V. Simpson. Wikipedia.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. Key to Correspondents.
Loulie ... Carmela: Louisa Dresel. Key to Correspondents.
Atkinson (2013) in his "Chronology of Alice Meynell," says that the sisters, Carmela and Grazia Maria L. Carbone were Italian-American singers. Grazia Carbone married Alice Meynell's son, Everard in 1908. The sisters performed together at Queen's Hall in London in 1907. See Catholic Who's Who (1936-1952), p. 61.
Meynell ... Corot: British author and artist, Everard Meynell (1882-1926), son of poet and Jewett correspondent, Alice Meynell. Corot and his Friends appeared in 1908. Key to Correspondents.
Camille Corot (1796-1875) was a French landscape and portrait painter. Wikipedia.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Sarah Orne Jewett Additional Correspondence, 100 letters from Annie Adams Fields, bMS Am 1743.1 Box 1, Item 33.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Elizabeth Jervis and Mary G. Gilman
Sunday
[ 7 June 1908 ]*
[ Letterhead, upper left corner, in red ink, of the initials SOJ intertwined, inside a circle ]
Dear Lizzie and Mary
Mrs. Fields* was so pleased with the poppies and wondered as I did at their being in bloom so early. She only got her poppy seeds in this week ! ! The last of the flowers
are in the window of her little sitting room up-stairs -- the buds all coming out this morning in the sun, though I gave some to Margie Burseley* ^to her delight^ for fear they would fade and fall before they all got here! (I told Mrs. Fields!) We enjoyed our short visits and glimpses of our friends very much, they are lovely to look back to -- With Mrs. [ Field's so written ] thanks and mine (she had a nice birthday yesterday) yours always, Sarah
Notes
1908: The letter was composed the day after the birthday of Annie Adams Fields (Key to Correspondents), which was 6 June. 7 June fell on Sunday in 1908.
The year is only a guess, based mainly on Jewett not mentioning the Gilmans' mother, Alice Dunlap Gilman, who died in 1905. Before 1905, Jewett would nearly always mention her in letters to her daughters.
Margie Burseley: This person has not yet been identified.
The manuscript of this card is held by the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Brunswick, ME, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers, Series 1 (M238.1): Correspondence, 1877-1905, n.d.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daughter, Dorothy
Manchester by Sea, Massachusetts, June 8, 1908.
Dearest Mary and Dorothy, -- This just one word of love and thanks because you gave me the great pleasure of coming over,* -- of seeing you both again! -- and I feel quite selfish about it, as if no one else could care about seeing you and being with you again quite so much! (This may be unjust to some dozens of people, but never mind! You must just take my love and blessing and believe how happy you made our dear A. F. and me.) She is much better now than when you saw her, the air here is always just the right thing, and I love to see her in her little pale grey dress sitting on the piazza looking seaward over the green tree-tops. She is tired, with getting away from Town more than from getting here, but she will soon be rested.
I thought that you would have more days in Quebec; I wish you could spend a week there, -- the old French country is delightful, but you have been seeing "Country" enough. Your dear heads will be in a whirl, between snow mountains and the early summer heat -- I doubt if you even get time to read your letters until you begin the slow first days on ship-board. Good-bye, good bye! Don't you remember that Kingsley finished his book: "We cannot not have been in the West Indies,"* and so we cannot not have had you both here! and not have had fast hold of each other's hands again. You cannot know what joy and delight your visit has given. I do hope that neither of you are the worse for it.
Yours with true affection.
Notes
coming over: I Annie Adams Fields (2002), Rita Gollin says that Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daughter visited the United States and stayed with Fields in Boston in June 1908 (pp. 298-9).that Kingsley finished his book: "We cannot not have been in the West Indies'": Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), Christian socialist and writer. At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies (1871) ends with this sentence: "We could not not have been in the tropics."
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Rice Jewett to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dear Sarah:
It was so pleasant to come home to your dear letter tonight since I could not have you to tell about the pleasant day at Aunt Gilman's.* It was not a successful start for the train broke down just beyond Great Falls and I was more than an hour late, but telephoned May [ who corrected ] went for a drive from the station instead of waiting there. She and Margie* were in great spirits. And both seemed very well indeed. They have changed the furniture etc. in some of the rooms to great advantage and I never saw the house look pleasanter. It was a howling
N. W. gale so no sea breeze was to be had, and the sea looked gray with cold except for the white caps. It was fortunate that I went today since Margie goes home tomorrow. There seemed to be no special news except the engagement of Zippy's Anna to Edward Noyes* Margie's cousin who must be twice her age I should think, but there is vast satisfaction on all sides. It seems that Miss Anne Williams* left the house to Margie which is the reason of her being there, and the furniture was to be divided but as Laura* said most of the heirs have left it there while Zip lives. Margie said that most of it was not interesting, being of the
"black walnut" period. Of course we talked over many things, and most affectionate messages were sent to you. I shall think of particulars when we meet. The Perrys* are on their way back from California and little Mary is looking forward to a visit from them very soon. She feels very content with the two new women. One of whom Mrs. Evans* sent her, a nice Scotch woman again -- the cook being German. You must have been amused by the finality of my remarks this morning about your not being able to go to Worcester, but I some
as well as have it yourself. You and Mrs. Fields* are so good to
For the first time in many days we have waked to a really comfortable morning, and the front door is wide open
and no wind to fluster one. It really seems spring like now. The orange lily has opened the first flower of its really noble cluster under the sunshine's influence, and the rose is full of sweetness, which makes me quite sure it is one of the lovely Dawson [ kind corrected ] that being fragrant? Do give my love to Dorothy when she comes again, nice child that she is. And you must not forget to tell them how much we liked the Garibaldi book.* And say everything for me about Diana Mallory* of course. Much love dears, and now I must go on my way along shore on the morning round.
M. R. J.
Notes
1908: This date is supported by the references to the visit to Boston of Mrs. Humphry Ward, which took place in June 1908. If Mary Jewett means in her cryptic final note to indicate that she wrote the letter the day before Wednesday, then it is likely this letter was composed on the Tuesday following Jewett's Monday 8 June "thank you" note to Mrs. Ward.
At the top center of page 1, Jewett has drawn an image.
Aunt Gilman's: This Aunt Gilman has not yet been identified. The usual assumption in the Jewett letters is that Aunt Gilman is Mrs. Helen Williams Gilman. However, this Aunt Gilman died in 1904 and cannot be the person mentioned here. Another possibility, Alice Dunlap Gilman, died in 1905. See Key to Correspondents.
May ... Margie: These people have not yet been identified. As the notes above and below indicate, Mary Jewett refers to relatives apparently connected to the Jewetts through the Gilman family. This is a very complex family to research, not only because it is so extensive, but because so many names are reused.
Zippy's Anna ... Edward Noyes ... Anne Williams: Zippy is Zilpha Ingraham Cutler Smith (1851-1927).
Her daughter, Anna Williams Cutler Smith (1884-1921), married Edward Deering Noyes (1858-1941) on 23 September 1908.
Ann Matilda Williams (1825- 23 June 1907) is buried in the Williams Cemetery in Augusta, ME, in a family tomb with Helen Williams Gilman's father, Reuel Williams, and Zilpha Ingraham Cutler, mother of "Zippy." Presumably, she is "Anne Williams."
Laura: This person has not been identified.
The Perrys: The Jewett sisters' mother was Caroline Perry. Which of the Perry relatives had traveled to California in 1908 is not yet known. "Little Mary" and Mrs. Evans also are not yet identified.
Mrs. Ward: Mary Augusta Ward, who wrote as Mrs. Humphry Ward. Her daughter was Dorothy Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
In Annie Adams Fields (2002), Rita Gollin says that Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daughter visited the United States and stayed with Fields in Boston in June 1908 (pp. 298-9).
Helen: Which this may be of the several Helens the Jewetts knew is not yet known. At this time in their lives, likely possibilities are Helen Merriman and Helen Choate Bell. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Emily: Emily Tyson. See Key to Correspondents.
Thérèse: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. See Key to Correspondents.
Garibaldi book: While this is not certain, it seems likely that Mrs. Ward would have recommended to the Jewetts British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan's (1876-1862) Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic (1907).
Diana Mallory: Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel serial, The Testing of Diana Mallory ran for a year in Harper's Monthly, beginning in November 1907 and concluding in October 1908. The novel was published as Diana Mallory in 1908.
Morrogo Wins-dy: The transcription is uncertain, and the meaning not yet known. Perhaps Jewett is reproducing an Irish dialect representation of "More ago Wednesday?" Perhaps she means to convey that this is her second Wednesday letter to Sarah Jewett, or that she intends to write more again on Wednesday?
The manuscript of the letter is held by the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection MWWC0196_02_00_013_01. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich
Dear Lilian
Will you be kind enough if there are any left, to send an invitation for the 30th* to Henry Deering Esqre Portland Maine (member of thee Historical Soc. ^etc^ & greatly interested.) and to Mrs. Bursley 374 Spring Street Portland?* The latter is my cousin and Mr. Deerings niece -- he is very anxious to have the pleasure of coming, and I promised to ask: he did much about the Longfellow affairs,* the
New Hist. Society building there etc -- I hoped to get down this week to see you but I am not sure I shall.
I send you another letter about the house. Mrs Davidge is an old friend of mine, the daughter of Bishop Potter.* She has your address. I told her when I wrote but I have just sent it again and told her about Mr. Fuller* but I dont remember his initials. I wondered if some of the things out of
Mr Richardson's house* could be put in, but at any rate they could easily get bed & mattresses &c from Rockland. If Mr. Moody* were well I can imagine that he would soon stir about!
Annie --
Notes
1908: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 18 June 1908.
30th: Though Jewett does not mention this directly, the main topic of this letter is a celebration of the opening of the Bailey House in Portsmouth, NH, as a museum to honor Thomas Bailey Aldrich. This house eventually became a part of the Strawbery Banke Museum complex in Portsmouth.
See Horatio S. Krans, "T. B. Aldrich and the Portsmouth Celebration Held on June 30, 1908" in Book News Monthly (27: September 1908) pp. 171-9.
Deering ... Bursley: Henry Deering (1842-1917) was a longtime member of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, serving on the standing committee. See The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (April 1918), pp. 83-6.
Mrs. Bursley is Margaret Deering Gilman Bursley (1852-1924).
Longfellow affairs: This concerns the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, ME, the childhood home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). It became a museum open to the public in 1902.
Davidge ... Bishop Potter: The painter Clara Sidney Potter Davidge (1858-1921) was the daughter of Episcopal Bishop of New York, Henry Codman Potter. Late in her life, she married the American painter Henry Fitch Taylor (1853-1925).
Mr. Fuller: Possibly this is Henry Brown Fuller (1867-1934), an American painter. Jewett was acquainted with his wife, Lucia Fairchild (1872-1924), also a painter.
Richardson's house: According to George Carey's "The Rise and Fall of Elmore," The William Richardsons at Seawoods and the Aldriches at the Crags were neighbors during summers at Tenants Harbor, ME. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Moody: Jewett and Fields are not yet known to have corresponded with anyone named "Moody." A likely possibility is American poet and dramatist, William Vaughan Moody (1869-1910). Wikipedia.
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: 2770.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ 25 June 1908 ]*
Dearest: Your card from Portland and our talk from S.B.* have just [ transpired ? ]{.} No, it never was so long before (four days) since I had heard and I had to talk with you a good deal while I was dressing this morning.
How absorbingly interesting the news is and the reports today, but I cannot talk it over on paper just now darling, because Rose* is waiting.
For one [ while ? ], I thought I needed you more than I ever did for I fancied the [ young ? ] woman would not answer, but I think now she is likely to do well. How I wish you could see the magnificent bundle of roses which has been sent in -- Do not let Mary* try to send hers while the weather is so warm{.}
But I must go. Rose's birthday is tomorrow.
My love to Edith and Edith Webster.*
Notes
1908: Detective work with dates has narrowed the composition date of this letter to two possible years. Fields says she is writing on the day before Rose Lamb's birthday, which was 26 June. The relevant years in which 25 June fell on a Thursday were: 1885, 1891, 1896, 1903, and 1908. Of these 1896 and 1908 are possible, when Jewett was in South Berwick on this date and well enough to write and telephone.
1908 is the more probable, for there is evidence that Jewett had recently been in Portland, ME, in her letter to Lilian Aldrich of 18 June 1908. In 1896, she was very busy, with multiple projects that probably kept her at work in South Berwick and made it unlikely that she traveled to Portland.
S.B.: South Berwick, ME.
Rose: Rose Lamb. See Key to Correspondents.
Mary's: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Webster: These people have not yet been identified.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett. Fields, Annie (Adams) 1834-1915. 16 letters; 1894-1901 & [n.d.], 1894-1901 bMS Am 1743 (64).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, Burton Trafton Collection, Box 2, folder 88.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
It is Rose's* birthday and she has had a pretty fête remembered by many friends{.} Our visit from Mr. [ Eid ? ]* was very successful. He is interesting and I wish you might have seen him.
If you can come here for a bit of a visit before Rose goes, next week Friday, it would be pleasant, but it is of course not necessary until after the visit of Mrs Forbes{.}* Then perhaps we could have some restful days together. If you are obliged to go to town I shall be glad of a few things, especially for my precious box of
pens which I seem to have left behind in the bay-window room, I suppose -- I shall like Mary* & you to have the [ thermos-bottle corrected ] for expeditions --
How lovely the roses are!
A.
Notes
1908: Fields mentions a "Moody letter" in her postcard to Jewett of 14 May 1907, but 26 June did not fall on Friday that year, as it did the following year. I have guessed that the so far unknown correspondence with a person named Moody took place at a time close to 1907.
Moody's: Jewett and Fields are not yet known to have corresponded with anyone named "Moody." A likely possibility is American poet and dramatist, William Vaughan Moody (1869-1910). Wikipedia. See Jewett to Lilian Aldrich of 18 June 1908.
Rose's: Rose Lamb's birthday was 26 June. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Eid: This transcription is uncertain and this person remains unidentified.
Mrs. Forbes: Edith Emerson Forbes. See Key to Correspondents.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett. Fields, Annie (Adams) 1834-1915. 16 letters; 1894-1901 & [n.d.], 1894-1901 bMS Am 1743 (64).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, Burton Trafton Collection, Box 2, folder 88.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dearest: Rose* has gone with Mr. Grew* down to see the church and the two new memorial stones and I [ seize corrected ] a moment to pass with you.
(By the way, I believe you ran away with my black silk blouse -- you villain!)
What a heavenly day this is. South East wind, rain?
Yesterday P.M. came poor Mr Bartlett.* He is really very much like a soldier now who has seen reverses in ^his^ [ deletion ] army -- He spoke of Mr. Motley* as very ill indeed. He asked for you & Jess* -- and said he passed the previous day in Portsmouth with Lilian* who had done wonders{.}
[ Unrecognized title ] Black & Pitman* came while he was here and later came Whittemore* who was very agreeable going away at nine o'clock. He and Rose talked of [ deletion ] France together and quite fired me with new enthusiasm [ to corrected ] hear them --
darling
from your
A.
1908: Exact as it is, this identification of a date is very tentative, based mainly upon this letter being with several letters from about this time in the Houghton Library collection, those from 1908 mentioning an extended visit to Fields by Rose Lamb. See for example, Fields to Jewett of 26 June 1908, which this letter may follow by 2 days.
Rose: Rose Lamb. See Key to Correspondents.
Grew: Possibly Boston businessman, Henry Sturgis Grew (1834-1910), summer neighbor of Fields in Manchester by the Sea, or his brother, Edward. See Henry Grew Papers.
One of Henry Grew's daughters was Elizabeth Sturgis Grew, who married Boylston Adams Beal, Annie Fields's nephew, son of her sister, Louisa Jane Adams Beal. See Fields in Key to Correspondents.
The occasion of the new memorial stones and the identity of the church have not yet been determined.
Bartlett: Edward Jarvis Bartlett. See Key to Correspondents.
Motley: This transcription is uncertain and the person remains unidentified.
Jess: Jessie Cochrane. See Key to Correspondents.
Lilian: Lilian Aldrich. See Key to Correspondents.
Black & Pitman: Fields may refer to George Nixon Black, Jr. (1842-1928), a prominent philanthropist and the builder of Kragsyde (1883–85, demolished 1929), "a Shingle Style mansion designed by the Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns and built at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, with landscaping by the Olmsted firm.
Miss Pitman may be American painter and teacher, Sophia Lord Pitman (1855-1943).
Whittemore: American scholar and archaeologist, Thomas Whittemore (1871-1950). Wikipedia.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett. Fields, Annie (Adams) 1834-1915. 16 letters; 1894-1901 & [n.d.], 1894-1901 bMS Am 1743 (64).
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, Burton Trafton Collection, Box 2, folder 88.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
[ July 1908 ]*
Dearest Annie
Oh what a good talk this morning! and what a dear letter later with the most sensible extract about [ bad dreams ? ] ! Indeed I shall try to mind it! These last hot days have pulled us all down -- it has been very hot and close here but Mary* and I boldly started off and had a good drive and brought home lap-lilies* and other lilies after supper, and wished we had done it before though it has seemed too hot for either [ unreadable line ]*
How really delightful about the Nortons and Miss Sedgwick!* I wish that I hadn't missed
[ Page 3 ]
Please tell Mrs. Forbes* that I have been meaning to send her a note (full of thanks) and waited first to find out from Mrs. Tyson* the name of a day lily that grew by the gate of the garden. Mrs. Tyson does not remember after all only it is a Funkia* as Mrs.
[ Page 4 ]
Forbes said, and she would look for it in catalogues -- she thought she should recognize it at once but the "Christian name" had quite slipped away. I send much love and please forgive a hot letter -- the candle seems like a bonfire and I must blow it out and go to bed. I am sorry to be disappointing about
Notes
July 1908: A note on the upper right of page 1, beneath Jewett's "Monday evening" reads: July 1908 -- in a very hot time". This date is supported by Jewett's reference to the summer heat of that year, which she mentions in other letters.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
lap lilies: While the term "lap lily" does not appear in major dictionaries, it does show up in plant nursery advertisements, e.g. The National Nurseryman v. 18-19 (1910), pp. 204, 242, 316..
unreadable line: This page appears to have been written in pencil, though this is not certain from examining the digital image from which this transcription has been made. The final line of this page has been rubbed and smeared.
Mrs. Ward Howe's birthday: Julia Ward Howe. See Key to Correspondents.
Shoals: The Isles of the Shoals resort off the coast near Portsmouth, NH.
Nortons and Miss Sedgwick: See Sara Norton in Key to Correspondents. Probably Jewett refers to British-American author Anne Douglas Sedgwick (1873-1936).
the Wards: Mary Augusta ,Mrs. Humphry, Ward and her daughter, Dorothy. See Key to Correspondents. The letter from Mary that Jewett treasures almost certainly is from Mrs. Ward.
Mrs. Forbes: Edith Emerson Forbes. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Tyson: Emily Davis Tyson. See Key to Correspondents.
Funkia: Funkia is the genus name for plants commonly know as hostas or plantain lilies.
Pinny: Pinny Lawson, a nickname for Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields papers: mss FL 5551. This manuscript has been damaged by water, making parts of the transcription less than normally certain. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
You can't think what comfort I had Saturday, the first of these last hot days in stealing a pair of plain white stockings out of your
steamer box ( I had taken the [ cover off ? ] when it first came thinking there might be something you would like to have at home)*{.}
Mr. Grew* [ deletion in a fit of restlessness ? ] came up to see me last evening and told me about the play ^Alice in Wonderland^* in Mrs Putnam's oak grove yesterday. He said it was very pretty and 150 people children & all. Lorraine Washburn* did it all -- The Cheshire Cat was in the tree when they arrived!* (It was lucky I did not try to go.) Betty was full of delight over it. How good to hear of beloved H.B.* and all you say of her and that you are going to send her "The Neighbour{.}"*
It is cooler -- though it be wet & sticky today. I am thinking of going to Beverly Farms to take a few things to "The Class"* { -- } also considering asking Alice & K.N.* here, for they feel pretty solitary often --
Katie is but a poor companion for Alice, but
if she [ were corrected ] interesting where would be the virtue and as it is they are very good pals which is a mercy.
Thursday [ to your A. ? ]
Notes
1908: This letter responds to Jewett's also probably of July 1908, This date gains a little mroe support from the sketchy information gathered about the performance of Alice in Wonderland. See notes below.
home: These parentheses may have been added later.
Grew: Henry Sturgis Grew (1834-1910). A successful Boston businessman, Mr. Grew had homes in Boston, Hyde Park, and Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Alice in Wonderland: Dramatizations of Alice in Wonderland (1865) by British author Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) were popular at the turn of the 20th century. Jewett and Fields are known to have attended one in February 1897 (letter to Mary Rice Jewett before 20 February 1897).
Information about the show Mr. Grew mentions has proven difficult to obtain. In a letter of 31 August 1909, Frances Cabot Putnam (1897-1913) of Cotuit, MA, describes a theatrical very much like the one Fields describes here. See Memoir of Frances Cabot Putnam (1916) by Marion Cabot Putnam (1857-1932) pp. 111-2. Of course, Jewett had died the previous June, but the names resonate with the account in this letter.
Dr. James Jackson Putnam (1846-1918) and his family were Fields's neighbors in Boston, and established a summer home in Cotuit on Cape Cod in 1897. Dr. Putnam's brother, Charles Pickering Putnam, married Lucy Washburn. Wikipedia, Find a Grave, Back Bay Houses.
One may speculate, then, that Mr. Grew attended another performance that took place in 1908 at the James Putnam home in Cotuit.
Unfortunately, Lorraine Washburn remains unidentified.
Betty may be Elizabeth Sturgis Grew Beal (1871-1959), Henry Grew's daughter, who married Boylston Adams Beal (1865-1944), Fields's nephew.
arrived: Between lines, Fields has inserted "afeard of strange cats." She has not indicated a clear insertion point. Perhaps she is claiming to be afraid of strange cats, or perhaps the Cheshire Cat was supposed to have this phobia.
"The Neighbour": Jewett published several pieces with "Neighbor" in the title, but it is not certain that Fields refers to one of these: "Miss Debby's Neighbors" (1883), "New Neighbors (October 1888), "A Word from a Neighbor" (January 1893) and "A Neighbor's Landmark" (December 1894).
H.B.: Probably Helen Choate Bell. Key to Correspondents.
Beverly Farms ..."The Class": Sarah Wyman Whitman's summer residence was in Beverly Farms. Before her death in 1904, she conducted a Sunday class there for many years.
Alice & K.N.: In the Jewett-Fields correspondence, Alice usually is Alice Greenwood Howe. "K.N." has not yet been identified.
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.
Mary Elizabeth Garrett* to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ July ? ] 1908
My dear Sarah,
Thank you for the dear little note -- I am so very sorry that you have been suffering so much. I hope each day of summer on your Maine coast will give
you strength.
I am writing to say that when I send you the manuscript of my friend I will send an avant-courrière card so that you need not be anxious at any non appearance. I hear that the author
is ill & it may not come. It was good of you to wish the work was something of mine. To show you what a fraud & a lazy one I am I have never opened the package of what I was at work upon here last summer when I suddenly confessed to you. Life seems always so swift
& engrossing that there is not half time to catch up. Just now I am trying to get back a little lost French & am reading "La Terre qui Meurt"* -- but it is very sad -- Can it be that Alice Warren* would try a N. England winter? I think she is there now but I had not heard of her spending next winter there -- Dear Sarah I hope I did not ask too much of your strength!
Affectionately yours -- MM G
Notes
Garrett: I really do not know who wrote this letter, but I think Mary Garrett is a good guess. Signing the letter with initials that look like MMG would seem to exclude her, so I cannot be sure. But Garrett was close enough to Jewett to address her as "My dear Sarah," and for Garrett to dare to impose upon the unwell Jewett a request to read a manuscript. They had spent time together in France in 1898 and in Italy in 1892.
La Terre qui Meurt: French author René Bazin (1853-1932) was the author of La Terre qui Meurt (1899), published in English as Autumn Glory: The Toilers of the Field. Bazin's novel was serialized in translation in The Living Age as The Perishing Land (1899-1900). Wikipedia.
Alice Warren: Probably, this is Alice Amelia Bartlett Warren (1843-1912) who moved in the same social circles as Fields and Jewett, being a friend of Henry James and Ellen Emerson, among other Jewett Correspondents. See the introduction to Little Women Abroad: The Alcott Sisters' Letters from Europe, 1870-1871 (2008), edited by Daniel Shealy, pp. lxii-lxiii.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
G., M.M. 1 letter; [1908]. (72).
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.
Katharine Prescott Wormeley to Sarah Orne Jewett
12. [ July 1908 ]*
My dear friend
I have been a good deal agitated this week. -- what with sending and receiving cables and the arrival of Osborne Curtis, and my own.* sense of the loss of a true brother, or I would have answered your. tender letter sooner.
My brother & sister reached London from Venice July 1. Their son Ralph met them at station -- his father seemed exhausted from having eaten something indigestible -- A doctor was sent for next morning -- at 1 p.m. he seemed much better -- but at 3 suddenly collapsed and dead [ quietly or quickly ] in 10 minutes{.}
I dont quite know what will come next -- I hold myself ready to go to her if she looks for me.
Just now I am rather the worse for wear -- Heat and so forth.*
Adieu, and true thanks for letter -- that is card.
KPW*
Notes
1908: Wormeley's sister Ariana Randolph Wormeley married American lawyer and banker, Daniel Sargent Curtis (1825-1908) and they resided in Venice. Their older son was the artist Ralph Wormeley Curtis (1854-1922). For father and son, see Wikipedia.
own.: Wormeley seems to have placed a clear period here and also at "your. tender."
so forth: These words are underlined twice.
KPW: Wormeley has underlined her signature twice.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Sarah Orne Jewett, Correspondence, MS Am 1743, Item 245, Wormeley, Katherine Prescott, 1830-1908. 7 letters. This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writers Collection, The Burton Trafton Papers, Box 2, Folder 98. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
William Dean Howells to Sarah Orne Jewett
W. D. Howells
Kittery Point, Maine
[ End letterhead ]
July 13, 1908.
Dear Miss Jewett the Younger:*
I am sorry indeed that with my dilapidated family I cannot arrange any day or hour for coming to see you. But sometime, if the varied maladies will permit, I will "call you up," and John* and I will wisk over in spite of your [ wired or weird ? ] moans for mercy, and demand a cup of tea. [ With ? ] love to Miss Jewett the Elder.
W. D. Howells.
Notes
Younger: Sarah Orne Jewett was the younger sister, Mary Rice Jewett the elder. See Key to Correspondents.
John: While this is not certain, it is likely John is Howells's son, the architect, John Mead Howells (1868-1959).
The manuscript of the letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. 16 letters to Sarah Orne Jewett; 1875-1908. Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, 1861-1930. MS Am 1743 (105). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich
MASSACHUSETTS.
July 15th [ 1908 ]*
My dear Lilian
her love to you with mine and all sorts of wishes for a good rest and vacation after your long pull of care and busy-ness. Please give our best wishes to Mrs. Fuller* too --
I shall pay a second visit to the Nutter house* as soon as I can -- there was so little time on the Day.* Do tell Talbot and Elinor* how glad we should be to see them at Berwick if they
are coming that way -- or any of your house and friends. If anybody cries Laven - der* under your London window you might buy t'rippence worth for me and send it (or bring it soon) in a newspaper.
----- I shall be so glad when you are back again and there is a little quiet time. Thank you so much for sending the tickets to Mr. Deering at Portland --*
Good by with most affectionate wishes & love from
Mr. Bartlett* has just [ been corrected ] here, and was
Notes
1908: The envelope associated with this letter was cancelled on 15 July 1908.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Annie: Annie Adams Fields, later referred to as A.F. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Fuller: Possibly Lucia Fairchild Fuller (1872-1924), an American painter.
Nutter house: The Bailey House, also known as the Nutter House, in Portsmouth, NH, became a museum to honor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, thanks largely to the efforts of Lilian Aldrich. This house eventually became a part of the Strawbery Banke Museum complex in Portsmouth.
the Day: The dedication of the Bailey House took place on 30 June 1908. See Horatio S. Krans, "T. B. Aldrich and the Portsmouth Celebration Held on June 30, 1908" in Book News Monthly (27: September1908) pp. 171-9.
Talbot and Elinor: The Aldriches' surviving twin son, Talbot, married Eleanor Little (b. 1886) in June 1906.
Laven - der: Jewett has underline that final syllable twice.
Mr. Deering at Portland: Henry Deering (1842-1917) was a longtime member of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, serving on the standing committee. See The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (April 1918), pp. 83-6. In an earlier letter, Jewett had asked Lillian Aldrich to send him and his niece tickets for the June 30 celebration.
Mr. Bartlett: Probably this is Edward (Ned) Jarvis Bartlett. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. Dexter: There are two Mrs. Dexters with whom Jewett and Aldrich likely were acquainted.
It is more likely that Jewett refers to Josephine Anna Moore (1846-1937), who was the second wife of Chicago lawyer Wirt Dexter (1832-1890). She returned to her Boston home after her husband's death, where she died, though she was buried with him in Chicago.
But perhaps she refers to Susan Chapman Dexter (1843-1917), wife of Frederic Dexter (1841-1895), a Boston cotton merchant. Both are buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Mrs Dexter lived at Beverly Farms as well as in Boston's Back Bay area, and so might easily have been known to Fields and Jewett.
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: 2771. This mark also appears bottom left of page 4.
Lilian Woodman Aldrich to Sarah Orne Jewett
Stratford-on-Avon.
My dear Sadie*
Anne Hathaway* sends you from her Cottage garden these sprigs of Lavender -- And she hopes you will like them.
We are having a beautiful tour through this lovely English Country -- I find a motor car the pleasantest of all for a journey -- -------
A note from Mrs Read today, gives me this pleasant item for Portsmouth, & the Nutter House* ---- "Sunday there were 17 at the Memorial; Monday 65, Thursday 54, & in the three days, 22 "Bad
Much much love goes with this to you & Mary* -- and always dear Annie ----- -----
Lilian.
Notes
An envelope associated with this letter is addressed to Jewett in South Berwick, canceled in Stratford on Avon, possibly in 1908. In the upper right corner of page one is penciled 1903, but 1908 is almost certainly correct. Aldrich reports attendance at her husband's memorial house, the Nutter House, in Portsmouth, N.H. and responds to Jewett's letter of 15 July 1908.
Sadie: The Aldriches nicknamed Jewett, Sadie Martinot. Key to Correspondents.
Ann Hathaway: British playwright, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) married Anne Hathaway. Wikipedia.
Mrs Read ... Nutter House: Mrs. Read has not yet been identified. The Bailey House, also known as the Nutter House, in Portsmouth, NH, became a museum to honor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, thanks largely to the efforts of Lilian Aldrich. Mentioned in several of Aldrich's books, this house eventually became a part of the Strawbery Banke Museum complex in Portsmouth.
Mary ... Annie: Mary Rice Jewett and Annie Adams Fields. Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743 Box 1, 5. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Sarah Orne Jewett
How did it [ happen ? ] that A. Howe* had such a [ mass ? ] of [ sketches ? ] June and July.* Shall I not now send them on to you? They came back today with some flowers* & the enclosed card & a Littell -- with an interesting paper worth reading on [ Campbell=Bannerman ]*
O it is quite worth-while for you to be at home; entirely the thing to do just now. I am really very little alone; and when there is
It is a wonderful morning here{,} very cool and clear at first{,} now with clouds that look like a storm but we know not!
I feel rather tired and this goes with love
Notes
August 1908: The year is confirmed by the recent death of and The Living Age reprinting of the article on Campbell-Bannerman. The month seems likely given the report that Alice Howe has sent them sketches from her work in June and July.
A. Howe: Alice Greenwood Howe. See Key to Correspondents.
July: Fields seems to have written "a" with a tail for "and." She punctuates this sentence with a period.
Campbell=Bannerman: British politician, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836- 22 April 1908). Wikipedia.
Littell's The Living Age 330 (2 May 1908: 314-17) reprinted from the Spectator an appreciation of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, written for the occasion of his retirement.
Fields sometimes doubles her hyphens.
This manuscript is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University -- Sarah Orne Jewett correspondence, MS Am 1743, Box 2: 64. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Adams Fields
Intervale, Sunday. [ 9 August
1908 ]
Helen* and I drove over to Miss Wormeley's yesterday afternoon,# -- a wonderfully beautiful afternoon, with such high, bright clouds and such a sunset, and the view from the house of most matchless beauty. She was there all her atmosphere -- her books on the table, her flowers all in bloom: it was a most sad and lovely and unforgettable visit. Only on Tuesday she was there -- all day Tuesday! it seems so wonderful, that living creature, that friend! I kept saying to myself those lines of Fitzgerald's in the "Agamemnon": --
"And some light ashes in a little urn."*
#Fields's note: After Miss Wormeley's death.*
Notes
Helen: Almost certainly, this is Helen Bigelow
Merriman. See Key
to
Correspondents.
those lines of Fitzgerald's in the "Agamemnon": -- "And some light ashes in a little urn.": Edward Fitzgerald translated Agamemnon: a Tragedy, taken from the Greek of Aeschylus. This line appears in a chorus just before Agamemnon's first entrance. The Chorus describes the sorrow of the royal house at its losses in the just completed Trojan War. Speaking of the God of war, it says:
And for the blooming Hero gone
a-field
Homeward remits a
beggarly return
Of empty helmet, fallen sword and
shield,
And some light
ashes in a little urn.
In 1908, August 4 fell on a Tuesday.
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Royal Cortissoz to Sarah Orne Jewett
August 13th 19 [ 08 ]*
[ Begin Letterhead ]
THIRTY-ONE WEST TENTH STREET
My dear Miss Jewett;
Perhaps as one of Miss Wormeley's* friends my name is known to you, and so you will permit me to tell you of my grief over her death and of my sympathy for you. You were often in her letters, and knowing of your friendship, I can realize how heavy the blow is to you. To me and my wife it was good to love her; we valued her more than I can tell. There was never a women like her. I send you the best words I printed her in memory the other day. They leave so much of my feeling for her unsaid but
one cannot put everything into words. I was so glad to hear from Ralph Curtis* that he had been with her.
Royal Cortissoz
Notes
1908: See notes below. Cortissoz underlined "August" twice. He also underlined his signature twice.
With this letter is an envelope addressed to Jewett in South Berwick and canceled in New York on 13 August 1908.
Also with the letter is the press clipping Cortissoz enclosed.
Wormeley: Katherine Prescott Wormeley. See Key to Correspondents. She died on 4 August 1908. See Jewett's reply of 24 August 1908.
Ralph Curtis: Ralph Wormeley Curtis (1854-1922) was Wormeley's nephew, son of her sister Ariana Randolph Wormeley Curtis (1834-1922). Find a Grave.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence I, Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Cortissoz, Royal, 1869-1948. 1 letter; [1908]. (42).
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 Willa Cather
Manchester by Sea, August 17, 1908.
My dear Willa, -- I am delighted to have your letter.
You will find that I sent a verse that I found among my papers to "McClure's,"* -- and I did it as a sort of sign and warrant of my promise to you. No story yet, but I do not despair; I begin to dare to think that if I could get a quiet week or two, I could really get something done for you, and it should be for you who gave me a "Hand up" in the spring!
I wish that I could see you and that something might bring you to Boston and for a night to Manchester. For more than a night, or as long as you could stay. Mrs. Fields bids me say this.
I shall be here for a fortnight now, or more. It is the time of year when people crowd the foreground of every background of shore or inland life, but it is also the time for quiet days together. I wish that I could see you, -- I must write the words again!
Send me one word on office paper to
say that you are getting on well. I envy you your work, even
with all its difficulties. I wish that I could take a handful
for my own hand, and to help you.
Notes
McClure's: Jewett's last work published in her lifetime was "The Gloucester Mother," a poem in McClure's Magazine 31 (October 1908) p. 703. In Letters edited by Annie Fields, a facsimile of the manuscript appears on p. 90. When Jewett and Cather met, Cather was an editor at McClure's.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 Royal Cortissoz*
August 24th [ 1908 ]*
South Berwick, Maine
[ End deleted letterhead ]
Dear Mr Cortissoz
I wished to thank you at once for your most kind letter and the true and friendly remembrance that prompted it. I thought of you too when I first had news of dear Mifs Wormeley's* death{.} Your friendship and* thoughtfulness have long been a great pleasure to me because I was so thankful that she found such pleasure in perhaps the very latest of her real friendships. She
often told me of your great [ kindnesses ? ] and she delighted in your works and ways. I am sure that it was through you that her Second Funeral of Napoleon was printed and brought her the very last of her pleasures of that kind. What instant recognition the spirit of it has won! I have heard of it from so many persons and the last time I wrote her was to tell her this -- and much more.
What a delightful friend
and companion we shall always miss! -- I heard from her, a gay spirited note after her accident dictated to Margaret* but signed with a steady K.P.W. -- and I had planned to go to my friend Mrs. Merriman* on the Thursday so that I could drive over to see her -- but on Wednesday the note came to tell me that I should not find her. -- It was a hard blow -- I cannot get over the disappointment for if I might only have seen her once more I think that I could have borne the loss better. I had all that one could have -- on the Saturday
I did go to the dear house on a wonderful afternoon -- the mountains all transfigured -- her flowers in bloom -- her books lying on the table. I could see what she had been reading -- her dear ghost was there with me as if we were lingering together -- --
I love what you have written about her, and I thank you more than I can say. Oh how well we both knew it, that "noble pride," that hatred of 'pompous gravity,' that gentleness and kindness! She lived alone in that high house as if she lived in London and sometimes the nearby voice was a fox's -- barking on the hills -- She was never [ unmindful ? ] of conventions and yet she knew
nothing of conventionalities, any more than she did of sentimentalities -- 'the vice of sentiment'* as some one said lately. -- I am not so sure about Jane Austen,* but what a late supper she and Mary Lamb* might taken together!
I wish more than ever now that I might see you and Mrs. Cortissoz. And my friend Mrs Fields* has been saying the same thing -- She has begged me to ask if you would not remember us in case you are to be near [ to ? ] here in the early autumn or later in Boston; [ deletion ] if you would
give her the pleasure of a visit. Pray do not feel that I have been slow in answering to your kindness -- perhaps Miss Wormeley may have told you that I had a bad accident* some time ago and still have many days when I wish to write and do not find it possible. It robs me of all my work -- and our dear friend will no
It may be that Mr.
Pray believe me with all kind and appreciated messages and thanks for your kindness in writing.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Notes
Cortissoz: Jewett's rendering of this name is uncertain, but almost certainly she addresses American art historian and journalist, Royal Cortissoz (1869-1948).
1908: See notes below.
Wormeley: Katherine Prescott Wormeley. See Key to Correspondents. She died on 4 August 1908. In July of 1908, her essay "Napoleon's Return from St. Helena" appeared in Putnam's Monthly 4:4, pp. 387-393.
Wikipedia says that in 1840, the remains of French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) were moved from Saint Helena island, where he was buried at his death, to Paris, where a state funeral was held on 15 December 1840. American National Biography says that Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (1822-1904), Katherine Wormeley's older sister, also an author, "witnessed the second funeral of Napoleon." In her Putnam's essay, Wormeley says that she also witnessed this event, though she was only 10 years old at the time. Jewett's use and underlining of the title The Second Funeral of Napoleon may result from her knowledge of the works of British author William Makepeace Thackeray, who published a book with this title in 1841. Wormeley discusses his account of the event in her essay.
and: Jewett sometimes writes an "a" with a long tail for "and" in this letter. I have rendered these as "and."
Margaret: This person appears to be a caretaker or secretary rather than a family member. She has not yet been identified.
Mrs. Merriman: Helen Bigelow Merriman. See Key to Correspondents.
vice of sentiment: This phrase shows up more than once in 19th and 20th century criticism. Perhaps Jewett saw it in Charles Whibley's essay, "George Buchanan," Blackwood's Magazine 180 (July 1906), p. 9.
Jane Austen: British novelist, Jane Austen (1775-1817). Wikipedia.
Mary Lamb: British author, Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847). Wikipedia.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
bad accident: Jewett refers to the September 1902 carriage accident that ended her literary career.
Berkeley Updike: American printer and historian of typography, Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941). He was the founder of Merrymount Press, publisher of two Jewett texts, including Verses (1916), a posthumous collection of her poems.
Curtis ...Putnam ... Latimer: Mr. Curtis probably is Wormeley's nephew, Ralph Wormeley Curtis (1854-1922), younger son of her sister, Ariana Randolph Wormeley Curtis (1834-1922. Find a Grave.
Mr. Latimer almost certainly is her nephew, Ralph Randolph Latimer (1862-1931), son of Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer. Find a Grave.
Mr. Putnam is George Haven Putnam. See Key to Correspondents.
de Praslin letters: Putnam's published this announcement in 1909 issues of the magazine:
Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer recounted this incident in her book, France in the Nineteenth Century (1892). Putnam's was absorbed by Atlantic Monthly in 1910, and so far as I can determine, this piece never was published.The Murder of a DuchessThe assassination of the Duchesse de Choiseul-Praslin was one ofthe celebrated
criminal cases of the nineteenth century. That the murderer washer husband, and that he dropped dead in court when brought to trial, was not calculated to lessen popular interest in the crime or horror at its perpetration. An English girl who happened to be living in Paris at the time recalled the story in her old age and wrote it out for Putnam's Magazine. This was the late Katherine Prescott Wormeley, well-known for her translations from the French.
This manuscript is held by Archives and Manuscripts at Yale University's Beinecke Library, in the Royal Cortissoz Papers: Jewett, Sarah Orne, n.d. -- Box: 6, Folder: 263: Call Number: YCAL MSS 146, Series I
This transcription is from a photocopy held by the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett, 1875-1890, the Burton Trafton Jewett Research Collection.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daughter, Dorothy
Manchester by Sea, Massachusetts, September
1, 1908.
My dear Mary, -- It has been the swiftest of flights of a summer! I have been trying to solve the usual problem of trying to be in two places at once; but besides this I had two pleasant cruises down the Maine coast, of a week or so each, with Mrs. Forbes,* whom you will remember; but I wish you knew the "Merlin" too, a big sailing yacht of great charm and spread of sail; and the Maine coast, since you only saw that of Southern New England, so low and quiet and different. Oh, no! you have seen the St. Lawrence region, which is more like Maine; the Pointed Firs, -- the mountains near the shore; the long Norway-like fiords and islands!
I have the whole 'back of my mind' full of things that I wish to tell you, but I get so hindered about writing: not the "stop" in one's mind that Quakers gravely talk about,* but something much less interesting. We are first of all so very anxious about dear Mr. Norton in these days; Sally's letters are very troubled, poor child, but she said in her last letter that she hoped to get to Mrs. Fields's for a day and night very soon.* She came twice with her father to Miss Sedgwick's in the very hot weather, but unluckily I was not here.* I cannot give up the hope of seeing him again. For so many reasons I am thankful that you could come last spring.
People are talking about "Diana,"* and those who wait for the book are finding it hard to wait. I think every one delights in it. I am waiting, too, for the book to have it all again, and for next month's magazine number, I must also confess! Mrs. Bell* was wishing for it Saturday when she came up from the York Shore to luncheon. How I wish you had both been with her! Was the house all as you wished, and the poor hurt man doing well? We have longed to know, but I waited at first to write because I knew you would both go home to such busy days. I see that "Lady Rose" is to be played at the Castle Square Theatre,* and I shall hie me to see it with great haste. I was so sorry that you did not have the chance in London, but you might come over to Boston! I must not write more, but to send my love. I am afraid not to seal up this poor note and send it off -- next thing it will be Spring.
Yours most affectionately.
Notes
Mrs. Forbes: Almost certainly this is Mrs. John M. Forbes. Richard Cary writes of the Forbes family, "Miss Jewett periodically visited the family of John M. Forbes, the railroad builder, who owned his own island off the coast of Massachusetts. Emerson's daughter Edith was married to Forbes's son William. The island was a haven for summer and autumn guests who entertained themselves at boating, fishing, riding, and hunting. Miss Jewett relished most the invigorating cruises along the Maine coast in the Forbes majestic sailing yacht, Merlin" (Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, 86).
the stop in one's mind that Quakers gravely talk about:
The Quakers or Society of Friends practiced an inward mode of
Christianity, in which a part of worship was inner
contemplation, seeking the light of God's presence in oneself.
Mr. Norton ... Sally's letters are very troubled:
Sara
Norton's
father,
Charles
Eliot
Norton,
died on October 21, 1908.
Miss Sedgwick's: Probably Jewett refers to British-American author Anne Douglas Sedgwick (1873-1936).
People are talking about "Diana": Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel serial, The Testing of Diana Mallory ran for a year in Harper's Monthly, beginning in November 1907 and concluding in October 1908. The novel was published as Diana Mallory in 1908.
Mrs. Bell: Probably Helen Olcott Choate Bell (1830-1918), daughter of Rufus Choate, and a neighbor of Annie Fields. SeeKey to Correspondents.
"Lady Rose" ... Castle Square Theatre: Mary Augusta Ward's (1851-1920) novel Lady Rose's Daughter (1903) was dramatized as dramatized as Agatha in 1905).Wikipedia says: "The Castle Square Theatre (1894–1932) in Boston, Massachusetts, was located on Tremont Street in the South End.[1][2] The building existed until its demolition in 1933."
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 Sara Norton
South Berwick, September 16,
1908.
-- I am sending a little book chiefly for the sake of its biographical preface. I have delighted in knowing Lady John Scott,* and just now I have been lending her to Mrs. Bell* who made friends as quickly as I did. She is such a simple and real and dear person. The grandniece who writes the preface must be equally nice and delightful. I thought it might be something that you and your father would like to read together. Do not hurry, or trouble to send it back, -- some day I can put it in my pocket. I am going back to Manchester tomorrow or next day; these last few days I have been quite alone and have done ever so many put-off things and comforted my soul. I was much amused the other day by a tale of some good housekeeping creatures who enlivened a tea party by trying to think what they should carry with them into another world if they could choose one precious thing, -- and one chirped up that she should take an empty drawer that she had in the third story. You will guess by this what turn my poor energies have taken, but indeed I have had three or four extra good days, and hope for more. I do hope that dear Mr. Norton is better and stronger too. I think a great deal about him and wish many wishes.* I always forget, when I see him, to ask a question about a classmate, young Perry, whom I can just remember with deep childish affection as he was going over to Italy in '54 or '55, -- his fair hair, his amusing, kind ways to his little niece. He was my mother's brother, and died that very year abroad.* I am afraid he was no student, though he studied law and had some gifts and ambitions toward political life. He was "wild," and I am afraid a little naughty, and he and Mr. Bigelow Lawrence kept each other's rather gay company.
He had been abroad before and was
twenty-eight when he died. These are nearly all the things I
know about him, except that I still treasure the remains of a
lovely Paris paint-box that he was bringing me home. What a
long story about a poor young uncle! I wonder if Susanina*
will preserve such memories. I must have been somewhere about
five years old or a little less. He had been many months away.
This Sunday I shall spend at Naushon and see the great beeches
and the deer flickering about.* We saw two here this summer at
the edge of some woods. I had been long hoping for such a
sight. Mrs. Bell came up from York for luncheon last Saturday.
Was not that delightful? So well and so enchanting.
Notes
Lady John Scott: Alicia Ann Spottiswoode, Lady John
Montague-Douglas Scott (1810-1900). Jewett was reading Songs
and Verses by Lady John Scott (1904), "edited, with a
memoir, by her grand-niece, Margaret Warrender." Lady John
Scott is best remembered as the author of "Annie Laurie."
Mrs. Bell: Probably Helen Olcott Choate Bell
(1830-1918), daughter of Rufus Choate, and a neighbor of Annie
Fields. See Key
to
Correspondents.
your father: Sara Norton's father, Charles Eliot
Norton, died on October 21, 1908.
It is likely that Jewett refers to Timothy Bigelow Lawrence (d. 1869), whose notoriety in brahmin Boston is reflected in his book title: An Exposition of the Difficulties Between T. B. Lawrence and His Wife, Sallie Ward Lawrence: Which Led to Their Divorce (1851). Wikipedia sketches Mrs. Lawrence's life; see also Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events 1873, p. 503.
Perry and Lawrence both were, like Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard graduates from the class of 1846.
Susanina: The identity of Susanina is unknown.
Naushon: Wikipedia says: "Naushon Island, part of the Elizabeth Islands, is seven miles (11 km) long, just off (SW of) Cape Cod, and four statute miles (6 km) NW of Martha's Vineyard. The island is owned by the Forbes family and is included in the town of Gosnold, Massachusetts."
Richard Cary writes Miss Jewett periodically visited the family of John M. Forbes, the railroad builder, who owned his own island off the coast of Massachusetts. Emerson's daughter Edith was married to Forbes's son William. The island was a haven for summer and autumn guests who entertained themselves at boating, fishing, riding, and hunting. Miss Jewett relished most the invigorating cruises along the Maine coast in the Forbes majestic sailing yacht, Merlin" (Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, 86).
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Amelia St. Clair to Annie Adams Fields
Kensington. [ W ? ]
Sept 19. 1908
My dear Mrs Fields
Y. loving letter was -- & is -- a great joy to me. I am ashamed to see how long ago it was written.
I wish I cd say -- not
that I "am going to Santa Barbara or Malta" -- but that I am coming to New York & Boston. I am afraid that cannot be this year. I've had to be rather economical, as there have been some heavy expenses, & I must not take so long a trip. Perhaps next year it may be possible, & then I wd love to come & see you in Manchester.
I have had a pleasant holiday, though, staying with friends, yachting with sons in Scotland & motoring with sons in Normandy. In October I am to take my friend, Miss Mary Moss,* (you may remember her brilliant work in The Atlantic Monthly) into Dorset to see Thomas Hardy* & explore his country. I have just come back from a visit to Oxford with her & Professor Jastrow & his wife.* She was so good to me when I
I wonder if you will like my new novel "Kitty Tailleur."* She is so different from my others that you may not care for it. I am planning a long -- really very long -- novel. It will be harder to write than anything I've done since The Divine Fire* & I must not talk about it -- in case it does not "come off." It is one that I've had in my mind for years & I have not felt ready for it till now.
Please give my dear love to Miss Jewett. I shall live in hope of
[ across the top margin of page 2 ]
And with much love to y. dear self
always v. [ affectely ? ] ys May Sinclair.
Notes
Mary Moss: American author and literary critic Mary Moss (1864-1914).
Thomas Hardy: British novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
Professor Jastrow & his wife: Probably this is Morris Jastrow, Jr. (1861-1921), a "Polish-born American orientalist and librarian associated with the University of Pennsylvania." His father, Marcus Jastrow, was an internationally famous Talmudic scholar. His wife was Helena Bachman (1869-1940). Morris Jastrow attended an International Congress on the History of Religions in Oxford, England, in the autumn of 1908.
Kitty Tailleur: Sinclair's novel, Kitty Tailleur, appeared in 1908.
The Divine Fire: Sinclair's novel, The Divine Fire (1904), preceded The Helpmate (1907). Her next novel, The Creators (1910), was a long book. See Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction, by Theophilus Ernest Martin Boll, p. 81.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, California: James Thomas Fields Papers and Addenda (1767-1914), Letters of Sinclair, mss FL 1-5637.
May Sinclair, when she abbreviates a word as well as with some titles places some of the letters in superscript position. I have elected not to duplicate this practice in the transcriptions of her letters.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Harriet Prescott Spofford
Manchester by Sea, Monday, 1908.
My dear Hally, -- have been thanking
you ever since your letter came, -- you were so good and kind
to write and I loved what you said. I found the verses among
some things I was pulling out of a desk or drawer;* I don't
know in the least when they were written, but when I saw them
in print I felt a little more alive in the world. Perhaps some
day now, in the right place and with the right kind of
quietness, I shall find myself beginning all over again; but
it will be a timid young author enough! We do have our long
years' use of that strange little tool, the pen, to fall back
upon, and that must count for something, -- the wonder and
uncertainty is about a "living spring," as country people
would say, to come out of the hillside with proper water for
the ink! It was a day like this last year that you all three
came over to Berwick, and I wish you would do it again while
Annie is there. With much love and many thanks for your dear
letter.
Notes
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 Mrs. Humphry Ward
Manchester by Sea, October 1, 1908.
My dear Mary, -- What I most wish to
tell you is my delight in "Diana";* you have indeed done
everything to those last chapters in making them justify
Diana! They do! They do! I have been reading again and again
with real admiration of your most noble and beautiful gifts,
-- the gifts of heaven of sympathy and feeling and insight
above all. That defeated old Lady Lucy, with the young
strength and self-forgetful love of Diana coming in at the
door! There flits into my mind as I write a most lovely poem
of Mr. Lowell's that begins, "How was I worthy so divine a
loss?"* I think some of the lines in it are so akin to all you
felt about Oliver and Diana, -- perhaps you would not say so.
Could Oliver ever be selfish or a cad again, with such a love?
Ah, but he was selfish and must so continue, and must,
thank Heaven, always be fighting and fall into worse shame
when he cannot win. And her face would be shining more and
more with the joy of watching his poor victories. My heart is
full of your story, my dear friend. I miss you so as I write
and wish that we were talking; indeed, I think we have never
stopped missing you and dear Dorothy since you went away. Our
last day, our last minutes always seem so close.*
Notes
"Diana": Mrs. Humphry Ward's The Testing of Diana
Mallory (alternate title Diana Mallory) was
appearing in Harper's Monthly 1907-1908, and was
completed in the October issue.
Mr. Lowell's that begins, "How was I worthy so divine a loss?": The poem of James Russell Lowell to which Jewett refers is "Das Ewig-Weibliche" (The Eternal Feminine).
How was I worthy so divine a loss,
Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns?
Why waste such precious wood to make
my cross,
Such
far-sought roses for my crown of thorns?
And when she came, how earned I such
a gift?
Why
spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole,
The fireside sweetnesses, the
heavenward lift,
The
hourly mercy, of a woman's soul?
Ah, did we know to give her all her
right,
What
wonders even in our poor clay were done!
It is not Woman leaves us to our
night,
But our
brute earth that grovels from her sun.
Our nobler cultured fields and
gracious domes
We
whirl too oft from her who still shines on
To light in vain our caves and
clefts, the homes
Of
night-bird instincts pained till she be gone.
Still must this body starve our souls
with shade;
But
when Death makes us what we were before,
Then shall her sunshine all our
depths invade,
And not
a shadow stain heaven's crystal floor.
so close: In Annie Adams Fields (2002), Rita Gollin says that Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daughter visited the United States and stayed with Fields in Boston in June 1908 (pp. 298-9).
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 Sarah Cabot Wheelwright
9th October [ 1908 ]*
Dear Sarah
This letter came near crossing yours for I have been wishing to write and thinking of you a good deal these last few days. I was wishing that I could hear from you and Mary* direct ^though I have had news from one friend & another^. I thought I had written last and I imagined that you might be coming up earlier and that I might see you -- You thought of taking the household and going right to Newport when you wrote last, and I thought it was to be toward
the first of this month and idly waited to hear! I dont believe in keeping debt & credit always about letters with my real friends, but I often get off the hooks about writing. This last time it was because I adventured from York Harbour homeward in a motor -- a friend offered to bring Mary* & me home, and we came so fast that it almost broke my neck again!* I have kept pretty fairly well, on the whole (when I keep to steady trolleys that stop every little while!) and I have thought of you always with unforgetting and
the Cambridge [ unrecognized word ] -- "owe no man anything but to love one another"* -- that's a good motto, but after all, one grows more and more to love the debts that come with true friendship . . . I have just been telling Mrs. Fields* about your letter and giving your message and she says as I do, how [much corrected ] she feels for you about the good cook. I think Mrs. McDevitt 25 Lawrence Street* can get first rate people especially if you give her time enough. She used to live (in single
wont forget that I am very fond of you dear Sarah and it makes [me corrected] fonder still when I know that the clouds come -- even if I cant be or do anything else. Goodbye for now, but I really hope that I shall see you soon
S. O. J.
Notes
1908: This manuscript is problematic in that it clearly contains pieces of two different letters. Page 4 comes from another letter and there is material missing at the end of the other 3 pages. The main three pages probably are from 1908. Jewett clearly writes after 1902, as she alludes to her September 1902 carriage accident. 1908 seems likely because she refers to Mrs. James Howe, who appears in the notes below, to be Laetitia Lemon Howe, who married James Carleton Howe in February of 1908. If Mrs. Howe is correctly identified, then this letter must have been written in 1908.
Mary direct: Mary Cabot Wheelwright, daughter of Mrs. Wheelwright. See Key to Correspondents.
bring Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
broke my neck again: Jewett refers to her carriage accident of September 1902.
Mrs. James Howe: It seems likely that this is Letitia Todd Lemon (1884-1927), wife of James Carleton Howe (1877-1957), a Massachusetts manufacturer and business man, who graduated from Harvard in 1899. They married in February 1908.
Mary really: Probably Mary Cabot Wheelwright, daughter of Mrs. Wheelwright. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Wheelwright: Andrew Cunningham Wheelwright, husband of Mrs. Wheelwright. See Key to Correspondents.
Helen Merriman: See Key to Correspondents.
Page 4: It seems clear that this page does not belong here, and that the material that should appear at this point in the letter is missing.
love one another: See the Bible, Romans 13:8.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Mrs. McDevitt 25 Lawrence Street: This person remains unidentified, though the context seems to suggest that she operated an employment agency for domestic help.
Mrs. Cabot's Mary Bourke: Mrs. Cabot is Susan Burley Cabot. See Key to Correspondents. Mary Bourke, presumably her cook, has not be identified.
This manuscript is held by the Small Library, University of Virginia, Special Collections MSS 6218, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara Norton
Tuesday morning, October, 1908.
My dearest Sally, -- It was a great joy to see your handwriting, -- letters can give such a feeling of companionship. I have been longing for some news of your dear father,* and I was planning last week to go to town and to Shady Hill to try to see you, but on Monday night dear Mrs. Fields was taken very ill, and for some days and nights I was most anxious.
But we have begun our little
pleasures, too, and yesterday and day before I read to Mrs.
Fields awhile in Lucas's "Charles Lamb."* We have been going
through the first big volume this summer, and a chapter about
all those friends whom she knows so well seems just the right
thing. We have just got Coleridge home from Malta, and nobody
in the book or out can think what to do with him! What
wonderful weather for us here and at Shady Hill. Last night
came the first touch of frost. I see from the window that a
row of zinnias are all brown, but the upper flower-bed is as
bright as ever -- all the friendly marigolds -- and I shall
have them tucked up with a blanket if it is cold again
tonight. I must not write longer, but I think to you often and
send with true love you -- and dear Mr. Norton both. I have
never been able to believe that wireless telephones were a new
discovery; if you love people enough you can be your own
battery, the only thing is to teach us how to use it, -- so
often it seems to go off by accident only. What a scientific
turn this letter takes! but never mind; it carries you much
love and many wishes.
Notes
dear father: Sara Norton's father, Charles Eliot Norton, died on October 21, 1908.Lucas's "Charles Lamb": Jewett probably refers to Edward Verrall Lucas (1868-1938) The life of Charles Lamb (1905). This is described as the life of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and Mary Lamb (1764-1847).
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 David Douglas
Manchester by Sea, Mass., October 20. [1908]
My dear Mr. Douglas, -- Day after day has gone by, warm and misty or rather smoky from the great forest fires that have so afflicted the country east and west.* We are apt to have a wet, windy October and nearly all November like this, but it has been an unusual summer in many respects, hardly any rain and yet little real drought. The farmers, who do not often dig their wells deep enough, are always afraid of the ground's freezing before the great rains come, and having to drive their poor cattle far to water, but let us hope that all the springs will fill in season this year. We have seen Mr. and Mrs. Bryce lately* -- since their return from England. [The Embassy has had its summer quarters almost on the next place] and the Ambassador seems to feel little uneasiness about high affairs on either side the Atlantic. They are now away, so that we don't know how the latest affairs in Turkey, etc., affect his mind. He is a delightful man. Nobody could be more welcome to either his place of State or to his old friends in America. I have been wishing to ask you if it would be possible to find a copy of "Gleanings from an Old Portfolio," edited by Mrs. Godfrey Clark?* I see that it was privately printed, but sometimes such a book comes into the market. I was reminded of it by the list at the head of a paper in the July "Quarterly Review" about my favorite Lady Louisa Stuart.* I always thank you for giving me the pleasure of what has been a true "book friendship." This year I have lost one of my dearest older friends, Miss Katharine Wormeley, who was of the Lady Louisa ("Guinea!") stamp* and rank, a delightful "great lady," -- daughter of an American mother and an English admiral, who fought in the Peninsular Wars,* and was already retired when his younger children were born. Miss Wormeley had seen much of the world all her days, but her last years were spent in a quiet house among our "White Mountains," where she busied herself with French translations, Balzac, etc., being wise enough to know that a hermit should not be idle! She lived as if she lived in London, but for months she heard few sounds beside the wind and the mountain brooks and the foxes barking on the hills. I delight in the thought of my visits to her. Lately I have been re-reading the preface of the "Lady John Scott," and delighting in it more than ever. Has "Margaret Warrender" who signs it written other things? -- for this preface is a very uncommon piece of writing of that difficult and delicate sort.*
For how many pleasures I have to
thank you, dear Mr. Douglas! and I must beg for one more; that
we may hear from you soon and have good news of you and all
your household. I hope that Miss Douglas will be happening on
a new sketching ground; her work is so interesting and must
provide you with many treasures and souvenirs.*
Notes
great forest fires: Ralph Chipman Hawley and
Austin Foster Hawes, in Forestry
in
New
England:
A
Handbook
of
Eastern Forest Management (1912, pp. 254-7),
report on numerous and extensive forest fires in Maine during
1908.
Mr. and Mrs. Bryce: James Bryce, Viscount Bryce (1838-1922), was Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford University (1870-1893), ambassador to the United States (1907-1913), and also an author.
"Gleanings from an Old Portfolio," edited by Mrs. Godfrey Clark: Alice Georgina Caroline Strong Clark edited Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, Containing Some Correspondence Between Lady Louisa Stuart and Her Sister Caroline, Countess of Portarlington, and Other Friends and Relations in 1895/1898, three volumes.
Lady Louisa Stuart: Wikipedia
says: "Lady Louisa Stuart (12 August 1757 - 4 August 1851) was
a British writer of the 18th and 19th centuries."
John Buchan (1875-1940), Lady Louisa
Stuart in Quarterly Review (London : England).
London : J. Murray, 1908, Vol. 209, no. 416 (July) 1908.
Miss Katharine Wormeley ... Peninsular Wars:
Wikipedia
says:" Katherine [sometimes Katharine] Prescott
Wormeley (January 14, 1830 - August 4, 1908) was an American
nurse in the Civil War, author, editor, and translator of
French language literary works.... [She] died ... at her
summer home in Jackson, New Hampshire."
The Peninsular Wars involved England
fighting Napoleon's forces in Spain and Portugal (1808-1813).
("Guinea!") stamp: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "In 1663 the Royal Mint was authorized to coin gold pieces of the value of 20s. 'in the name and for the use of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading with Africa'; these pieces were to bear for distinction the figure of a little elephant, and 441/2 of them were to contain 1 lb. troy of 'our Crowne gold'. The 20s. pieces of the African company received the popular name of guineas almost as soon as they were issued, as being intended for use in the Guinea trade, and made of gold from Guinea; and the name was extended to later coins of the same intrinsic value.... The latest coinage of guineas took place in 1813." Hence, any coin with a guinea stamp would be claiming superior value.
"Lady John Scott" ... "Margaret Warrander": Jewett was reading Songs and Verses by Lady John Scott (1904), "edited, with a memoir, by her grand-niece, Margaret Warrender." Warrender's memoir is about 100 pages. With luck, Jewett might have found at least three other titles by Julian Margaret Maitland Warrender: Marchmont and the Humes of Polwarth: by one of their descendants .... (1894), Walks Near Edinburgh (1895), Illustrations of Scottish History (1889).Miss Douglas: David Douglas's daughter, Sarah Wyse Douglas (1861-1886) married Professor Sir William Abbott Herdman in 1882. She died from childbirth in 1886. She had two daughters, neither of whom appears to have been married by 1908:
Beatrice Sophie Herdman (1883-1978), married around 1908 to Herbert Eldon Roaf,
Winifred Flora Sarah Herdman (1886-1976), married as late as 1923 to Montagu Phillips .
In the collection, Sarah Orne Jewett Correspondence (MS Am 1743 ), of the Houghton Library at Harvard University, is this item: "(49) Douglas, Sophie B. 1 letter; 1907. With drawing in watercolor." This letter is to Sarah Orne Jewett from Miss Douglas.
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 Sara Norton
[ October 21, 1908 ]*
My dearest Sally
I must write one word to tell you how close I hold you in my heart, and how I share with you these hours of watching. You will be sure of this and yet I cannot help saying it or how dearly I love to think of your father* and all that his friendship and years of kindness have been to me. I think most of all of the last time I went to Ashfield* -- that beloved visit! I feel nearer to him now, and count the new nearness of every year, and yet I keep thinking
of those days.
Oh, it is no use to write but I long to know that you will remember for comfort that they never are so near us as when they first go -- Many and many a time now I have proved this true! -- it is all very hard to bear but great peace falls upon our hearts and theirs together.
Will you give my love to Lily and Margaret, and to your brother Richard?* I feel very near to you all.
I could not help
going to you if I were not held here, but my heart's love goes, dear dear Sally --
S.O.J.
Notes
1908: This date comes from the envelope accompanying the letter, addressed to Shady Hill. in Cambridge, MA, was the Norton family residence.
On the front of the envelope is a note in another hand: "Ans. Wreath acknowledged."
your father: Norton's father, Charles Eliot Norton, died on 21 October 1908.
Ashfield: The Norton summer residence in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.
Lily and Margaret, and to your brother Richard: Sara Norton's siblings. See Norton in Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Norton Family, recipient. Letters Received by the Norton Family. 5 letters to Sara Norton; [1897-1908]. MS Am 1088.1 (870-874). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College, with assistance from Tanner Brossart.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
Dear Friend
I shall mail you with this the book.* Gertrude* says that the day they came in I was chained to my chair three hours and a half and read it right through. I did read it through but took no count of the time. It seemed as if some other me had done it and I liked the other me better than me self -- I trust you are heartily well and not overtired [ moving ? ]{,} the which I presume you have done [ and corrected ] wish you were back on the hill{,}* these days are so perfect. I am getting into the groove and am heartily well
Notes
book: Collyer often omits periods in this letter. I have supplied them where they seem necessary.
Collyer's book, Some Memories, appeared in 1908.
Gertrude: Collyer's daughter-in-law. See Collyer in Key to Correspondents.
hill: Fields's summer residence was on Thunderbolt Hill in Manchester by the Sea.
Sarah.: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Jewett's poem, "The Gloucester Mother," appeared in McClure's Magazine in October 1908, p. 703. It was the final known publication in her lifetime.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 11: mss FI 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Willa Cather to Sarah Orne Jewett
82 Washington Place [New York City]
October 24th [1908]
Dear Miss Jewett;
Your letter reached me on a gloomy and tired day and such a new heart as it gave me. It is so true that "great worries make little frets", and that worried people become sour and disposed to find faults. Let me take that as a rebuke, whether you meant it so or not, for it is a rebuke that will do me good. The fact that both you and Mrs. Fields* felt vitality in the first chapters of Mrs.Ward's story* has cheered me mightily. I am sending you a letter from her in which she outlines the rest
of the story. I am now ransacking libraries to find material on divorce for her. I sent her off a bundle of pamphlets yesterday.
I knew Mr. Norton's death* would be a sorrow to both you and Mrs. Fields, and I thought of you both when I saw the headlines announcing it. Mrs. Fields is the only one left who can evoke that vanished time that was so much nobler than this. How she does evoke it! I think it never had much reality for me until that afternoon when I first went to her house on Charles Street, and she sat in the window with the fine broad river and a quiet sunset behind her. It was the first time in my life that I ever felt that
we had any past -- of that kind -- of our very own, and I went out with an exultant feeling of
What joy I have had from "The Singing Shepherd,"* which you marked and tied up for me with your own hands. I love "Blue Succory" and "An Autumn Bird" and "Winter Lilacs." But I think "Still in Thy Love I Trust" is perhaps the most beautiful.*
That is one of the complete things that give one such complete and utter satisfaction. And then there is dear "Little Guinever,"* that is so like a song in some Elizabethan play. How really gay that is, and how it sings.
I feel sure that you are both back in Charles Street by this, and I am hopeful that Mrs. Fields is getting joy out of these soft warm autumn days. "The Gloucester Mother" was copied in the N. Y. Times,* and when I was on the train going up to New Haven to spend Saturday and Sunday of last week, I saw a dear old lady cut the verses out of the paper with a hair pin!
Miss Lewis* and I are enjoying our apartment more every day, although we lead so dreary, idle lives in it. Mrs. Fields, I know
will exclaim when you tell her that so far we have largely fended for ourselves and have managed to get our own breakfast and luncheon and, about three days a week, our dinner. We dine at the Brevoort* on other nights and have a maid come in to clean two days a week. There are good reasons why we should each of us practise reasonable economy this winter, and cooking does take one's mind away from office troubles. These latter cares will, we hope, be somewhat lighter after the middle of November. Meanwhile, we shall have a pretty thorny path to tread until then.
The sales for October were 10,000 more copies than last October, and November has started well.*
I have just finished the page proofs of my story in the December number.* I am afraid you wont like it, dear Lady. The scent of the tube-rose* seems to cling to it still. It rather screams, and I cant feel
There was something heady in the wind that blew up from Mexico. I make bold to send this scorned tale (Mr. McClure says it is all introduction) and I pray you cast your eye upon it in some empty half hour. It is about a place a weary long way from South Berwick.
I hope the size of this packet will not frighten you. A thousand good wishes and much love goes with it to you and to Mrs. Fields. Are you rested by this, I wonder, and is your anxiety for Mrs. Fields quite over? I hope so. Good night, Dear Lady.
Willa
Notes
Mrs. Fields ... Mrs.Ward's story: Annie Adams Fields and Mrs. Humphry Ward. See Key to Correspondents. Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel serial, The Testing of Diana Mallory ran for a year in Harper's Monthly, beginning in November 1907 and concluding in October 1908. The novel was published as Diana Mallory in 1908.
Mr. Norton's death: Charles Eliot Norton died 21 October 1908 . See Key to Correspondents.
her verses to the Charles River ... "The Singing Shepherd," ... "Blue Succory" ... "An Autumn Bird" ... "Winter Lilacs" ... "Still in Thy Love I Trust" ..."Little Guinever": All of these poems, except "An Autumn Bird" appear in Fields's collection, The Singing Shepherd (1895). However, "The Bird of Autumn" is included.
"The Gloucester Mother" ... N. Y. Times: Jewett's "The Gloucester Mother" first appeared in McClure's Magazine (31:702) in October 1908. The poem also appeared in the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, October 17, 1908, p. 1, with slight textual variations.
Miss Lewis: Edith Lewis (1882-1972) was an editor at McClure's Magazine and managing editor of Every Week Magazine. After meeting in 1903, Lewis and Cather became domestic partners until Cather's death in 1947.
Brevoort: According to the Westview News, the Hotel Brevoort, in New York City, was built in 1845 by the Brevoort family and demolished in 1954.
December number: "On the Gulls' Road" appeared in the December 1908 issue of McClure's Magazine.
tube-rose: Wikipedia says: "The tuberose is a night-blooming plant native to Mexico, as is every other known species of Polianthes. It grows in elongated spikes up to 45 cm (18 in) long that produce clusters of fragrant waxy white flowers that bloom from the bottom towards the top of the spike. It has long, bright green leaves clustered at the base of the plant and smaller, clasping leaves along the stem."
Mr. McClure and Mr. Burlingame: For Sidney S. McClure, see Key to Correspondents. Wikipedia says: "Edward Livermore Burlingame (born in Boston on 30 May 1848; died in New York City on 15 November 1922) was a United States writer and editor.... [I]n 1886 [he] was appointed founding editor-in-chief of Scribner's Magazine, where he served until his resignation in 1914."
Jewell and Stout identify the story Cather sent to Jewett as "The Enchanted Bluff."
Chaucer: Wikipedia says: "Geoffrey Chaucer ... (c. 1343 - 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages."
cow-boy saddle ... Spanish model: Wikipedia confirms the Spanish origins of the "cowboy" or western saddle.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University: Sarah Orne Jewett additional correspondence, 1868-1930, MS Am 1743.1, (15) Cather, Willa, 1873-1947. 3 letters; 1908 & [n.d.]. A transcription appears in The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013) by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, pp. 115-7.
This new transcription and the annotations are by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Sara Norton
[October 28, 1908]*
Dearest Sally -- oh thank you thank you dear for this note. You are always in our hearts, but I need not tell you so. Dear Mrs. Fields* is much stronger in these last two days but she feels very sad. I can see that her mind is full of that beautiful [ group corrected ] of friends whom she almost alone remembers all together eager with their love of books and of life -- We must
be all that we can be to her and for her.
I shall be in Cambridge tomorrow (since I can feel that she can be left for midday --) at the Chapel,* and this is after [a all so written ] a kind of comfort --
S.O.J.
Notes
1908: This date comes from the envelope accompanying the letter, addressed to Shady Hill. in Cambridge, MA, was the Norton family residence.
Mrs. Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Chapel: Probably, Jewett refers to a memorial service for Norton's father, who died on 21 October 1908. See Norton in Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Norton Family, recipient. Letters Received by the Norton Family. 5 letters to Sara Norton; [1897-1908]. MS Am 1088.1 (870-874). Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College, with assistance from Tanner Brossart.
Annie Trumbull Slosson to Sarah Orne Jewett
Dear Sarah Orne Jewett
You just escaped another letter of congratulation on that poem in McClure! I was just going to write when the thought came to me that perhaps it was the work of years ago and it might hurt to think too much about it. It had the sea in it and I liked it.
I was more than glad to have your letter. Again and again I have thought
of writing, but refrained swiftly on your account. I am so sorry you cannot write for us. I miss it more than I can tell you. And I know how you miss it.
But it will come back. I know it will. If you could at least find those lost stories!
Yes, I write a little, principally goody-goody sketches. I have brought out two books* the past year, but you would not care for them.
One was made up of true stories, the first I ever wrote, sketches of plain folk I have known. I called it Simples from the Master's garden. Two dear old servants, with black faces and white souls were told of in it and some other simple saints. I would send it to you were I not afraid you would think you must acknowledge and say something pleasing about it. Then a publisher asked [ lean ? ] to make a small book of two magazine tales of mine, each laid in the White Mts, for sale to
[ Page 4 ]
jaded tourists this last summer, and I consented. One was an Atlantic story ^"a dissatisfied soul"^ which came out two years ago and which greatly interested me as I wrote it, the other was trash to me. I may send both to you, as we say in New England I don't know as I will and don't know as I will.
I was seventy in May and so ought to stop scribbling perhaps.
I have [ never seen ? ] the Hampshire Sketches though I was [ fond ? ] of M'lle Ixe* years ago. As I read your praise of them and characterization of their style
[ Page 5 on letterhead ]
and charm I [ feel ? ] a keen longing to go back and begin again and try to write that way. Do you know the [ feeling ?] ? At seventy it hurts a little.
I went to Florida last winter for the first time without my comrade* of long years. [ Gripe ? ] sent me and I took a niece along. I went to a new place with no old associations. I may go again in January.
Good bye. I wish I might see you face to face. I love you,
Notes
1908: Penciled in another hand at the top center of page 1: Poem: "The Gloucester Mother". Jewett's poem first appeared in McClure's Magazine, October 1908.
Associated with this letter is an envelope addressed to Jewett care of Mrs. James T. Fields in Manchester by the Sea, MA, and forwarded to 148 Charles St., Boston, cancelled on 28 October 1908.
two books: Slosson's two recent books were: Simples from the Master's Garden (1907) and
A Dissatisfied Soul -- A Tale of the White Mountains (1908).
Hampshire Sketches ...M'lle Ixe: Mademoiselle Ixe (1891) is a novel by Lanoe Falconer, pen name of British fiction writer Mary Elizabeth Hawker (1848-1908). Her 1907 book was Old Hampshire Vignettes. Wikipedia.
comrade: Wikipedia suggests that this comrade was Slosson's widowed brother-in-law, William Cowper Prime (1825-1905). Prime was an art historian who shared Slosson's interest in entomology.
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 199. I. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward to Annie Adams Fields
TRING.
My dear Mrs Fields
Whenever Mr and Mrs Hooper* appear our welcome will be ready for them. I have told the servants to send on their cards, & I hope very much that they will come down to us at Stocks for a night -- There is no chance I fear of our being in town before Christmas, but Stocks is so near that it ^is^ almost as easy to come to us there, as to dine in town, -- especially since we have become possessors, or rather [ hirers ? ] of a motor! -- We have just got back into the dear rebuilt [ or ? ] transmogrified house. It is much prettier and more convenient ^than of old^ & I hope the newness will soon subside! -- I have just been
writing my letter of sympathy to [ dear ? ] Sally* -- How thankful I was that we had that [ last ? ] evening at Shady Hill in May, & for the tender & gracious [ memories ? ] it leaves. Mr Norton was quite himself then, though so frail, and the remembrance of him standing on the threshold, as we left, smiling gently at us, so kind, and yet already so far away, will never leave me --
I think of you now as back in the Charles St house. It is so good to hear from Sarah* that you are really the better for the summer. -- I do hope the winter will do nothing to take away the gain.
We have been very busy getting into Stocks & are now fairly settled, but all our home-coming has been darkened for us by the grave illness of my dear sister Julia Huxley.* She is very, very ill, & one hangs upon the news from day to day, & week to week. It is such a tragedy! In seven years she has created a great
Mary A. Ward
Notes
Hooper: Probably William and Elsie Alice Perkins Hooper (1867-1945). Richard Cary notes that William Hooper was "a Boston cotton mills, mining, and railway executive. Alice Perkins Hooper maintained a home in Boston and a cottage in Manchester-by-the-Sea, where she entertained many of the women in the Fields-Jewett circle. Helen Bell characterized her house as the only salon in Massachusetts."
Sally: Sarah Norton. See Key to Correspondents. Her father, Charles Eliot Norton, died 21 October 1908.
Ward has cross written on the first 6 lines of this page, and the transcription of these lines as well as of the cross-writing is more than usually uncertain.
Sarah.: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Julia Huxley: Julia Huxley (1862- 29 November 1908). Her cause of death was cancer.
Diana: Ward's 1908 novel, Diana Mallory in the U.S., The Testing of Diana Mallory in the U.K.
Ward's next novel was Daphne (first American title, Marriage à la Mode).
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda: mss FI 5637, Box 64, Ward, Mary Augusta (Arnold), 14 pieces. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett possibly intended for an unknown recipient*
The music -- the thing that carries the poet along -- is not always there. If it were shortened the weaker and more difficult passages left out, it would give the others more force set free their beautiful simplicities. It does not quite bear such length as it now has.
Notes
Jewett wrote this passage using both sides of a small envelope that was cancelled at Fenway Station, Boston, on Nov. 3, 1908. The envelope is addressed to Sarah Orne Jewett, 148 Charles St. Boston, Mass.
This text is from the Maine Women Writer's Collection, University of New England, Letters from Sarah Orne Jewett to Annie Fields. corr057-soj-af-06.
Henry Mills Alden to Sarah Orne Jewett
[ Begin letterhead ]
Editorial Rooms, Harper's Magazine
Harper & Brothers
Franklin Square, New York.
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Miss Jewett:
Even now, before the winter is actually upon us, we are planning the spring and summer numbers of the Magazine. May we not hope to have the pleasure of seeing one or more short stories by you with a view to possible use during the coming season?
As you know we prefer stories of about 5000 words in length, and we shall be most happy if you can place a story in our hands of consideration within the next
month or two.
Trusting that you will find it possible to send us something even before that time, we are
[ signed H. M. Alden ]
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett
148 Charles Street,
Boston, Massachusetts.
Notes
The typescript of this letter is held by the Houghton Library of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. bMS Am 1743 Box 1, 4. Letters to Sarah Orne Jewett.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Robert Collyer to Annie Adams Fields
201 West 55th Street
New York
[ End letterhead ]
Dear Lady Lass
Thanks for the good letter, and the "piece" about the memories,* also so good that I could not want or think of a better -- Gertrude* has had one of her bad times but is here along this morning to breakfast Laus Deo* -- I dreamed I should pass the milestone* this year quietly{,} just smile at old Father Time and see him smile but the Unitarian Club proposes to take him by the forelock at its first meeting on the 18th, give a dinner and reception to and for me, at the Manhattan with congratulations and the "haith"* of good wishes in which Andrew Carnegie* will join them{,} bless the [ mark corrected ] and the man -- This will be 20 days before I am born Dec 8th, 1823 at 20 minutes past 2 in the morning Greenwich time and you see that will let me meet the Ancient quietly all the same at 20 minutes
past seven Washington time --
I have a quarrel with Andrew of old standing -- The restless Clans came leaping over the border in 1319 A D doing much mischief, and Lady Percy* reports to the government in London they burnt her town of Ilkley -- But -- It will be in order if the humor takes me to say one of Ilkley will forgive and kiss and be friends henceforth.
I think He makes true the ancient Saga "The younger son of the All Father is King of the Forge{.}"*
Notes
memories: Collyer's book, Some Memories, appeared in 1908. It appears Fields has sent him a review his book. Fields is not yet known to have published a review, herself. Judith Roman points out that the Huntington Library holds a manuscript entitled, "Memoir of Robert Collyer," Box 3, Env. 14.
Gertrude: Collyer's daughter-in-law. See Collyer in Key to Correspondents.
Laus Deo: Latin: Praise be to God.
milestone: Collyer's birthday was 8 December.
haith: This transcription is uncertain. Perhaps Collyer intends a dialect pronunciation of "height?" Or perhaps he actually intends the Scottish meaning, "curse."
Carnegie: Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who funded a library, in part honoring Collyer, in Ilkley, Yorkshire, UK.
Lady Percy: Collyer refers to the Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 14th - 16th centuries. Probably, Lady Percy was Eleanor FitzAlan (1284-1328), wife of Henry de Percy (1273-1314).
Forge: This is the epigraph of Collyer's poem, "The Legend of Two Kings" in Unity 72 (18 December 1913) pp. 249-50. In this publication, the poem is said to have been read at an Illinois convention of blacksmiths. The poem had appeared earlier in The Modern Elocutionist or Popular Speaker (1900, pp. 149-53) by Guy Steeley, where it is said to have been given to "the Hebrew Brethren of New York for their great Purim ball ... for the honor and glory .... of his old craft -- the blacksmith."
Though this is not certain, it seems likely that Collyer quotes or paraphrases from a translation of the Völsunga Saga. See The Younger Edda in which Regin, a youngest son becomes a blacksmith.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 11: mss FI 1-5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Annie Adams Fields to Lilian Aldrich
Dear Lily:
Your pretty gifts this morning and your note of affectionate remembrance gave me real pleasure. The marmalade* was pronounced the best of its race but however that may be, the posy and the cards and your note were surely loving landmarks to hold when the marmalade is no more!
Annie Fields.
Notes
marmalade: Fields may have written "marmelade" both times.
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 Willa Cather
South Berwick, Friday, 27th November, 1908.
My dear Willa, -- I was glad to get your letter last night, and I was sorry to miss the drive to the station and a last talk about the story and other things; but I was too tired -- "spent quite bankrupt!" It takes but little care about affairs, and almost less true pleasure, to make me feel overdone, and I have to be careful -- it is only stupid and disappointing, but there it is, as an old friend of mine often says dolefully. And I knew that I was disappointing you, besides disappointing and robbing myself, which made it all the harder. It would have been such a good piece of a half hour! Emerson was very funny once, Mrs. Fields has told me, when he said to a friend, "You formerly bragged of ill-health, sir!"* But indeed I don't brag, I only deplore and often think it is a tiresome sort of mortification. I begin to think this is just what makes old age so trying to many persons. It seemed a very long little journey, and I could hardly sit up in my place in the car. I have never been very strong, but always capable of "great pulls."
I expect to be here until Monday the seventh, unless dear Mrs. Fields should need me. I have just had a most dear and cheerful note from her, and we spoke by telephone last evening. She wrote me about the pink roses.
And now I wish to tell you -- the
first of this letter being but a preface -- with what deep
happiness and recognition I have read the "McClure" story,* --
night before last I found it with surprise and delight. It
made me feel very near to the writer's young and loving heart.
You have drawn your two figures of the wife and her husband
with unerring touches and wonderful tenderness for her. It
makes me the more sure that you are far on your road toward a
fine and long story of very high class. The lover is as well
done as he could be when a woman writes in the man's
character, -- it must always, I believe, be something of a
masquerade. I think it is safer to write about him as you did
about the others, and not try to be he! And you could almost
have done it as yourself -- a woman could love her in that
same protecting way -- a woman could even care enough to wish
to take her away from such a life, by some means or other. But
oh, how close -- how tender -- how true the feeling is! the
sea air blows through the very letters on the page. Do not
hurry too fast in these early winter days, -- a quiet hour is
worth more to you than anything you can do in it.
Notes
Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Annie
Fields tells this anecdote twice in Authors
and Friends (1897). In "Glimpses of
Emerson," she reports: "After an agreeable conversation with a
gentleman who had suffered from ill-health Mr. Emerson
remarked, 'You formerly bragged of bad health,
sir. I trust you are all right now'." (p. 96). In
"Whittier," the gentleman is revealed to be John Greenleaf
Whittier, and the quotation is rearranged: "I hope you are
feeling well, sir! I believe you formerly bragged
of bad health" (p. 309).
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 Annie Adams Fields
South Berwick
Maine
Dearest Annie
I have just parted from "Billy"* who sends his love to you, and I told him the kind of plot you had and let me have for our coming to spend Thanksgiving Day with you -- and he was so pleased and only wished he could have seen you -- it was always so much to see you! He was very interesting last night after we got home -- he had been in Washington nearly a week at the Y.M.C.A. convention, and told me of such interesting men and their speeches -- and much besides. One of the men was named Steiner a Hungarian by birth, a professor in the Iowa State College. He has written a book called The Emigrant's Trail* (I think that was it.) He said that there were just as many Puritans and Pilgrims coming every year now and in all this great rush to our country we knew the dangers but the menace was not in them but in us! That it was in our hands. It seems that the Association has already begun to send workers over to Italy and Hungary etc. to know the people at home before they come in order to work better among them after they get here. I did so much wish for you last evening and I shall try to remember more than I can now -- but I really thought this man Steiner would be a person for Miss Schuyler* to be reminded of in order to think about the foreigners and some possible work of a large sort.
The day at Exeter was very comfortable and pleasant -- 14 at dinner -- Uncle Will* very well -- My ink is low and this is a flinty pencil. I send you Mr. Higginson's note* -- please lay it on my desk. What an exquisite day yesterday -- it was beautiful coming down in the train -- and today is shining bright but there is a little snow that fell yesterday morning early.
Pin*
Notes
"Billy": This person is mentioned in letters, possibly as early as 1881, but more clearly from 1896 on. His identity remains unknown. Possibly he is Jewett's distant cousin William Elbert Furber, son of Jewett correspondent, Cynthia Elvira Irwin Furber.
Y.M.C.A. convention: The International Y.M.C.A. Convention was held in Washington, D.C. on November 22-25, 1908.
Steiner ... The Emigrant's Trail: Edward Alfred Steiner (1866-1956) was a professor of religion at Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA. Born to a Jewish family in Slovakia, he immigrated to the United States in 1886, where he pursued the Tolstoyan teachings of non-violence and toleration he had embraced at the University of Heidelberg. In the U.S., he converted to Christianity and attended Oberlin College. He joined the faculty at Grinnell College in 1903. He published On the Trail of the Immigrant in 1900.
Miss Schuyler: Georgina Schuyler (1841-1923) lived with her sister Louisa Lee Schuyler (1837-1926) on Park Avenue in New York City. Wikipedia says: "Louisa Schuyler ... was an early American leader in charitable work, particularly noted for founding the first nursing school in the United States." Georgina was her partner in her philanthropic work. The New York Times (May 6, 1903, p. 9) reports that Georgina Schuyler donated the bronze plaque with the sonnet, "The New Colossus," by her friend Emma Lazarus, that appears at the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
Uncle Will: It seems likely Jewett refers to Dr. William Gilman Perry (1823-1910), her maternal uncle. See Key to Correspondents.
Mr. Higginson's note: This could be Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), but this is not certain.
Pin: Pinny Lawson was a Jewett nickname used between her and Annie Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
This transcription appears in Nancy Ellen Carlock's 1939 Boston University thesis, S.O.J. A Biography of Sarah Orne Jewett. The manuscript is held by The Morgan Library and Museum: Record ID: 193455. Accession number: MA 3943.
Notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Willa Cather
148 Charles Street, Boston, Mass.,
Sunday, 13th of December.
My dear Willa, -- I have been
thinking about you and hoping that things are going well. I
cannot help saying what I think about your writing and its
being hindered by such incessant, important, responsible work
as you have in your hands now. I do think that it is
impossible for you to work so hard and yet have your gifts
mature as they should -- when one's first working power has
spent itself nothing ever brings it back just the same, and I
do wish in my heart that the force of this very year could
have gone into three or four stories. In the "Troll-Garden"
the Sculptor's Funeral* stands alone a head higher than the
rest, and it is to that level you must hold and take for a
starting-point. You are older now than that book in general;
you have been living and reading and knowing new types; but if
you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all,
have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing
things not much better than you did five years ago. This you
are anxiously saying to yourself! but I am wondering how to
get at the right conditions. I want you to be surer of your
backgrounds, -- you have your Nebraska life, -- a child's
Virginia, and now an intimate knowledge of what we are pleased
to call the "Bohemia" of newspaper and magazine-office life.*
These are uncommon equipment, but you don't see them yet quite
enough from the outside, -- you stand right in the middle of
each of them when you write, without having the standpoint of
the looker-on who takes them each in their relations to
letters, to the world.* Your good schooling and your knowledge
of "the best that has been thought and said in the world," as
Matthew Arnold put it,* have helped you, but these you wish
and need to deepen and enrich still more. You must find a
quiet place near the best companions (not those who admire and
wonder at everything one does, but those who know the good
things with delight!). You do need reassurance, -- every
artist does! -- but you need still more to feel "responsible
for the state of your conscience" (your literary conscience,
we can just now limit that quotation to), and you need to
dream your dreams and go on to new and more shining ideals, to
be aware of "the gleam" and to follow it;* your vivid,
exciting companionship in the office must not be your
audience, you must find your own quiet centre of life, and
write from that to the world that holds offices, and all
society, all Bohemia; the city, the country -- in short, you
must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that
all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength
in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is
only observation; sentiment falls to sentimentality -- you can
write about life, but never write life itself. And to write
and work on this level, we must live on it -- we must at least
recognize it and defer to it at every step. We must be
ourselves, but we must be our best selves. If we have patience
with cheapness and thinness, as Christians must, we must know
that it is cheapness and not make believe about it. To
work in silence and with all one's heart, that is the writer's
lot; he is the only artist who must be a solitary, and yet
needs the widest outlook upon the world. But you have been
growing I feel sure in the very days when you felt most
hindered, and this will be counted to you. You need to have
time to yourself and time to read and add to your
recognitions. I do not know when a letter has grown so long
and written itself so easily, but I have been full of thought
about you. You will let me hear again from you before long?*
Notes
"Troll-Garden" the Sculptor's Funeral: Willa Cather's
(1876-1947) collection of short stories, The Troll Garden,
appeared in 1905 and included her short story, "The Sculptor's
Funeral." In Willa Cather, Sharon O'Brien quotes
from an unpublished May 1905 letter Jewett had written to
Witter Bynner at McClure's after reading The Troll
Garden: "I cannot help wishing that a writer of such
promise chose rather to show the hopeful, constructive yes --
even the pleasant side of unpleasant things and disappointed
lives! Is not this what we are bound to do in our own
lives and still more bound to do as writers? I shrink
more and more from anything that looks like giving up the
game" (343). This was written before Jewett had met
Cather.
Nebraska life ...child's Virginia ...newspaper and
magazine-office life: Cather was born in 1873 and
spent her early childhood near Winchester, VA. In 1883,
her family moved to the area of Red Cloud, NB. After
graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1896, having
written for newspapers during college, Cather continued
journalism in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1906, she moved to New
York City, after accepting an editor's position at McClure's
Magazine.
to the world: In her preface to Alexander's Bridge (1922), Cather writes: "One of the few really helpful words I ever heard from an older writer, I had from Sarah Orne Jewett when she said to me: "Of course, one day you will write about your own country. In the meantime, get all you can. One must know the world so well before one can know the parish."
Matthew Arnold: See Matthew Arnold's preface to Literature and Dogma, where he defines culture as the best that has been "known and said" or "thought and known." See above notes on Arnold.
"responsible for the state of your conscience": The source of this quotation, if it has one, has not been discovered.
"the gleam": possibly referring to "the visionary gleam" in William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" (1807). Or perhaps, Jewett refers to Tennyson's poem, "Merlin and the Gleam" (1889).
before long: Sharon O'Brien in Willa Cather:
The Emerging Voice (1987) says that this probably was
"the most important letter Cather ever received" (344), and
she summarizes some of what Cather said in her reply: "Cather
... felt like a broken circuit from which all the energy was
slowly ebbing. She told Jewett that she was a trapeze
artist trying to catch the right bar .... With her
energy absorbed by work she didn't want to be doing, after a
day at the office she simply didn't have the resources to
write fiction.... [W]hen she tried to write a story she felt
like a newborn baby every time....
"McClure had told her ... that she would never be much
good at writing stories: she was a good magazine executive and
should be satisfied with that.... [S]he often thought he was
right. She knew that she was a good editor, but that
only required application and discipline; being a better
writer of fiction required something more, but she didn't know
what that was or where to find it. And she hadn't
learned anything about writing since The Troll Garden,
she confessed. How could she possibly be destined to do
something at which she was so inept" (292-3)?
In a 1913 interview, Cather said, "I dedicated my novel O Pioneers! to Miss Jewett because I had talked over some of the characters in it with her one day at Manchester, and in this book I tried to tell the story of the people as truthfully and simply as if I were telling it to her by word of mouth" (The Kingdom of Art, 448).
This letter appears in Annie Fields, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), Transcribed by Annie Adams Fields, with notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Dorothy Mary Ward to Sarah Orne Jewett
TRING.
Dearest Miss Jewett
This very morning there has come the most delightful letter from you, and I want to make use of wet Sabbath peace (!) to answer it at once -- though indeed I have had an envelope addressed to you -- with a photograph inside lying on my table for a fortnight, & I was anyhow going to write to you for Christmas. Thank you lovingly for this dear letter, -- for the wishing to talk about Sally* to me, that I care so much for you to have felt, and for the warm, delightful things you have said about the new story -- I took the letter straight in to Mother, and you don't know what pleasure & encouragement your words have given her. Just now, when the "plot is thickening" & all the difficulties of the new story coming to a head, it
helps her very particularly to know what you think of the opening chapters. It was also extra good to have anything cheering to show her just in these days, when she is so very sad. You did not know that on the very day on which you wrote, we were laying Mother's beloved sister, Julia Huxley,* to rest -- in the lovely little hill-side cemetery in Surrey, where Watts* designed & painted the little chapel. -- It was a funeral never to be forgotten by those who loved my aunt -- for the outward & visible signs it brought us of the love in which our dear one was held. You know that she founded & created the [ great ? ] school, which -- starting 6 years ago with 4 or 5 girls, has now 83, and the most beautiful group of school buildings you could find anywhere in England. All the [ elder ? ] girls were there -- 40 of them -- in their simple [ blue-eye ? ] frocks & school hats, just as she would have liked -- their young
faces awed, hushed, at first, & then all breaking down at the last sentences by the grave. All the mistresses were there, & all the servants -- & many, many friends. And her poor husband, boys! it was piteous to see them -- & my Mother's drawn face. She had only been ill 4 months -- & only known to be fatally ill for 2 months, & oh! such a cruel, relentless disease! -- At the end one could only give thanks that she was released -- even though, on the other hand, one could feel nothing but bewildered rebellion that such a thing could be -- such a pouring out of a life still young -- only 45 -- & so wanted, so ineffably wanted -- beneficent & lovely in all its ways & all its effects.
I cannot tell you what a night-mare of an autumn it has been for my Mother -- since the great doctor's final verdict at the end of September -- "no operation possible !" For this sister & she have been bound together by a tie peculiarly tender, intimate & lovely. And to see her suffer so! -- to watch her week by week -- for week by week Mother went down to see her, even if [ she ? ] to only be with her 5 minutes -- slipping down the path of life & out gradually into the great unknown. The pity of it! -- my poor Mother -- it is the worst thing that has happened to her for many, many years, & I am afraid it will [ tell ? ] on her for a long time. Yet I cannot tell you, too, how wonderful he has been through it all! -- bending her mind by sheer force of will [ unrecognized word ]
to her book* -- to the Play-centres -- to the old people in the village here -- to the planning of the garden for next year -- -- to all that Arnold & Janet & I were doing -- with a heart tortured meanwhile & her thoughts by the bedside on the Surrey hills. -- The day after my aunt died (Mother had been with her the last 4 days, tho' there was never any room for her at the School -- that was one of the sad things too -- & she had to put up two or three miles away at a tiny village inn & go back & forth) -- Mother brought the 2 youngest children back here -- Margaret, the little 9-year-old girl, the last comer, who was her mother's darling joy, & Aldous, the 13-year-old boy in his first "half" at Eton, poor little
fellow, & I returned post haste from Dublin, where I had been for 3 days with my dear friend Lady Lyttelton.* -- The 2nd boy, a dear of 19, came the next day from Oxford (his first term at Balliol, where his elder brother is too -- both with Scholarships, oh! how proud -- how justly proud she was of them! ) -- & we tried our best to love & comfort them. I took them to the funeral from here, & brought them back. The little Eton boy is very sensitive & brooding & white, & feels it deeply -- & dumbly! like a boy does! The little girl is too young -- such a child, all spirits & free, does not, cannot realise what she has lost -- we alas! realise it so fully for her -- we shall have them all here for Xmas -- Trev & Margaret are here now, tho' Aldous
4
want back to Eton for the last fortnight of term. Their old faithful German nursery-govey is here too & a great help. -- Two years ago my Aunt, finding the sheer practical work of the School growing almost unmanageable for one person, took a partner, Mrs Burton-Brown,* a rather well-known classical lecturer, & this lady is going to keep in the School now. But of course it means the breaking-up of the home for my uncle & the children & their plans are entirely unsettled at present. I have written rather at length about our trouble, but I knew you & Mrs Fields* wld feel the deepest sympathy with Mother in her loss. -- It was very hard for my aunt Ethel* starting when she did -- and we all went to Euston to see her off for America, to try & cheer her up, tho' it wasn't very possible under the circumstances. But the lectures had been
fixed up many months before & she working on them for ever so long, & Mother felt it was wise to persuade her to stick to the plan -- esp. as my Aunt Judy had been so, so keen for Ethel to go to America. And she could alas! do nothing by staying -- no one could. -- To our great relief we heard by cable ^(from someone else!)^ that the first lecture had been a great success -- so we do indeed hope the others will be too.
-- -- I just loved to hear all you told me about Sally. Only yesterday I posted a letter to her begging her, if she really is coming over in January, to come as early as she can, so that we may claim her here first for all that remains of that month -- because, alas, as Fate will have it, we must go to London about the 1st of Feb., & we have not even half a spare-room there! -- the 2 that there were having had to be mopped up for mother's working-room & our two
5
Secretaries' office, years ago. It really distresses me, selfishly & personally, that Sally' visit shld have to be just in those months, January, February, March -- because they are for us always the most London-y months of the year, and I had so longed to have her for one long solid month at least, here, in our dear, beautiful Stocks. But we shall be here all January, so that, as I have said to her, if she can get over by about the 12th, we shld still have 3 weeks or so of her dear company here. That is, always supposing she is meaning to come to us first, which of course I am not sure of! -- Yes indeed, how that well-known figure at Shady Hill must be missed! and what a different life it will be
now for the daughters! I have thought so much of it all. And you can imagine how glad Mother & I are that the good fates took us just this year, & not later, to Shady Hill. We shall never forget that last evening we spent there -- One felt all the evening that it was the last time -- & the happiness of being there was sobered & made more precious by that realisation. -- I had a dear letter from Lily* this past week, & was so relieved that she [ did ? ] say in it that on the whole Sally was well.
. . . While I was writing this, this morning -- Mother came in & when I told her to whom I was writing, her dear face brightened & she said -- "Oh tell dear Miss Jewett that I am of course aghast* at her having been allowed to see the first chapters!! -- but that I love to know she likes them so much -- that I do indeed
6
hope the rest of it will interest her equally much." -- -- And she went on to say that I was to [ tell you ? ] she was now rather low about it, because all the people in it are turning out to be horrid ! -- but she is struggling to make the Bostonian, Elsie French, be a more gracious & kindly person than the rest! -- be rather a comfort to the reader, in fact! Its just all being very contrary & difficult just now -- you know how books sometimes get out of hand like wayward ponies! -- Well -- I think I must put a forcible stop to this too long letter, as I don't want to weary you, dear friend. I want you to have
this photograph that I took -- 3-4 years ago? -- of dear Madame Blanc* & mother on the lawn here. I never did send it you, did I? -- and I want you to know that I have been wearing one dear paste brooch constantly, that it makes me think of you just ever so often. I have been remiss at writing -- forgive me -- but I have not been un-busy this autumn. Since the middle of September we have moved back into this house & re-furnished it from top to toe & I have got together & started an almost entirely new household. So that the days have been absorbed in things domestic, to a great extent. It is so delicious now, I do wish you could see it -- I have such a dear sitting-room of my own, next my bedroom, & oh! would 'nt it be good to have a [ room ? ] with you in it! --- Will you give
8
our dear love to Mrs Fields -- I shld be proud if she wld care to see this letter -- & tell her how greatly relieved & rejoiced we were -- & freshly are, by your account -- to know that she had really quite got well over her October illness. What with one not being in London & our absorption in Auntie Judy's illness, and Mrs ^Hooper^ [ deletion ] not being able to go about, we have never yet met her, I'm sorry to say! tho' she & Mother exchanged letters. She held out hopes of returning in the spring. -- The little art couple* (I forget their names at the moment) came by the Settlement long ago & saw the Warden, Mr Gladstone, while we were away & introduced them to Mr Patrick Geddes* of
the Chelsea University Hall Settlement, & I heard of a little reception being given for them there. But I am sorry to say tho' we wracked our brains we did not think of a way in which we cld help them financially at the Settlement, as its very little available money for teaching was allotted for the winter --. so much of the lecturing & teaching is voluntary. I do hope they are getting on all right. --
Dear Miss Jewett, may all good Christmas blessings be yours & may 1909 bring you good health & much happiness of the loveliest & most enduring kind.
-- I did so love your letter! please, please write again before too long.
Notes
Sally: Sara Norton of Shady Hill, in Cambridge, MA. Her father, Charles Eliot Norton, died on 21 October 1908. See Key to Correspondents.
In volume 2 of Mrs. Humphry Ward's A Writer's Recollections (1918), she recalls her visit to New England in 1908:
Then Philadelphia, where I lectured on behalf of the London Play Centers; Boston, with Mrs. Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett -- a pair of friends, gentle, eager, distinguished, whom none who loved them will forget; Cambridge, and our last sight of Charles Eliot Norton, standing to bid us farewell on the steps of Shady Hill; Hawthorne's house at Concord; and the lovely shore of Newport. The wonderful new scenes unrolled themselves day by day; kind faces and welcoming voices were always round us, and it was indeed hard to tear ourselves away.Julia Huxley: British scholar, Julia Huxley (1862-1908) founded the Prior's Field School for girls in 1902. She died of cancer. She was the mother of British novelist, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). Wikipedia. Her other three children were Julian (1887-1975), Noel/Trev (1889-1914), and Margaret (1899-1981). See Wikipedia and Mrs. Humphry Ward in Key to Correspondents for more information about the illustrious Arnold and Huxley families.
Watts: Wikipedia says the Watts Cemetery Chapel was completed in 1896. The designer was British painter and sculptor, George Frederick Watts (1817-1904).
her book ... Play centres: Mary Augusta Ward's Daphne, or 'Marriage à la Mode' appeared in 1909, with Elsie French among its characters.
Mary Augusta Ward and her daughter were leaders in the Play Centers Movement in Victorian England, to provide after school recreation and education for children of working parents.
Arnold ... Janet: Children of Mary Augusta Ward, siblings of Mary Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
Lady Lyttelton: There were several Lady Lytteltons whom Dorothy Ward might have known, but in Dublin, it seems likely she would have met British novelist and playwright, Lady Edith (Balfour) Lyttelton (1865-1948). She is remembered particularly as a friend of Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). Wikipedia.
Burton-Brown: British educator, Ethel Ann Burton-Brown (1868-1927). She served as headmistress of Prior's Field School from 1908 to 1927.
Fields: Annie Adams Fields. See Key to Correspondents.
Ethel: According to Wikipedia, English author, journalist and lecturer, Ethel Arnold (1865-1930) lectured in the United States in 1909 and 1910. This letter indicates that these lectures began in late 1908.
Lily: Elizabeth (Lily) Gaskell. See Sara Norton in Key to Correspondents.
aghast: This word is underlined twice.
Blanc: Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc. See Key to Correspondents.
Auntie Judy ... Mrs. Hooper: Presumably, Aunt Judy is Julia Huxley.
Mrs. Hooper is Elsie Alice Perkins Hooper (1867-1945). Richard Cary notes that her husband, William Hooper, was "a Boston cotton mills, mining, and railway executive. Alice Perkins Hooper maintained a home in Boston and a cottage in Manchester-by-the-Sea, where she entertained many of the women in the Fields-Jewett circle. Helen Bell characterized her house as the only salon in Massachusetts." See Mary Augusta Ward to Annie Adams Fields, 28 October 1908.
art couple: The reference to their "smallness" suggests she refers to Charles H. and Susan Marcia Oakes Woodbury. See Key to Correspondents.
Settlement: The Passmore Edwards Settlement (now Mary Ward House), founded by Mary Augusta Ward. See Key to Correspondents.
Gladstone ... Patrick Geddes: I have been able to learn little about George Edward Gladstone. He was the second warden of the Passmore Edwards Settlement in London, 1908-1912. He was married to the British artist, Grace Elizabeth Gladstone (1873-1964). See "The Passmore Edwards Settlement" in Charity Organisation Review 36 (October 1914) pp. 257-62.
Wikipedia says that Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a British biologist, sociologist and philanthropist. For information on the University Hall Settlement, see Chapter 5 of The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward (1923) by Janet Penrose Trevelyan.
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, Dorothy Mary. 1 letter; 1908. bMS Am 1743 (226).
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.
Willa Cather to Sarah Orne Jewett
82 Washington Place [New York City]
Saturday, December 19 [ 1908 ]
My Dear, Dear Miss Jewett;
Such a kind and earnest and friendly letter as you sent me! I have read it over many times. I have been in deep perplexity these last few years, and troubles that concern only one's habits of mind are such personal things that they are hard to talk about. You see I was not made to have to do with affairs -- what Mr. McClure calls "men and measures."* If I get on at that kind of work it is by going at it with the sort of energy most people have to exert only on rare occasions. Consequently I live just about as much during the day as a trapeze performer does when he is on the bars -- it's catch the right bar at the right minute, or into the net you go. I
feel all the time so dispossessed and bereft of myself. My mind is off doing trapeze work all day long and only comes back to me when it is dog tired and wants to creep into my body and sleep. I really do stand and look at it sometimes and threaten not to take it in at all -- I get to hating it so for not being any more good to me. Then reading so much poorly written matter as I have to read has a kind of deadening effect on me somehow. I know that many great and wise people have been able to do that, but I am neither large enough nor wise enough to do it without getting a kind of dread of everything that is made out of words. I feel diluted and weakened by it all the time -- relaxed, as if I ^had^ lived in a tepid bath until I shrink from either heat or cold.
I have often thought of trying to get three or four months of free-
dom a year, but you see when the planning of articles is pretty much in one person's [deleted word] ^head^ it is difficult to hand these many little details over to another person. Your mind becomes a card-catalogue of notes that are meaningless except as
Mr. McClure tells me that he does not think I will ever be able to do much at writing stories,
often think that he is right. If I have been going forward at all in the last five years, it has been progress of the head and not of the hand. At thirty-four* one ought to have some sureness in their pen point and some
But the question of work aside, one has a right to live and reflect and feel a little. When I was ^teaching^
I did. I learned more or less all the time. But now I have the feeling of standing still except for a certain kind of facility in getting the [deleted word] sort of material Mr. McClure wants. It's stiff mental exercise, but it is about as much food to live by as elaborate mental arithmetic would be. -- Of course there are interesting people and interesting things in the day's work, but it's all like going round the world in a railway train and never getting off to see anything closer. I have not a reportorial mind -- I can't get things in fleeting glimpses and I can't get any pleasure out of them. And the excitement of it doesn't stimulate me, it only wears me out.
Now the kind of life that makes one feel empty and shallow and superficial, that makes one dread to read and dread to think, can't be good for one, can it? It can't be the kind of life one was meant to live. I do think that kind of excitement does to my brain exactly what I have seen alcohol do
to men's. It seems to spread one's very brain cells apart so that they don't touch. Everything leaks out as the power does in a broken circuit.
So whether or not the Chief is right about my never doing much writing, I think one's immortal soul is to be considered a little. He thrives on this perpetual debauch, but five years ^more^ of it will make me a fat, sour, ill-tempered lady -- and fussy, worst of all! And assertive;
I have to lend a hand at home now and then, and a good salary is a good thing. Still, if I stopped working next summer I would have money [deleted word; enough muddled?] enough to live very simply for three or four years. That would give me time to pull myself together. I doubt whether I would ever write very
much -- though that is hard to tell about for sure; since I was fifteen I have not had a patch of leisure six months long. When I was on a newspaper I had one month vacation a year, and when I was teaching I had two. Still, I don't think that my pen would ever travel very fast, even along smooth roads. But I would write a little -- "and save the soul besides"* It's so foolish to live (which is always trouble enough) and not to save your soul.* It's so foolish to lose your real pleasures for the ^supposed^ pleasures of the chase -- or of the stock exchange. You remember poor Goldsmith*
"And as an hare whom horns and hounds pursue,
Pants for the place from which at first she flew"
It is really like that. I do feel like such an [a] rabbit most of the time. I dont mean that I get panic-stricken. I believe I am still called "executive" at the
office. But inside I feel like that. Isn't there a new disease, beloved by psychologists, called "split personality"?*
Of all these things and many others I long to talk to you. In lieu of so doing I have been reading again this evening "Martha's Lady."* I do think it is almost the saddest and loveliest of stories. It humbles and desolates me every time I read it -- and somehow makes me willing to begin all over and try to be good; like a whipping used to do when I was little. Perhaps after Christmas I can slip up to Boston for a day. Until then a world of love to you and all the well wishes of this season, an hundred fold warmer and more heartfelt than they are wont to be. I shall think of you and of Mrs. Fields often on Christmas Day.
Willa
Notes
Mr. McClure: Sydney S. McClure; see Key to Correspondents.
Wikipedia says: "In 1906 Cather moved to New York City after being offered a position on the editorial staff of McClure's Magazine. During her first year at McClure's she wrote a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. ... "Mary Baker G. Eddy: The Story of Her Life and the History of Christian Science" was published in McClure's in fourteen installments ..., and then in book form as The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909)." The Willa Cather Foundation Timeline indicates that Cather left McClure's in 1912.
Miss Tarbell: Wikipedia says: "Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 - January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading 'muckrakers' of the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism. She is best known for her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company,"
thirty-four: Jewell and Stout say that at the writing of this letter, Cather had just turned thirty-five.
"and save the soul besides": Near the end of The Ring and the Book (1868-9) by Robert Browning (1812-1889), appear these lines:
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.
It's so foolish to live ... and not to save your soul: Cather seems to be alluding to Matthew 16:26: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
See also Mark 8:36.
poor Goldsmith: In "The Deserted Village" (1770), Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) writes:
And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return—and die at home at last.
split personality: The 21st-century medical term for "split personality" is "Dissociative Identity Disorder ... characterized by the appearance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately show in a person's behavior."
Martha's Lady: Jewett's "Martha's Lady" was first published in Atlantic Monthly 80, pp. 523-533, in October 1897, and was collected in The Queen's Twin (1899),
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 additional correspondence, 1868-1930, MS Am 1743.1, (15) Cather, Willa, 1873-1947. 3 letters; 1908 & [n.d.]. A transcription appears in The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013) by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, pp. 117-20.
This new transcription and the annotations are by Terry Heller, Coe College.
David Douglas to Annie Adams Fields
Underlined portion filled in by hand. ]
PUBLISHER
Edinburgh Dec 19 190_
I do not like the last week of the year to pass without sending our Christmas greetings including wishes for 1909. Both our households have reason ^to Miss Jewett^* to be grateful to the protecting hand of the Almighty in the years that is rapidly waning. --
My daughter is sending (in lieu of a sketch from Nature) a view of our staircase [ containing ? ] representations of some of my friends. I wish I could have added a corner of my
little library which contains another group, in which the beautiful photograph of Mr Fields has an honored place -- (under David Masson & De Quincey) -- of course one cannot contemplate them without a feeling of sadness, but also with the blessed hope of meeting them again. --
Here am I, on the very brink of human dissolution -- yet permitted to look on their faces! I can only thank God and implore his continued protection "until" (in the words of the old hymn)* -- "all our [ deleted word ] ^wanderings^ cease, and at our Fathers loved abode our souls arrive in peace" --
Are you acquainted with the writings of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen?* I [ intend ? ] to send you a little volume containing a
a selection from his Letters made a few years ago, -- some of which will, I think, interest you. I knew him a little but was too young to know him intimately -- His friends included Dr Chalmers & Carlyle,* specimens of their correspondence are included in the volume. --
Miss Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents. Though Douglas has indicated his insertion belongs here, it is not very clear where he really wanted to put it.
David Masson ...De Quincey: Scottish author and reformer, David Mather Masson (1822-1907).
British author, Thomas Penson De Quincey (1785-1859).
old hymn: This hymn is "O God of Bethel, by whose hand."
Thomas Erskine of Linlathen: Scottish theologian, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (1788-1870). A collection of Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen appeared in 1878.
Chalmers & Carlyle: Scottish clergyman and educator, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).
Scottish author and historian, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).
enclosed: Douglas's wife was Sarah Burns Millidge (1830-1912). The enclosed small printed card reads: "Mr. & Mrs. David Douglas send their kind wishes for Christmas and the New Year." It is dated December 1908 from 22 Drummond Place, Edinburgh.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda, Box 16: mss FI 5637. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Alice Meynell to Annie Adams Fields
W.
Portman Square
[ 1908 ]*
Dear Friend,
It was a joy to see your handwriting and to know that you think as affectionately of your old guest as I do of my dear and most kind hostefs.
It would be a grief to me to think I should not see Boston again, and I still hope.
I am distrefsed to know you have been ill. I love to think of my dear Mifs Jewett* watching over you. I am sending her a copy
of Francis Thompson* because Mr, Whittemore* said he was sending you one instead of me. You are not to let her acknowledge it. She should have a rest from letters. I know she does not forget me as I do not forget her.
Many many thanks for the Shelley -- It is singularly interesting. That large-eyed portrait I never believed, but William Bell Scott* had a rather grotesque bust with a retreating chin which he held to be authentic. The chin in this West portrait* is particularly good, and the face is altogether fine.
My son* and his bride are very happy and well, settled near me. A very happy New Year, dear, dear Friend to you and your darling friend and mine.
Alice Meynell
Notes
1908: The Huntington Library believes this date is correct. The belief is supported by the marriage hear of Meynell's son, Everard and the publication of her husband's Thompson volume. See notes below.
Jewett: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Francis Thompson: Thompson (1859-1907) was British poet. It seems likely that Meynell's gift to Jewett was Selected Poems: with a Biographical Note (1908), prepared by Meynell's husband, Wilfrid Meynell.
Whittemore: American scholar and archaeologist, Thomas Whittemore (1871-1950).
Shelley: British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
William Bell Scott: Scott (1811-1890) was a Scottish painter, poet and teacher. His bust may have been the portrait bust attributed to Marianne Leigh Hunt. The "wide eyed" portrait probably was a widely circulated engraving based upon Amelia Curran's 1819 painting.
West portrait: Damian Atkinson has identified American portrait painter William Edward West (1788-1859), who produced a memorable image of Shelly.
son: Meynell's son, Everard, married the Italian-American singer, Grazia Carbone, in 1908.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda Box 47: mss FI 3301, Folder 1. Archival notes on the manuscript have not been reproduced. This letter was previously transcribed by Damian Atkinson for The Selected Letters of Alice Meynell (2013). New transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward to Annie Adams Fields
TRING.
My dear Mrs Fields
[ Thankyou so it appears ] so much for your kind thought, & cheering words of Diana.* You had ^not^ heard when you wrote of our [ irreparable ? ] loss, but you will have heard before this, and I know how you and Sarah* will have felt for us -- It is barely a month since she* passed away, and [ though ? ] her last words to me are always in my ear -- 'sweetheart! -- sweetheart! {'} -- all my last watch beside her seems to have passed in another life, another world -- We have her children here, & my poor brother-in-law. Today there is a big Xmas tree for the children, -- and I hear their merry cries in the hall -- For years she & her babes always spent Xmas here --
Every good wish to you and Sarah for the New Year, my dear friends -- I do hope the winter will deal kindly with you -- you will perhaps have heard of the success of Ethel's lectures* in New York. The news of it has been a great joy to me in this dark time -- and would have been such a joy to Judy!
I am very glad about Diana. The next story alack, will have an odious heroine & will be as much a tract as anything I have ever written. But I was much stirred by some talk I had at Philadelphia on the divorce problem, & I have tried to show what money-hunting on the English side, & [ deleted word ] ^ the^ divorce laws on your side may come to in combination. I am finding the subject however extraordinarily difficult, and am at present [ groaning ? ] and laboring. Do by all means send me any criticisms that come to you
Mary A. Ward.
Notes
Diana: Ward's 1908 novel, Diana Mallory in the U.S., The Testing of Diana Mallory in the U.K.
Ward's next novel was Daphne (first American title, Marriage à la Mode).
Sarah: Sarah Orne Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
she: Ward's sister, Julia Huxley (1862- 29 November 1908).
Ethel's lectures: Ward's sister, Ethel Arnold (1865-1930), a British suffragist and niece of the poet, Matthew Arnold. Wikipedia notes that she lectured in the U.S. in 1909 and again in 1910. Though her topics were various, a main topic was woman suffrage.
The manuscript of this letter is held by the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, in the James T. Fields Papers and Addenda: mss FI 5637, Box 64, Ward, Mary Augusta (Arnold), 14 pieces. Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Elizabeth Jervis and Mary G. Gilman
[ Christmas 1908 ]*
Dearest Lizzie and Mary
The candy is better than ever, and the fairy gingerbread couldn't have been better if fairies had charmed it into being! Thank you so much; and I believe that I never loved to have your Christmas remembrance so much. I am glad the little boxes got there all right.
I cant think why they were so slow --
-- I came down early on Christmas morning and now Mary* and I have begun to get our breath again. Such a feeling comes over me of needing to be in both places!
I had a most dear postcard from Cousin Fanny* -- beautifully written and so full of her dear kindness. I had a nice time with her too on Thanksgiving day when we sat next. Goodbye with my best new year wishes to you both [ and with love ? ] -- Sarah
Notes
1908: This date is only a guess, supported flimsily by the similarity of this card to another addressed to the Gilman sisters in June of 1908. The guess of the date of that card also has minimal support.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. See Key to Correspondents.
Cousin Fanny: This presumably is Fanny Gilman. See Helen Williams Gilman in Key to Correspondents.
The manuscript of this card is held by the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Brunswick, ME, Sarah Orne Jewett Papers, Series 1 (M238.1): Correspondence, 1877-1905, n.d.
Transcription and notes by Terry Heller, Coe College.
Sarah Orne Jewett to Lilian Woodman Aldrich
South Berwick. 28th [ December 1908 ]*
SOJ in red ink intertwined inside a circle.]
I shall hope to see you soon and thank you all [ over ? ] again
1908: The envelope associated with this note was cancelled on 28 December 1908. The note appears to be written on a black-bordered card.
Mary: Mary Rice Jewett. 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: 2772.