From Fields, dated Monday evening, [1885]
(Fields
7)
Today I have been reading
hard, in Thierry chiefly, with some other big books
alongside, and I feel as if I had been over-eating
with my head!!! I try to think how fortunate it is
that I should be well paid for learning a thing that I
ought to know at any rate, but all that period is very
difficult for any one to straighten out who has not
been a student of history. It is so important and such
a key-note to later English history, that I think of
the early Britons all sound asleep under the green
grass of Salisbury Plain, and feel as if they would
have been quite within my grasp! When I read the
"Saturday Review" and "Spectator" I find myself
calling one politician a Saxon and the next a Norman!
Indeed I can pick them out here in Berwick!
Note
Fields dates this letter from 1883, but it seems
clear that Jewett is well into her work on The
Story of the Normans. The earliest date
for this is likely to be in sometime in 1885.
Sunday Afternoon [Fields has penciled in 1885?
November]
(HL from p. 2)
Yesterday I was reading hard all day as I mean to be
for a good many days to come. I remind myself
constantly how good all this work is in every way –
and how thankful I shall be to have done it when I go
to England again. I shall be able to improve an
ignorant mouse's ["Mouse's"
appears in tiny
script.] mind and to speak with confidence of
battlefields and warriors and be a very profitable
companion in short!
Notes
"Mouse" is an endearment Jewett used to refer to Annie
Fields.
Evidence in the rest of the letter indicates that it
was written in the autumn, before Thanksgiving.
Jewett has been reading Susan Coolidge's
A Little
Country Girl (1885). Coolidge is a pen name used
by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835 - 1905).
Monday evening [Autumn 1885]
[HL, from p. 1]
This has been a hardworking Pinny,
but a getting-along-one! I wish I could be sent
to school over again, for I never was more conscious
that I don't know how to study. Of course, a
certain amount of this reading must be committed to
memory, else I have to go back again and again to get
things straight ----
Notes
Though Jewett does not mention that she is studying
the Normans, this is most likely the task she would
refer to in October or November of 1885.
"Pinny" is an endearment used by Fields and Jewett to
refer to Jewett.
Later in the letter, Jewett recommends to Fields,
Edith M. Thomas's sonnet, "Migration," in the new
November issue of
Century. The poem appeared
in
The
Century 31: 1 (Nov 1885): 115.
Monday afternoon [1885 or 1886]
(HL from pages 1-2, 4)
[
Letter begins in bright green
ink.]
A Pinny playing
with ink is a splendid sight but I got a pretty
collection for
making different [
previous three
words appear to be in gray ink]
notes and references in the history
that I could see at a glance whence this lively
green! I dont know it should dazzle ones eyes
so, when green is always suffered to be so good for
the eyes [
change to darker ink]
I am beginning my letter before I do
my work for I mean to go [
begin very black
ink] drive tonight after the sun gets very low….
I read Burnaby's Ride to Khiva Saturday night with
great pleasure and a new persuasion of the barbarism
of Russia. Last week one day I indulged in a
short peroration on the true causes ^and benefits^ of
war to begin a Normans chapter, and this story of
travel made me [feel
?] more eager about my
opinions. I hope to read it to you someday and
have you say you agree.
Notes
"Date of Normans" is penciled near the top of page 1.
Jewett's peroration opens Chapter 13 of
The Story
of the Normans.
Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842-1885)
published
A Ride to Khiva in 1881.
________________________________________
[April 1886] (HL to J. G. Whittier,
Pickard-Whittier papers)
… [T]he History is creeping on again and I shall
finish it within a few weeks. I am afraid I have that
sort of affection for it that people have for their
crooked and lame children -- but at any rate it has
taught me a great deal, if nobody else gets any good
out of it.