Manuscripts
By the Trolley Car
Manuscript of an unfinished sketch
by Sarah Orne Jewett
From Annie Fields, Diary and Commonplace Book, 1907 - 1912
Introduction
Annie Adams Fields kept a diary and commonplace book in which she made occasional entries, beginning when Sarah Orne Jewett suffered what would prove her fatal stroke on Sunday 31 January 1909. She died almost five months later on Thursday 24 June 1909.
After Jewett's death, sometime in the first 9 months of 1910, Fields gathered what she says were scraps of a Jewett diary and copied these into her own diary. She implies that these were written after Jewett's 1902 carriage accident that brought an end to her professional writing career. Thus, they suggest that she did continue to think about writing fiction.
Included with a number of short observations and reflections is the following sketch, fragmentary and unfinished.
Fields explains that when she had copied what she thought she could, she destroyed the originals. Should scholars find these fragment useful, they will be frustrated by knowing that they are copies and not originals. Fields clearly has revised them, and it cannot be clear whether the changes she makes are corrections of her own transcription errors or "improvements" on what Jewett wrote. It is even possible, though not very likely, that she recorded Jewett's own revisions in her notes.
{ } = editorial clarifications.
[ ] = editorial information and commentary.
By the Trolley Car.*
--------------------------------
The making of the Trolley road had been a question of great importance to the towns of Byfleet and [ Epsom ? ]. The objection had been not without bitterness and prejudice and the promoters not without insolence; but by the time I took my first journey the fact of its existence was already quietly accepted; one of the most prejudiced opposers had frankly stated that "she wish she [had corrected ] the money back" ....
[ A page seems to be attached at this point, about half way down.
It appears to fold out, making a single long page ]
x x x x
[ deleted mark ]
butthe end seems almost to justify the means in rustic neighbourhoods. I had already seen timid faces ^re^appear agaiin the village church{,} women who lived in lonely farmhouses half way from town to town whom time and ^family^ changes had been isolating more and more until they were living like hermits. The [ deleted word ] ^power^ of visiting ones neighbours or being punctual in ones* place in a church three miles away is true luxury brought within easy reach by these rural railways; they are very civilizing. Damage to the country road, unnecessary at any rate if the [ deleted word ] builders take a little care, is more than overset by this charming ease of transportation. I was about to have an excellent illustration in the delight of the old traveller by my side.
[ Page 2 ]
This [old ? ] friend looked up pleasantly and called me by a childish name that I supposed everybody had forgotten{.} She gave me back my youth with it -- the days when I used to wait in the green little yard of her farm-house for my father to come out from his visit to some sick person.
x x x x x x *
One^Another^ old woman gets in apparently from a lair among some alders, -- but a homely scent of camphor followed her progress into the car. [ deleted mark ] They were old acquaintances, hadn't met since eleven years ago when Elder [ Joseph ? ] Wilkin's [ so written ] wife died -- talk him all over and his second venture. [ Quotation mark ? ] He offered to everybody he had bowing acquaintance with but there was nobody wanted to marry him just to save him from hired help -- he heard of a lady up to Dover and went
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to see her. Yes -- I heard 'em say he told her he'd got to return by next train -- an' she thought the time was short for reflection but he said three quarters of an hour ought to do for anybody. They was married in just a week. She was a good appearing woman but I guess she's had all the time she wanted to think it over."
"I wisht I could take off my flannel petticoat" commented the traveller in a moment of confidence {--} "feels 's if there was a fire somewhere's [ so written ] but I dont see no opportunity for it."
"Aint it considable like flying {?}" she exclaimed, admiringly: "My sakes alive we're up to [ Parcher's ? ] place already! and there's their barn they've been [ puttin' ? ] forty foot on -- and its all for show -- They ain't got
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the very wust hay farm on this road but next thing to it."
The Conductor disappeared quickly. There was a long delay so that one of the two men who were our only fellow [ passengers corrected ] looked round impatiently. With great care the young official was helping an unwieldy old person to her seat. The motor man looked round to see [ deleted word ] John Caswell had not given the signal to start and then leaned back comfortably against the fender to watch the proceeding. The new comer was so lame and so broad that she had to be ended along like a barrel. I saw that there were designs of getting her to the middle of the car and when I rose to help wondering how the old courageous
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traveller had ever taken the high step to the car platform{.} I saw [ we or she ? ] had left a good straight-backed kitchen chair by the roadside as we slowly moved on. There we^re^ two or three spectators{,} some elderly men and an anxious looking woman with a brown gingham handkerchief over her head. [ one seemingly not capitalized ] of the men pushed the [ deleted word bag ? ] ^chair^ aside into the bushes and then stood looking after the car.
{"}Now aint that nice{,"} said the conductor sympathetically to me. "They can visit each other by the way." The two old women were shaking hands with great [deleted word satisfaction ? ] enthusiasm; their unexpected meeting filled them with instant satisfaction. They did not let go of each others hand [ possibly corrected from other and ] but
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but [ repeated ] bend toward each other keeping fast hold and talking eagerly both at the same time.
"Know ye! Well I guess I did{,"} said the new comer. {"}I was asking my nieces [ folks corrected ] about ye only yesterday and they said they didn't know as you [ was written over were ? ] able to git out any now. My mind was led to make this trip, I though I might see you setting to the winder or out to the door even this pleasant day as I rode by. But [ lor ? ] there ye be{";} and they pressed each others hands again with beaming joy.
The first pleasant Sunday after the trolley car had begun to run was the Day of general resurrection.*
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Everybody turned out along the road to go to meeting{.} The minister not settled very long, his first funeral was old [ "Lijah intending 'Lijah ] Carstairs and I see* 'Lijah's old twin brother come up the aisle that had been spending the winter to Lowell with his daughter and wasn't to the funeral. You couldn't tell him & 'Lijah apart and when the minister see him coming in, his eyes got round as a calf's and his mouth fell right open.
Notes
Car: Presumably this sketch was written soon after the opening of the South Berwick branch of local trolley service. Richard Cary notes that the electric trolley lines of the Portsmouth, Dover and York Street Railway were extended to South Berwick, ME during the spring of 1903.
x x x x x x: Fields usually uses "x's" to indicate ellipses, but in copying this sketch she seems to intend dividing sections of the narrative, so I have rendered them as she did, and not as ellipses. Whether Jewett so divided her manuscript is not known.
ones: The paper is damaged at this point. Fields clearly has written more than "one," probably "ones."
general resurrection: Easter 1903 fell on 12 April. Jewett's joking reference to the "Day of general resurrection" could refer to this holiday, as well as to the reappearance of many who had been unable to attend meeting before the trolley.
I see: The narrator shifts into dialect here, as if she intended another character to narrate this incident.
This manuscript is from Annie Fields's "Diary and Commonplace Book" 1907-1912, held by the Massachusetts Historical Society: Annie Fields papers, 1847-1912, MS. N-1221. This transcription was made from a microfilm copy, available courtesy of the University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence Kansas: Annie Adams Fields Papers 1852-1912. Folio PS 1669.F5 Z462, 1986, Reel 2.
Manuscripts