Letter from Annie Adams Fields to John Greenleaf Whittier, August 23, 1885

Letter from Annie Adams Fields to John Greenleaf Whittier, August 23, 1885

Annie Adams Fields (1834-1915), author and beloved friend of John Greenleaf Whittier, married James T. Fields (of the famous publishing firm Ticknor and Fields) in 1854. Ticknor and Fields published the works of many of the prominent American writers of the time, including Whittier. The Fields' Charles Street home in Boston served as a literary salon. Annie Fields herself edited collections of letters and wrote short biographies of the literary women and men she knew. Whittier, Notes of His Life and His Friendship is her loving portrait of the poet and a tribute to his character. Her spirit, her affection for Whittier, and her place in this community of letters comes through in the letter above. Asquam House, to which she refers, was a grand hotel on the shore of Squam Lake, in Holderness, New Hampshire, in the foothills of the White Mountains.

Annie Adams Fields

August 23, 1885

August 23, 1885

Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts

 

My very dear friend;

Your letter from Asquam made me feel greater regret than before because we were obliged to abandon our plans of going to see you there this year.  Hardly a day passed without a thought sent hillward to the pleasant spots where I fancied you sitting and talking, or ”drinking the remembering wine.”

It is beautiful here in this warm dogdayish weather indeed in almost all weather, but I have had a household more or less dependent upon me for occupation or amusement and having set the housekeeping wheels going I thought it better to stay by the ship.  I have had a cow this year and have made my butter!  This dignity of a dairy is something quite new in my experience but it has worked very well.  Her name is Clarissy and I must tell you all about her when we come to Danvers.  Sarah and I mean to drive over as soon as she returns from So. Berwick and also we hope to accept your invitation later to pass the night in Amesbury on our way home from this place in October.

Mr. Lowell had been here lately—not staying in my home but his niece Mrs Charles Lowell was staying with other near relatives of his close by and he came to pass a few days with them all and to see his old friends.  People talk of him as very much changed; he does look older certainly but his manner is as spirited as ever and his conversation ever easier and richer in its flow.  He went about too as he has not done since his marriage.

Every now and then I have a hurried note from our Celia Thaxton.  The last one concerned a letter from Mrs Dickinson giving some particulars of new visions.  Have you seen Elizabeth Phelps’s new paper in the North American?  I think she is right.  The subject deserves more honorable consideration than it receives.  Another generation must pass away perhaps before that will be granted and possibly many and many a one.  Such men as Mr. Lowell and Dr. Holmes will hardly grant a thought to it I fear though they love to play with the fire too in a way.  Mr. Lowell told me a picturesque story of his seeing the Witch Farm once!  I dare say you have seen [those who have found it?].  He was speaking of the Will & the Wisp and the flames which dance [above?] the dead.  He has seen both these in past days before the primitive rural aspect faded away from this locality.

What a spirited creature Helen Hunt was and what an amount of work she accomplished!  She printed so much anonymously that she had no credit for her industry.  I came to know her at last and to think her as generous and noble as she was gifted.  She was so high strung that many things disturbed her that different natures do not feel and I used to hear many things that prejudiced me against her.  When I came to really understand her and see her face to face I found everything to love and admire.  Those two books “A Century of Dishonor” and “Ramona” should keep her in the hearts of men for many and many a day after her detractors are forgotten.  Mr. Lowes Dickinson our English friend and artist whom you may remember, writes me he has just finished a portrait of General Gordon which Mr Phillip Brooks has been to see and evidently many other people, as the proceeds of the exhibition go to the Memorial Fund, though L.D. is not a rich man at all.  He writes “I have represented him as standing on the roof of the Residence at Kortoum at early dawn—alone with God—his field glass and pocket bible in his hands—a black Arab burnous half concealing his [undress?] Engineer uniform.  I call it ‘The Last Watch’ and suppose it to be the day of his death and the fall of Kartoum.  It is to be engraved.  There never was a nobler man.  Of the type I should say of Stonewall Jackson—”

My dear friend good bye.  I long to be with you again!

Yours

Annie Fields