Annie Fields

“ The uncontrollable laughter—where does one hear quite parallel notes to-day?—the simplicities of game and anecdote, the enthusiastic yielding of complete admiration, the glimpses of august figures of an earlier time—all these serve equally to take one back over more than half a century, into a state of society about which an element of myth begins to form, and to bring out of that past the living, human figure of Dickens himself. ”

“ Thaxter and his wife for William Morris Hunt grew to be the love of a lifetime. Hunt's grace, versatility, and charm, not to speak of his undoubted genius, exerted their combined fascination over these appreciative friends in common with the rest of his art-loving contemporaries; but to these two, each in their several ways, Hunt felt himself equally attracted, and the last sad summer of his life he gladly turned to Celia Thaxter in her island home as a sure refuge in time of trouble. It was she who watched him day by day, listening to his words, which came clothed with a kind of inspiration. ”

“ I have set down nothing which can recall the strong sweet beauty of Nilsson. She is a power to command success—fine and strong and sweet. Her face glowed and responded and originated in a swift yet gentle way, as one person after another was presented, that was a study and a lesson. She neither looked nor seemed tired until the presentation was over, when she said she was hungry. “We have had no breakfast yet, nothing to eat all day; ah, I shall know again what it means when Mrs. Fields asks me to lunch at one o’clock!” ”

“ It was a wonderful thing to hear him rehearse in the twilight the scenes of his youth, and the figures that came and went in that small world; the pathos and humor of his speech can never be exceeded; and there can never be again so complete a linking of the ancient provincial lore and the new life and thought of New England as there was in him. While he was with us, his poems seemed hardly to give sufficient witness of that rich store of thought and knowledge; he was always making his horizon wider, at the same time that he came into closer sympathy with things near at hand. ”

“ It comes over me to put down here and now the fact that this year for the first time others perceived, as well as myself, that I have passed the freshness and lustre of youth—but I do not feel the change as I once thought I must—life is even sweeter than ever and richer though I can still remember the time when thirty years seemed the desirable limit of life—now it opens before me full of uncompleted labor, full of riches and plans—the wealth of love, the plans of eternity. ”

“ Stowe has talent, as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius, as humanity feels the need of genius,—the genius of goodness, not that of the rules of letters, but of the saint."
All her life she stimulated the activity of her pen rather by her sympathy with humanity than by studies of literature. In one of her letters she says: "You see whoever can write on home and family matters, on what people think of and are anxious about and want to hear from, has an immense advantage. ”

“ Sumner’s character is one of the most extraordinary pictures of opposing elements ever combined in one person. He is so possessed by Sumner that there is really no room for the fair existence of another in his world. Position, popularity, domestic happiness, health, have one by one been cut away from him, but he still stands erect, with as large a faith in Sumner and with as determined a look toward the future as if it beckoned him to glory and happiness. ”

“ A kind of solitude of life and experience, greater than that which usually throws its shadow on the human soul, invested him in his passage through the world. The refinement of his education, the calm of nature by which, in youth, he was surrounded, the few books which he made his own, nearly all serious in their character, and the religious atmosphere in which he was nurtured, all tended to form an environment in which knowledge developed into wisdom, and the fiery soul formed a power to restrain or to express its force for the good of humanity. ”

“ How incomparable his gift of conversation was, it will be difficult, probably impossible, for any one to understand who had never known him. It was not that he was wiser, or wittier, or more profound, or more radiant with humor, than some other distinguished men; the shades of Macaulay, Sydney Smith, De Quincey, and Coleridge rise up before us from the past, and among his contemporaries we recall the sallies of Tom Appleton, the charm of Agassiz, of Cornelius Felton, and others of the Saturday Club; but with Dr. Holmes sunshine and gayety came into the room. ”

“ Fields, there must come a period of depression, almost of collapse, after the labor and the solace of this tender, tearful, yet blessed occupation. I think you need the kind thoughts and soothing words—if words have any virtue in them—of those who love you more than while each day had its busy hours in which the memory of so much that was delightful to recall kept the ever-returning pangs of grief a little while in abeyance. ”

“ For several years, before and after his sister Elizabeth's death, Whittier wore the look of one who was very ill. His large dark eyes burned with peculiar fire, and contrasted with his pale brow and attenuated figure. He had a sorrowful, stricken look, and found it hard enough to reconstruct his life, missing the companionship and care of his sister, and her great sympathy with his own literary work. There was a likeness between the two; the same speaking eyes marked the line from which they sprang, and their kinship and inheritance. ”

“ We went into the house and sat down to talk awhile about poetry and books. There was a large book-case full of French and Provençal literature here, but it was rather the parlor and everyday sitting-room than his work-room. Unhappily, they have no children. Evidently they are exceedingly happy together and naturally do not miss what they have never had. She opened the drawing-room for us, which is the room of state. It is full of interesting things connected with Provence and their own life, but perfectly simple, in accord with the country-like fashion of their existence. ”

“ It was the most natural thing in the world that he should care for this common flower, because in spite of a fine separateness from dusty levels which everyone felt who approached him, he was first of all a seer of beauty in common things and a singer to the universal heart.
Perhaps no one of the masters who have touched the spirits of humanity to finer issues has been more affectionately followed through his ways and haunts than Longfellow. But the lives of men and women "who rule us from their urns" have always been more or less cloistral. ”

“ Of course the talk was wittier and quicker as the time came to separate, but I cannot report upon it. The impression the two actors left upon me, however, was rather that of men who enjoyed coming up to the surface to breathe a natural air seldom vouchsafed to them than of men sparring with their wits—they are affectionate, gentle, subdued gentlemen and a noble contrast to the self-opinionated ignorance which we often meet in society. Dr. Holmes was, however, the wit of the occasion, as he always is, and everybody richly enjoyed his sallies. ”

“ He was seldom absent from the monthly dinners either in summer or in winter, and he lived to find himself at the head of the table where Agassiz, Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell had in turn preceded him. Could a shorthand writer have been secretly present at those dinners, what a delightful book of wise talk and witty sayings would now lie open before us! Fragments of the good things were sometimes brought away, as loving parents bring sugar- plums from a feast to the children at home; but they are only fragments, and bear out but inefficiently the reputation which has run before them. ”