James T. Fields

“ On the 24th of May we carried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of Concord, and laid him down under a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields. All the way from the village church to the grave the birds kept up a perpetual melody. The sun shone brightly, and the air was sweet and pleasant, as if death had never entered the world. Longfellow and Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, walked slowly by his side that beautiful spring morning. ”

“ The time into which Henry James escaped by “piping” of Mrs. Fields has now grown far more remote than the added span of the last seven years, merely as years, could have made it. Remote enough it seemed to him when, at the end of his reminiscences of the Fieldses, he recalled a small “feast” in the Charles Street dining-room at which Mrs. ”

“ James musingly as he turned away. “They always do!” And so on again presently to the train at Hastings, where Mr. McAlpine appeared at the right instant. Mr. James’s train for Rye left a few moments before ours for London. He took a most friendly farewell and having left us to Mr. McA. ran for his own carriage. In another five minutes we too were away, bearing our delightful memories of this meeting.
[302]
Not because they record momentous events and encounters, but merely as little pictures of the life which Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett led together, these passages are brought to light. ”

“ Hawthorne, 54. Fields, Eliza J. (Willard) , 11. Fields, James T., early days in Boston, 10, 11, 196; marries Annie Adams, 11; their home on Charles St., 11, 12, 137, 138, 218, 219; editor of the Atlantic, 14, 58, 67, 87, 107, 111, 119, 191 n., 233, 282; as raconteur, 21; Holmes quoted on his position in the literary world, 34; retires from business, 40; H. James, Sr., quoted on, 85; his love of the theatre and stage folk, 196, 197; his death, 280; fosters Mrs. F.’s friendship with Miss Jewett, 283. Yesterdays with Authors, 4, 54, 55, 62, 137, 176 n., 190. Fields, Osgood & Co., 10. ”

“ Some of the letters are very striking as developments on character, and the richness of diction in the poetical fragments is exquisite. Mrs. Browning is still at Florence with her husband. She sees more Americans than English.
Books here are sadly depreciated. Mr. Dyce's admirable edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, brought out two years ago at £6 12s. is now offered at £2 17s.
Adieu, dear Mr. Fields; forgive my seeming neglect, and believe me always most faithfully yours,
M.R. MITFORD. ”

“ During this summer, and yearly during the next four, James found real rest and refreshment on his Chocorua farm. The conditions were simple and the place yielded him all the joys of proprietorship without involving him in responsibilities to cattle and fields. Anyone who knows central New Hampshire will realize how rudimentary "farming" in one of the most barren parts of rocky New England necessarily was. The glacial soil produced nothing naturally except woods and apple trees. But the country was very beautiful, and on his own acres James was lord of part of the Earth. ”

“ The poor man returned to New York and at length shot himself. His wife never harbored the least animosity against him for his undeserved treatment. (Mr. J. looked like an invalid, but was full of spirit and kindness. He not infrequently speaks severely of men and things. Analysis is his second nature.)
March 5, 1869.—Jamie had an unusually turbulent and exciting day, and was thoroughly weary when night came. Henry James came first, and had gone so far as to abuse Emerson pretty well when the latter came in. ”

“ It is not inspiring. Wouldn’t that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they are very sincere; they don’t tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I don’t see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting someone’s portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth.”
“I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people,” said Acton. “You are having a very quiet time of it here. It’s a dull life for you.”
“Ah, the quiet,—the quiet!” the Baroness exclaimed. ”

“ It is a true home for an artist—nothing [301] could be lovelier. Unhappily she was not there, but we were happy to see the place which she described to us with so great satisfaction.
From Winchelsea Mr. James drove us to the station, where we took the train for Hastings. He had brought his small dog, an aged black and tan terrier, with him for a holiday. He put on the muzzle, which all dogs just now must wear, and took it off a great many times until, having left it once when he went to buy the tickets and recovered it, he again lost it and it could not be found ”

“ Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers disperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption, awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. ”

“ It is certain, however, that Sir James frequently and generously assisted his daughter and son-in-law. He set them up in their house in Leicester Fields; and he appears to have left Hogarth a considerable interest in his house at 104, St. Martin’s Lane, whither he had removed from Covent Garden, and the staircase of which he had painted, according to his incorrigible custom, with “allegories.” The great artists of those days used to employ one another to paint the walls and ceilings of each other’s rooms. ”

“ She appears surprised to hear that I have not transmitted her thanks to you before.
"We get the 'Atlantic Monthly' regularly. I need not tell you how much better the poetry is than at its commencement. Very good is 'Released,' in the July number, and several of the stories; but they are in London, and I cannot particularize them.
"We were very much pleased with Colonel Holmes, the son of your friend and contributor. He seems a very intelligent, modest young man; as little military as need be, and, like Coriolanus, not baring his wounds (if he has any) for public gaze. When you see Dr. ”

“ The rows of poplars, the heavy stone cottages, seamed and cracked with time, in many cases, and daubed in coarse, bright hues, the little bourgeois villas, rising middle-aged at the end of short vistas, the sunburnt women in the fields, the old men in woollen stockings and red nightcaps, the long-kirtled curé nodding to doffed hats, the more or less bovine stare which greets you from cottage-doors, are all so many touches of a local colour reflected from over the sea. ”

“ The sky never was empty and never idle; the clouds were continually at play for our benefit. Over against us, from our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, condensed and shifted, blotting the blue with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of grey, bursting into an explosion of light or melting into a drizzle of silver. ”

“ It may well have been after a visit to the Fieldses at the seashore town of Manchester that Henry James wrote this undated characteristic note which embodies the feeling of many another guest:—
My dear Fields:—
Pride ever goes before a fall. ”

“ Long before Field learned the value of his time and writing, he began to appreciate the value of printer's ink and showed much shrewdness in courting its favor. He did not wait for chance to bring his wares into notice, but early joined the circle of busy paragraphers who formed a wider, if less distinguished, mutual admiration society than that free-masonry of authorship which at one time almost limited literary fame in the United States to Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. ”

“ In company with a number of his staff Field next made the round of the all-night haunts and gathered to his aid as fine a collection of bohemian "thoroughbreds" as ever made the revels of Mardi Gras look like a Sunday-school convention. He installed them at the resort of a Kentucky gentleman named Jones, opposite the St. James. As one who was there reports, "The amber milk of the Blue-grass cow flowed in plenty." Bidding his associates await his return, Field, armed with a single bottle, crossed the street to the hotel in search of the enemy. ”

“ Neither a sinner nor a saint was the man who went into an old book-store in Chicago and bewildered the matter-of-fact dealer in old editions with the inquiry, "Have you an unexpurgated copy of Hannah More's 'Letters to a Village Maiden'?"
Everything Field wrote in prose or verse reflects his contempt for earth's mighty and his sympathy for earth's million mites. His art, like that of his favorite author and prototype, Father Prout, was "to magnify what is little and fling a dash of the sublime into a two-penny post communication." ”

“ After each of these excursions into the platform field, either in the triple alliance with "Bill" Nye and James Whitcomb Riley, or with George W. Cable, in a most effective combination, Field returned to his home in Chicago richer in pocket and interesting experiences, but distinctly poorer in the vital reserve necessary to prolong the battle with that rebellious stomach.
The presidential campaign of 1892 quite revived his interest in politics and politicians, and drew him away from the association with books at home and with the Saints and Sinners at McClurg's. ”

“ No matter how often Field played his antics before or on his wife, they always seemed to take her by surprise and evoked a remonstrance in which pride over his mirthfulness mollified all displeasure.
By the time Field returned to St. Louis his ready funds were exhausted and he had to appeal to Mr. Gray to raise more by mortgaging the balance of his interest in his father's property. This is as good a place as any to take leave of the patrimony that came to Field at the death of his father, for he was never to see any more dividends from that source. ”

“ The most valuable glimpse of Field at Williams is contained in the following letter written by Solomon B. Griffin, the managing editor of the Springfield Republican for many years, with whom I have had some correspondence in respect to the matter referred to therein. He not only knew Field at Williamstown, but was one of his life-long friends and warmest admirers. After a few introductory words, under date of Springfield, February 4th, 1901, Mr. Griffin wrote:
Yes, I was of the class of 1872, but Field flitted before I became connected with it. ”

“ It is not, however, for his learning and accomplishments of mind and person that we are interested in Roswell Martin Field, but for the strange incident in his life that uprooted him from the congenial environments of New England and the career opening so temptingly before him, to transplant him to Missouri, there to become the father of a youth, who, by all laws of heredity and by the peculiar tang of his genius, should have been born and nurtured amid the stern scenes and fixed customs of Puritan New England. ”

“ David Dudley Field, and his delight was to lay snares in dark halls and passages, and if he was opposed he did not hesitate to seize a carving-knife and flourish it frantically about. A civilized life was not attractive to him; and while Mr. Field was in England in 1856, his relations, who had tried in vain to Christianize the boy, decided to return him to his father, a bull-fighter in South America. ”

“ Nearly everyone knows all about Mr. Field’s career from the inception of the Fields’ Minstrels to date; but how many are aware of the famous comedian’s early struggles he went through before he reached the goal of success? It is a pleasure for the author to recount them.
Al. G. Field first appeared professionally at Jeffries Hall, Brownsville, Pa., about 1871; he performed in the old nigger act of “Handy Andy”; he attracted the attention of that famous minstrel Sam Sharpley, and became a member of his company, officially known as Sharpley, Sheridan, Mack and Day’s Minstrels ”

“ It may be recalled that Field's "Our Two Opinions" written in imitation of James Whitcomb Riley's most successful manner, was dedicated to Sol Smith Russell, and he for his part put into its recitation a subdued dramatic force and pathos that won from Henry Irving the comment that it was the greatest piece of American characterization he had ever witnessed.
Whenever Russell came to town Field spent all the time he could spare, when Russell was not acting or asleep, in his company. ”

“ No interruption from Field ever came or was taken amiss. From the hour he ambled laboriously up the steep and narrow stairs, anathematizing them at every step, in every tone of mockery and indignation, to the moment he sat down to his daily column of "leaded agate, first line brevier," no man among us knew what piece of fooling he would be up to next.
Something was wrong, Field was out of town, or some old crony from Kansas City, St. Louis, or Denver was in Chicago, if about one o'clock I was not interrupted by a summons from him that the hour for luncheon had arrived. ”

“ The “delicate little ‘Epistle Dedicatory’” has been found elusive.
From this early letter of Dr. Holmes a seven-league step may be taken to a passage in a diary Mrs. Fields was writing in 1860,—the year following the removal of the Holmes household from Montgomery Place to Charles Street,—before her long unbroken series of journals began. The occasion described was one of those frequent breakfasts in the Fields dining-room, which bespoke, in the term of a later poet, the “wide unhaste” of the period. Of the guests, N. P. Willis was then at the top of his distinction as a New York editor ”