Yesterdays with Authors by James T. Fields

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Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Kind Mrs. Sparks's biscuits arrived quite safe. How droll some of
the cookery is in "The Wide, Wide World"! It would try English
stomachs by its over-richness. I wonder you are not all dead, if
such be your _cuisine_.

Swallowfield, May 3, 1853.

How shall I thank you enough, dear and kind friend, for the copy of
---- that arrived here yesterday! Very like; only it wanted what
that great painter, the sun, will never arrive at giving, the actual
look of life which is the one great charm of the human countenance.
Strange that the very source of light should fail in giving that
light of the face, the smile. However, all that can be given by that
branch of art has been given. I never before saw so good a
photographic portrait, and for one that gives more I must wait until
John Lucas, or some American John Lucas, shall coax you into
sitting. I sent you, ten days ago, a batch of notes, and a most
unworthy letter of thanks for one of your parcels of gift-books; and
I write the rather now to tell you I am better than then, and hope
to be in a still better plight before July or August, when a most
welcome letter from Mr. Tuckerman has bidden us to expect you to
officiate as Master of the Ceremonies to Mr. Hawthorne, who, welcome
for himself, will be trebly welcome for such an introducer.

Now let me say how much I like De Quincey's new volumes. The "Wreck
of a Household" shows great power of narrative, if he would but take
the trouble to be right as to details; the least and lowest part of
the art, that of interesting you in his people, he has. And those
"Last Days of Kant," how affecting they are, and how thoroughly in
every line and in every thought, agree with him or not, (and in all
that relates to Napoleon I differ from him, as in his overestimate
of Wordsworth and of Coleridge), one always feels how thoroughly and
completely he is a gentleman as well as a great writer; and so much
has _that_ to do with my admiration, that I have come to tracing
personal character in books almost as a test of literary merit:
Charles Boner's "Chamois-Hunting," for instance, owes a great part
of its charm to the resolute truth of the writer, and a great
drawback from the attraction of "My Novel" seems to me to be derived
from the _blase_ feeling, the unclean mind from whence it springs,
felt most when trying after moralities.

Amongst your bounties I was much amused with the New York magazines,
the curious turning up of a new claimant to the
Louis-the-Seventeenth pretension amongst the Red Indians, and the
rappings and pencil-writings of the new Spiritualists. One should
wonder most at the believers in these two branches of faith, if that
particular class did not always seem to be provided most abundantly
whenever a demand occurs. Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the
most unlimited credence to every "rapping" story which anybody can
tell her! Did I tell you that the work on which she is engaged is a
fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a woman artist
(I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely modern? You
will see that "Colombe's Birthday" has been brought out at the
Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning's most intimate friend)
writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at whose persuasion
it was acted) told him that it had gone off "better than she
expected." Have you seen Alexander Smith's book, which is all the
rage just now? I saw some extracts from his poems a year and a half
ago, and the whole book is like a quantity of extracts put together
without any sort of connection, a mass of powerful metaphor with
scarce any lattice-work for the honeysuckles to climb upon. Keats
was too much like this; but then Keats was the first. Now this book,
admitting its merit in a certain way, is but the imitation of a
school, and, in my mind, a bad school. One such poem as that on the
bust of Dante is worth a whole wilderness of these new writers, the
very best of them. Certainly nothing better than those two pages
ever crossed the Atlantic.

God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to dear Mr. and
Mrs. W----, to Dr. Holmes, to Dr. Parsons, to Mr. Whittier, (how
powerful his new volume is!) to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, to all
my friends.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

I am writing on the 8th of May, but where is the May of the poets?
Half the morning yesterday it snowed, at night there was ice as
thick as a shilling, and to-day it is absolutely as cold as
Christmas. Of course the leaves refuse to unfold, the nightingales
can hardly be said to sing, even the hateful cuckoo holds his peace.
I am hoping to see dear Mr. Bennoch soon to supply some glow and
warmth.

Swallowfield, June 4, 1853.

I write at once, dearest friend, to acknowledge your most kind and
welcome letter. I am better than when I wrote last, and get out
almost every day for a very slow and quiet drive round our lovely
lanes; far more lovely than last year, since the foliage is quite as
thick again, and all the flowery trees, aloes, laburnums,
horse-chestnuts, acacias, honeysuckles, azalias, rhododendrons,
hawthorns, are one mass of blossoms,--literally the leaves are
hardly visible, so that the color, whenever we come upon park,
shrubbery, or plantation, is such as should be seen to be imagined.
In my long life I never knew such a season of flowers; so the wet
winter and the cold spring have their compensation. I get out in
this way with Sam and K---- and the baby, and it gives me exquisite
pleasure, and if you were here the pleasure would be multiplied a
thousand fold by your society; but I do not gain strength in the
least. Attempting to do a little more and take some young people to
the gates of Whiteknights, which, without my presence, would be
closed, proved too far and too rapid a movement, and for two days I
could not stir for excessive soreness all over the body. I am still
lifted down stairs step by step, and it is an operation of such time
(it takes half an hour to get me down that one flight of cottage
stairs), such pain, such fatigue, and such difficulty, that, unless
to get out in the pony-chaise, I do not attempt to leave my room. I
am still lifted into bed, and can neither turn nor move in any way
when there, am wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot
walk three steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my
chair am sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am
very, very feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear
in head, am quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very
much sooner exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must
come if only to make me well. I do verily believe your coming would
do me more good than anything.

I was much interested by your account of the poor English stage
coachman. Ah, these are bad days for stage coachmen on both sides
the Atlantic! Do you remember his name? and do you know whether he
drove between London and Reading, or between Reading and
Basingstoke?--a most useless branch railroad between the two latter
places, constructed by the Great Western simply out of spite to the
Southwestern, which I am happy to state has never yet paid its daily
expenses, to say nothing of the cost of construction, and has taken
everything off our road, which before abounded in coaches, carriers,
and conveyances of all sorts. The vile railway does us no earthly
good, we being above four miles from the nearest station, and you
may imagine how much inconvenience the absence of stated
communication with a market town causes to our small family,
especially now that I can neither spare Sam nor the pony to go
twelve miles. You must come to England and come often to see me,
just to prove that there is any good whatever in railways,--a fact I
am often inclined to doubt.

I shall send this letter to be forwarded to Mr. Bennett, and desire
him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent
youth," although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do
believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch,
with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God
bless him! ...To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a
grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school,
principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They
won a notable victory. They were quite right in the matter in
dispute and the "excellent youth" came out well in various letters.
His opponent, the vicar, was Senior Wrangler at our Cambridge, the
very highest University honor in England, and tutor to the present
Lord Grey.

By the way, Mr. ---- wrote to me the other day to ask that I would
let him be here when Mr. Hawthorne comes to see me. I only answered
this request by asking whether he did not intend to come to see _me_
before that time, for certainly he might come to visit an old
friend, especially a sick one, for her own sake, and not merely to
meet a notability, and I am by no means sure that Mr. Hawthorne
might not prefer to come alone or with dear Mr. Bennoch; at all
events it ought to be left to _his_ choice, and besides I have not
lost the hope of your being the introducer of the great romancer,
and then how little should I want anybody to come between us. Begin
as they may, all my paragraphs slide into that refrain of Pray, pray
come!

I have written to you about other kindnesses since that note full of
hopes, but I do not think that I did write to thank you for dear Dr.
Holmes's "Lecture on English Poetesses," or rather the analysis of a
lecture which sins only by over-gallantry. Ah, there is a difference
between the sexes, and the difference is the reverse way to that in
which he puts it! Tell him I sent his charming stanzas on Moore to a
leading member of the Irish committee for raising a monument to his
memory, and that they were received with enthusiasm by the Irish
friends of the poet. I have sent them to many persons in England
worthy to be so honored, and the very cleverest woman whom I have
ever known (Miss Goldsmid) wrote to me only yesterday to thank me
for sending her that exquisite poem, adding, "I think the stanza 'If
on his cheek, etc.,' contains one of the most beautiful similes to
be found in the whole domain of poetry." I also told Mrs. Browning
what dear Dr. Holmes said of her. The American poets whom she
prefers are Lowell and Emerson. Now I know something of Lowell and
of Emerson, but I hold that those lines on Dante's bust are amongst
the finest ever written in the language, whether by American or
Englishman; don't you? And what a grand Dead March is the poem on
Webster! ...Also Mrs. Browning believes in spirit-rapping
stories,--all,--and tells me that Robert Owen has been converted by
them to a belief in a future state. Everybody everywhere is turning
tables. The young Russells, who are surcharged with electricity, set
them spinning in ten minutes. In general, you know, it is usual to
take off all articles of metal. They, the other night, took a fancy
to remove their rings and bracelets, and, having done so, the table,
which had paused for a moment, began whirling again as fast as ever
the contrary way. This is a fact, and a curious one.

I have lent three volumes of your "De Quincey" to my young friend,
James Payn, a poet of very high promise, who has verified the Green
story, and taken the books with him to the Lakes. God grant, my dear
friend, that you may not lose by "Our Village"; that is what I care
for.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, June 23, 1853.

Ah, my very dear friend, we shall not see you this summer, I am
sure. For the first time I clearly perceive the obstacle, and I feel
that unless some chance should detain Mr. Ticknor, we must give up
the great happiness of seeing you till next year. I wonder whether
your poor old friend will be alive to greet you then! Well, that is
as God pleases; in the mean time be assured that you have been one
of the chief comforts and blessings of these latter years of my
life, not only in your own friendship and your thousand kindnesses,
but in the kindness and friendship of dear Mr. Bennoch, which, in
the first instance, I mainly owe to you. I am in somewhat better
trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage,
from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his
expectations. I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can only
bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a
foot's pace through the lanes. I am still unable to stand or walk,
unless supported by Sam's strong hands lifting me up on each side,
still obliged to be lifted into bed, and unable to turn or move when
there, the worst grievance of all. However, I am in as good spirits
as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the
acacia-tree at the corner of my house,--the beautiful acacia
literally loaded with its snowy chains (the flowering trees this
summer, lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias, have been one
mass of blossoms, and none are so graceful as this waving acacia);
on one side a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree; a
jar of roses on the table before me,--fresh-gathered roses, the
pride of Sam's heart; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat
the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,--biscuits from
Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really
indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle
if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old, and she
improves in it every day. Well that is a picture of the Swallowfield
cottage at this moment, and I wish that you and the Bennochs and the
W----s and Mr. Whipple were here to add to its life and comfort. You
must come next year and come in May, that you and dear Mr. Bennoch
may hear the nightingales together. He has never heard them, and
this year they have been faint and feeble (as indeed they were last)
compared with their usual song. Now they are over, and although I
expect him next week, it will be too late.

Precious fooling that has been at Stafford House! And our ---- who
delights in strong, not to say worse, emotions, whose chief pleasure
it was to see the lions fed in Van Amburgh's time, who went seven
times to see the Ghost in the "Corsican Brothers," and has every
sort of natural curiosity (not to say wonder) brought to her at
Buckingham Palace, was in a state of exceeding misery because she
could not, consistently with her amicable relations with the United
States, receive Mrs. ---- there. (Ah! our dear Emperor has better
taste. Heaven bless him!) From Lord Shaftesbury one looks for
unmitigated cant, but I did expect better things of Lord Carlisle.
How many names that both you and I know went there merely because
the owner of the house was a fashionable Duchess,--the Wilmers
("though they are my friends"), the P----s and ----! For my part, I
have never read beyond the first one hundred pages, and have a
certain malicious pleasure in so saying. Let me add that almost all
the clever men whom I have seen are of the same faction; they took
up the book and laid it down again. Do you ever reprint French
books, or ever get them translated? By very far the most delightful
work that I have read for many years is Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries du
Lundi," or his weekly feuilletons in the "Constitutionnel." I am
sure they would sell if there be any taste for French literature. It
is so curious, so various, so healthy, so catholic in its biography
and criticism; but it must be well done by some one who writes good
English prose and knows well the literary history of France. Don't
trust women; they, especially the authoresses, are as ignorant as
dirt. Just as I had got to this point, Mr. Willmot came to spend the
evening, and very singularly consulted me about undertaking a series
of English Portraits Litteraires, like Sainte-Beuve's former works.
He will do it well, and I commended him to the charming "Causeries,"
and advised him to make that a weekly article, as no doubt he could.
It would only tell the better for the wide diffusion. He does, you
know, the best criticism of The Times. I have most charming letters
from Dr. Parsons and dear Mr. Whittier. His cordiality is
delightful. God bless you.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

(No date.)

Never, my dear friend, did I expect to like so well a man who came
in your place, as I do like Mr. Ticknor. He is an admirable person,
very like his cousin in mind and manners, unmistakably good. It is
delightful to hear him talk of you, and to feel that the sort of
elder brotherhood which a senior partner must exercise in a firm is
in such hands. He was very kind to little Harry, and Harry likes him
_next_ to you. You know he had been stanch in resisting all the
advances of dear Mr ----, who had asked him if he would not come to
him, to which he had responded by a sturdy "no!" He (Mr. Ticknor)
came here on Saturday with the dear Bennochs (N.B. I love him better
than ever), and the Kingsleys met him. Mr. Hawthorne was to have
come, but could not leave Liverpool so soon, so that is a pleasure
to come. He will tell you that all is arranged for printing with
Colburn's successors, Hurst and Blackett, two separate works, the
plays and dramatic scenes forming one, the stories to be headed by a
long tale, of which I have always had the idea in my head, to form
almost a novel. God grant me strength to do myself and my publishers
justice in that story! This whole affair springs from the fancy
which Mr. Bennoch has taken to have the plays printed in a collected
form during my lifetime, for I had always felt that they would be so
printed after my death, so that their coming out now seems to me a
sort of anachronism. The one certain pleasure that I shall derive
from this arrangement will be, having my name and yours joined
together in the American edition, for we reserve the early sheets.
Nothing ever vexed me so much as the other book not being in your
hands. That was Mr. ----'s fault, for, stiff as Bentley is, Mr.
Bennoch would have managed him..... Of a certainty my first strong
interest in American poetry sprang from dear Dr. Holmes's exquisite
little piece of scenery painting, which he delivered where his
father had been educated. You sent me that, and thus made the
friendship between Dr. Holmes and me; and now you are yourself--you,
my dearest American friend--delivering an address at the greatest
American University. It is a great honor, and one....

I suppose Mr. Ticknor tells you the book-news? The most striking
work for years is "Haydon's Life." I hope you have reprinted it, for
it is sure, not only of a run, but of a durable success. You know
that the family wanted me to edit the book. I shrank from a task
that required so much knowledge which could only be possessed by one
living in the artist world _now_, to know who was dead and who
alive, and Mr. Tom Taylor has done it admirably. I read the book
twice over, so profound was my interest in it. In his early days, I
used to be a sort of safety-valve to that ardent spirit most like
Benvenuto Cellini both in pen and tongue and person. Our dear Mr.
Bennoch was the providence of his later years. They tell me that
that powerful work has entirely stopped the sale of Moore's Life,
which, all tinsel and tawdry rags, might have been written by a
court newsman or a court milliner. I wonder whether they will print
the other six volumes; for the four out they have given Mrs. Moore
three thousand pounds. A bad account Mr. Tupper gives of ----. Fancy
his conceit! When Mr. Tupper praised a passage in one of his poems,
he said, "If I had known you liked it, I would have omitted that
passage in my new edition," and he has done so by passages praised
by persons of taste, cut them out bodily and left the sentences
before and after to join themselves how they could. What a bad
figure your President and Mr. ---- cut at the opening of your
Exhibition! I am sorry for ----, for, although he has quite
forgotten me since his aunt's book came out, he once stayed three
weeks with us, and I liked him. Well, so many of his countrymen are
over-good to me, that I may well forgive one solitary instance of
forgetfulness! Make my love to all my dear friends at Boston and
Cambridge. Tell Mrs. Sparks how dearly I should have liked to have
been at her side on _the_ Thursday. Tell Dr. Holmes that his kind
approbation of Rienzi is one of my encouragements in this new
edition. I had a long talk about him with Mr. Ticknor, and rejoice
to find him so young. Thank Mr. Whipple again and again for his
kindness.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

(No date.)

My Very Dear Friend: Mr. Hillard (whom I shall be delighted to see
if he come to England and will let me know when he can get
here)--Mr. Hillard has just put into verse my own feelings about
you. It is the one comfort belonging to the hard work of these _two_
books (for besides the Dramatic Works in two thick volumes, there
are prose stories in two also, and I have one long tale, almost a
novel, to write),--it is the one comfort of this labor that _I_
shall see our names together on one page. I have just finished a
long gossiping preface of thirty or forty pages to the Dramatic
Works, which is much more an autobiography than the Recollections,
and which I have tried to make as amusing as if it were ill-natured.
_That_ work is dedicated to our dear Mr. Bennoch, another
consolation. I sent the dedication to dear Mr. Ticknor, but as his
letter of adieu did not reach me till two or three days after it was
written, and I am not quite sure that I recollected the number in
Paternoster Row, I shall send it to you here. "To Francis Bennoch,
Esq., who blends in his life great public services with the most
genial private hospitality; who, munificent patron of poet and of
painter, is the first to recognize every talent except his own,
content to be beloved where others claim to be admired; to him,
equally valued as companion and as friend, these volumes are most
respectfully and affectionately inscribed by the author." I write
from memory, but if this be not it, it is very like it, (and I beg
you to believe that my preface is a little better English than this
agglomeration of "its.")

Mr. Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's
poems show fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to
Mrs. Browning, she said it was exactly her impression. For my part I
am struck by the extravagance and the total want of finish and of
constructive power, and I am in hopes that ultimately good will come
out of evil, for Mr. Kingsley has written, he tells me, a paper
called "Alexander Pope and Alexander Smith," and Mr. Willmott, the
powerful critic of The Times, takes the same view, he tells me, and
will doubtless put it into print some day or other, so that the
carrying this bad school to excess will work for good. By the way,
Mr. ----, whose Imogen is so beautiful, sent me the other day a
terrible wild affair in that style, and I wrote him a frank letter,
which my sincere admiration for what he does well gives me some
right to do. He has in him the making of a great poet; but, if he
once take to these obscurities, he is lost. I hope I have not
offended him, for I think it is a real talent, and I feel the
strongest interest in him. My young friend, James Payn, went a
fortnight or three weeks ago to Lasswade and spent an evening with
Mr. De Quincey. He speaks of him just as you do, marvellously fine
in point of conversation, looking like an old beggar, but with the
manners of a prince, "if," adds James Payn, "we may understand by
that all that is intelligent and courteous and charming." (I suppose
he means such manners as our Emperor's.) He began by saying that his
life was a mere misery to him from nerves, and that he could only
render it endurable by a semi-inebriation with opium. (I always
thought he had not left opium off.).... On his return, James Payn
again visited Harriet Martineau, who talked frankly about _the_
book, exculpating Mr. Atkinson and taking all the blame to herself.
She asked if I had read it, and on finding that I had not, said, "It
was better so." There are fine points about Harriet Martineau. Mrs.
Browning is positively crazy about the spirit-rappings. She believes
every story, European or American, and says our Emperor consults the
mediums, which I disbelieve.

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