[Manchester—Tuesday, 11 September 1866]
Tuesday Sep. 11. For the last three days the weather has been clear and cold, more like October than the early part of this month. Saturday night Julian Hawthorne came down with Mr Fields. The evening was clear and lovely Venus magnificent. J. brought me a volume of Hawthorne’s diary to read. There is much of the Isles of Shoals in this, also a description of the view from his back windows in the city which I find he has enwoven into “Zenobia.” The volumes are deeply interesting. It was especially pleasant to find him talking so kindly of the artist Thompson whom he really appears to have liked from a true charity in his composition for there is nothing especially congenial to Hawthorne in Mr T. except a gentleness of temper wh. is always lovely to meet with. Thoreau’s Canada book came down in the sheets too. This we intend reading aloud; plans—plans. I was shocked to find I have overkept two books a month from the Athenæum just because I had laid my plans too large. I did not wish “to come short” of reading down here so I brought more than I needed and kept the books which I really wish to read thinking the time would surely come—and so it will some day.
We took a long walk with Julian Sunday. It was really good to watch his muscular figure swinging across the rocks with such perfect ease. He appeared in his true element. All that nonsense that his mother has told us respecting his becoming a clergyman is absurd. He wishes to become a traveller, a discoverer,—he is a wanderer by nature and constitution. He went to the beach alone before breakfast and took a bath. Jamie went to find him. He was running up and down the sands to keep warm. He is blunt in speech but a noble manly fellow. He told Mr Bartol that he came to town to see Booth in Romeo but could only wait to see him “stick Paris.” This expression somewhat overturned the parsonic gravity.
We have not a seat by the sea called Qui dort—meant as Victor Hugo says Guernsey has but one just as beautiful which might be called “La chaise pour rêver ou dormir au-dessus de la mer” so it be that in good French which I doubt for I feel I know nothing about that or any other language fundamentally. I begin to have a very contented feeling however, too contented I fear about languages so long as I can dig out of them what I wish. Sometime perhaps Europe will carry me over the “royal road” to further knowledge. We sat in the above “chaise” in the afternoon of Sunday. The sea and sky were wonderful for beauty. A rainbow stood with one glowing foot over Gloucester.
In the evening we sat some time telling ghost stories and tales of second sight; at length little Mrs Chase who begins to develop wonderfully told the weirdest thing of all because we could see beside her conversation that there was truth in it. She said, a friend of her acquaintance who had enjoyed some years of affluence as well as a happy married estate, suddenly lost his fortune. He at once conceived the idea of retrieving his losses by a visit to California and engaged his passage for a sudden departure intending to return too soon to make it best for his wife to accompany him. The parting was a severe grief to her but she worked vigorously in order to prepare him comfortably for his departure. The last few days she discovered that flannel shirts were needed and began to make them. One day he said to her, “I must take a lock of your hair with me,” this she promised but went to bed that night omitting or forgetting to cut it off. In the middle of the night the husband awakened and found his wife was not in the bed. He then opened the door of an adjoining apartment and saw her sitting there sewing, in her sleep, upon his shirts, her beautiful hair all cut off and lying by her side. She had been distinguished for her lovely hair and it was a real sorrow to him to see this. However the next day he sailed & they never met again. He was lost at sea and she died shortly.
Monday Julian & Mr Fields went to town together and Mrs Davis came down in the 12 n. train to pass the day with me. Lissie carried me over in the boat to meet her. The noonday sun was brilliant and warm, there was not a cloud in the sky, everything was still as if to receive the solar benediction. Mrs Davis came duly holding a little french novel in her hand. She talks of going to Europe, wishes to study there which I found in the end should read, wishes to economize and have fun all at once. She is possessed by a turbulent spirit which catches her and sends her,—a woman who with real magnetic power (I do not forget how she healed Mr Fields head aches and my lame foot) and also with some experience of spiritism, is apparently in practical life a total disbeliever in the coming of the Spirit. I mean an apparent disbeliever in the fact that the Spirit it is which quickeneth and giveth life. For what is all our contriving!!
She told me some curious stories about Washington life. Her husband being member from Syracuse N.Y. she has been passing the last 3 years of her life there keeping house and entertaining elegant and brilliant society. She wears her hair curled in a poor fashion and uses perfumery and powder, yet disgusting and vulgar as this is, by the side of southern and western women who have never had either culture or the opportunities of travel, she is refinement itself. She has a talent of representation, as the good phrase is, and “gave” me Mrs Southworth the story writer in full also an account of a Mrs Bickerdyke whom she met at an evening party at Mrs L’s house. Mrs Bickerdyke she heard had followed Sherman’s army and had been of real service there so she went to speak to her. She told her that she “had been a-nussing down in Nashville and that was how Genl Sherman saw me but I had a farm of 80 cows out in Ohio so after my work was done I went home. Presently there com’ a letter from Genl Sherman, saying Mrs Bickerdyke you must come back; I’m goin’ to carry the soldiers right through Georgy & South Carolina and you must go along. Why General says I how kin I, I’ve got 80 caows in Ohio to take ker of. Lor’ says he what is 80 caows to 80,000 men, come along Mrs Bickerdyke we can’t get on without ye. Well so I went and everywhere when we was to have a battle the General would jist send me woord and I’d hev my pails of lemonade and pails of gruel and pails of water all ready and plenty of beds so that my wounded (pronounced long) men were jist brought in and never had to wait one minute. Mrs Bickerdyke was allers ready whenever the wounded men came.”
Poor Mrs Southworth with all her excellence is so romantic in everyday life as to draw some ridicule down upon herself. It seems to me to show rather a lack than a perception of true ideality when it crops out in this offensive way in dress and manner. Her fancies too on practical affairs are crude and silly. She thinks it a great pity that an army of women had not been added to our army in the war. “But what department would you assign to them” somebody asked,—“O the cavalry of course, they should have worn a uniform of orange and black bloomer dresses which would then have produced a fine effect”. As some one said it would have been frightful enough to have driven the rebs into the Mexican gulf for very horror.
Drove Mrs Davis over to Beverly at night—missed Mr Fields and made him feel quite anxious. Sorry.
These glorious days have all the feeling of autumn in them except the gentle beauty of the very last days—the feeling of sadness in them is ever deepened by the knowledge that we must soon go to town. Any life must appear circumscribed for a time after this.
Today towards noon a mist crept up from the horizon covering the cold clear sky. A sudden warmth filled and covered the earth. I could count 6 or 7 “devils darning needles” as we call that fine insect careening in the atmosphere from one point where I stood. The ground was besprent with late dandelions, cabbages and onions lay ripening in the stillness of the noon and the waves crept up as if to the music of their own echoes.
