[Boston—Thursday, 28 February 1867]
Thursday morning. Jamie had a most brilliant evening at Longfellows—a note came in from O.W.H. towards night saying, he was full of business & full of his story but he must go to L.’s. Lowell’s poem in the morning had helped to stir him. J. reached his door punctually at 8—there stood the little wonder with hat & coat on and door ajar, his wife beside him. “I wouldn’t let him go with anybody else” she said “Mr Fields, he ought not to go out tonight, hear him how he wheezes with the asthma. Now Wendell when will you get home.” “Oh said he I dont know I put myself into Mr Fields hands.” “Well Mr Fields how early can you get him home” about 12 was the answer. “Now that’s pretty well” said the Dr—“Amelia go in and shut the door. Mr Fields will take care of me” so between fun and anxiety they chattered away until they were fairly into the street & in the car. “I’ve been doing too much lately between my lectures and my story and the fine dinners I have been to and I ought not to go out tonight. Why it’s one of the greatest compliments one man ever paid another, my going out to Longfellow’s tonight. By the way Mr Fields, do you appreciate the position you hold in our time. There never was anything like it. Why I was nothing but a roaring kangaroo when you took me in hand and I thought it was the right thing to stand upon my hind legs, but you combed me down and put me in proper shape. Now I want you to promise me one thing. We’re all growing old, your authors are all growing old, I’m near sixty myself, by and by the brain will begin to soften. Now you must tell me when the egg begins to look addled. People don’t know of themselves.”
He had been to two large dinners lately one at G.W. Wales’s which he said was the finest dinner he had ever seen, the most perfect in all its appointments, decorated with the largest profusion of flowers in as perfect taste as he had ever seen—“why even the chair you sat in was so delicately padded as to give pleasure to that weak spot in the back which we all inherit from the fall of Adam” the other was at Mrs Charles Dorr’s where there were 16 at table & the room “for heat was like the black hole at Calcutta” but the company very brilliant. Mr & Mrs Winthrop, Mrs Parkman, Dr Hayes etc. he sat next Mrs Winthrop, says she is a thorough-bred woman of society the daughter of a politician, the wife, first of a millionaire and now of a man of society. “I like such a woman now and then, she never makes a mistake.” Mrs Julia Ward Howe was thoroughly canvassed at the table “picked clean as any duck for the spit and then roasted over a slow fire” as O.W.H. afterward remarked to Mrs Parkman who is a very just woman and who weighed her well in the balances.
When they arrived at L’s my basket of flowers stood surrounded by other gifts and Longfellow himself sat crowned with all the natural loveliness of his rare nature. The day must have been a happy one for him. His son had just completed a portrait of remarkable beauty of his sister Edith, almost a work of genius as it seemed when it was remembered this was but the 2d portrait he had ever painted. O.W.H. had three perfect verses of a little poem in his hand which he read and then Lowell talked and they had great merriment and delight together.
Lissie and I sat at home writing and reading Ferrari’s play in Italian of Dante etc. which Longfellow lent me—a delightful thing.
During the day I had been playing show man about the house to country friends.
This morning a quiet hour at home—errands the afternoon—Lucy to dinner.
