[Boston—Thursday, 7 February 1867]
Thursday. Lovely day. Mr Dorr came to ask us to dine. Didn’t wish to go but had declined so often that I accepted conditionally if Mr Fields could manage it.
Found an agreeable company of ten among them Mabel Lowell the poet’s daughter, a beautiful and graceful girl. She had none of the timidity of girl-hood nor was she forthputting but exceedingly at her ease, opening her finely cut mouth for a simple or witty remark as occasion prompted, talking naturally and little rather than much. With a delicate nervous organisation she is nevertheless peculiarly healthy and her nervous energy finds its true expression in quickening her faculties and making her violet eyes shine or grow tender as she is swayed by persons or by moods. Her pretty dress of white alpacca trimmed with garnet color, with garnets at her throat, and in her ears, became her clear complexion perfectly, while the old style, just new, of putting up the hair high upon the top of the head showed her beautiful shape to perfect advantage. It was a real pleasure & refreshment to see anything so lovely. I shall make an effort to get Lissie to paint her; for it is the high hey-day of life with the sweet girl now & her loveliness should be caught at its perfection.
We resorted to that last ditch of amusement, tipping tables after dinner when there was either a great deal of cheating or a great deal of electricity about for the table rushed round marvellously. I sat next Governor Andrew at table. Mrs Dorr presented several knotty questions to him—one wherein lay the attraction of Mrs Charles Eames of Washington and it was a study to see how he slipped out of the noose thrown for him with the tact of a cavalier of the old school. He said how impossible it was “to define the quality which chiefly attracts us in those we like” and more of subtle analysis of woman’s power—but at last he said definitely that she was a good listener and therein lay a real secret of success; for persons must either listen or talk in company in order to be agreeable at all. Unfortunately there are many who do neither, thence proceeds much of the vapidity we feel but can seldom explain. We neither of us had at our tongue’s end that wise saying of Madame Swetchine “L’attention est une tacite et continuelle louange.”
