[Boston—Tuesday, 1 December 1868]
Dec 1st Dined with Kate Field and her mother at the St. James Hotel last night. Much talk of acting and actors beginning with the lovely Mrs S. Siddons crude but ambitious and ending with Dickens. It was the first anniversary of his first reading in America. Afterward K.F. read us 3 remarkable letters one from Edgar A. Poe to her father asking him to introduce into his journal an article which he proceeded to write in defense of himself—one from Ruskin to Browning, witty as Carlyle himself and not unlike his vim, and lastly one from Browning to K.F. surely one of the most delightful letters in existence—all written too in the fine scripture (more like E.B.s than his) yet strong & clear, which was his former manner.
