Diary of Annie Adams Fields

Monday May 18. Raining like all possessed again today. I was to have done my gardening today but there is no chance yet. Walked over Roxbury with J. yesterday and found everything gay with the coming loveliness. It has scarcely come however.

May 20th In the new life of David Garrick there is a passage reminding us of Dickens and his experience in America. Garrick had just left Dublin, taking “away with him the most generous and grateful sentiments of the people of the place; and when later, what he called “a most cruel and false...

Thursday. May 21st Ernest Longfellow’s wedding. The rain still poured as if the flood-gates had opened. The dear old house was thrown open for the first time since the death of its sweet mistress and the last time for (probably) many years to come. It was a lovely occasion with a veil of...

Friday 22. Still rain, but softer. The strength of the storm is broken.

Saturday 23d I was a bad prophet. The rain still continues. Tonight we had a farewell dinner to Longfellow. Eleven at table. We should have been 12 if Alexander Longfellow had not missed a train. Emerson, Agassiz, Holmes, Lowell, Greene, Norton, Whipple, Dana & Longfellow came. There was much...

Sunday 24. Warm weather. Brattleboro. Chiefly passed in the house except an hour or two of afternoon and evening under the trees and on the piazza. Yesterday when we arrived we found our letters within a week ago were just received. Mother had dressed our room with flowers and stood at the gate...

Monday 25. Excessively warm. Left at ½ past three in a comfortable carriage for Wilmington. Exquisite scenery. Green Mountains.

Tuesday morning rose at 4. Weather perfect cooled by the showers of last evening. Left our little Inn and our kind landlord at ½ past six. The wind blew freshly and as we ascended the mountains Jamie and I jumped out and walked up. The Peabody birds were singing in numbers around us—indeed I...

May 30th A whole month has gone since Dickens left us! We have had but a short note since his arrival. He is overwhelmed with business but he is not too much occupied to forget some little things he was to send us: the very smallness of them proving his attention all the greater. I find much in...

June 7th Another week has gone and not a word here; unfortunately this oftenest happens when there is the most to write about. The weather has grown soft and today really muggy and warm with small intermissions of sunshine.

Thursday June 11th A letter from Dickens Tuesday! And such a letter. Yesterday we passed at Whittier’s. He showed us a plate sent him from the wreck of the Palatine.

Friday. Rainy still.

Saturday at Framingham with mother. Warm and summer-like.

Sunday. At home. Cool and perfect—our first “June day.” Everything to write about but the mood is wanting.

June 17th. Wednesday. Our first excessively (if “empty” were not there) warm day this season. Left home for Lebanon Springs, driving over from Pittsfield in the afternoon. The country was looking green and fresh, the recent and continued rains having kept back every thing but the grass and...

Friday. Perfect day. Took train to Farmington watching from the car windows the winding of our Pemigewasset until it disappeared utterly—once more we had a peep at the Franconia range, floating mysteriously upon the horizon then they too quickly sank behind the waving foliage by the road-side....

Sunday June 21st We looked in vain for letters last night! Does not all the world know what that is? Our hopes were more baseless than those of others perhaps for we were hoping to hear from Longfellow & Dickens. If one’s friends are the great of the earth, be content with that, and with your...

Wednesday. June 24th At Oxford. A little town on the Connecticut of surpassing loveliness. Here we found the dear Bartols & Lissie Greene. With the help of a country photographer they have been taking marvellous pictures, worthy in form, design of Alma Tadama, Millet, and the rest. I am anxious...

June 25. Plymouth. Letter from Longfellow written on the steamer. Once more in the old places so well beloved among the shadows of the hills. O Love! O Life, so strange the years, so few, Eternal sleep the hills, and on their breast Sleeps swift mortality from this unrest; While ages fade and...

June 26. Plymouth. Perfect June has at last come to us, and this place which Whittier calls the loveliest village in New England is full of summer sights and sounds. The mountains are faint upon the sky becoming only a little deeper blue than the heavens themselves. We dream here of those we...

Saturday. Still in Plymouth, the weather still perfect. Jamie amuses himself variously. We have a little black boy, full of impishness here who was in the highest enjoyment yesterday at the arrival of a travelling band. He was set in motion immediately, showing a real talent for dancing just as...

Sunday. Have passed the morning on the piazza of a deserted house upon the hill-top, the whole Franconia Range in view. Whittier was our companion (in pocket-form, this time). It was a heavenly season.

Monday. Went to drive at ½ past 6 up Mount Prospect. It was very fine. Personally however I am no great traveller being rather a lover of old haunts than a seeker of new ones, but the walk down was everything. There is a moon now and the nights bring all the glory of the summer in their arms....

Tuesday. June 29 [sic]. Walked four hours, not steadily but perching under trees and by the river—the hours slipped away without a sound.

Wednesday. Weather Summer-like and sweet. In our walk yesterday J. delighted himself and me by rehearsing his memories of Willis. J. was at the Astor House when Willis returned first from Europe with his young bride. He was then the observed of all observers. As in those days travellers crossed...