Diary of Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday—xmas behind us we are beseiged by dreams of Europe, of those we love “on the other side” and several places we wish to see. Yet I would not go tomorrow if I could help it. I see a stretch of life before us, between us and the deep sea. I wish to live more for those around me, to...

Wednesday Decr 30th Mr. Whittier came to breakfast. His niece has just gone South to teach the freed people. The conversation turned naturally upon the condition of the South and the Colored race. He said she had gone to an old town by the name of Camden in So. Carolina. The place is more than a...

Thursday. Dec. 31st A long letter from Charles Dickens. We both sat down to read it in a perfect glow of delight and Jamie marched off with it after we had finished.

New Years Day we had a grand snow-storm the first of the season.

Saturday. Emerson’s first afternoon of public reading and comment on books.

Sunday & Monday. 3d & 4th Read last night the murder scene from Oliver Twist before going to bed and dreamed of it, and of Dickens all night. I was seized firmly by the wrists, in my fancy, and led to where the body lay, I turned my head away and would not look, but the grasp grew tighter and...

Friday Jany 8th Mabel Lowell has been passing a few days here. We have been out or had company almost every eveg for a week and are quite ready to turn to quiet scenes. She has told me a new story of Tom Appleton which we must not forget. Mrs Dorr, our flea of society, has a way of calling all...

Sunday Jany 10. I feel rather tired this morning. Tues. night we went to the opera. Wed. to see “Dot” which was most lovely. Thursday concert in the afternoon, talked all the eve. at home. Friday, party at Mrs Agassiz with lecture by the Professor upon his favorite glacial theory, his...

Thursday. Jan 14. Mabel went home yesterday full of dreams of Europe for we have asked her to accompany us in case we can go. It is an exquisite delight to find the house quiet again or full of disembodied voices breathing from the books around us. I have had dear and sweet society but it seems...

Saturday. Went to call on Anna Greene, also to hear Mr. Emerson. Wrote Laura a synopsis of the latter in the evening, also wrote Dickens. Jamie went to hear Ole Bull for the last time and to the Club. Ole carried all before him. He is a wonderful child. Mr. Emerson swept us away into his fine...

Wednesday. Jany 20. The days slip away with an awful swiftness. Sunday Louisa came to tell me scarletina had broken out among the children and she would like to send Nellie & Baby & nurse over here. So I have been playing with baby & attending to work people beside (it never rains but it pours)...

January 23d Thinking of Dickens just now while I was dressing in the yellow afternoon sunshine I thought how like heaven it is to have known two such men, men whose sympathies stand ready to receive and love and forgive yet with minds to comprehend the difficulties by the way. It makes a new...

January 27. Day after day slips away but as I give five hours of each to our baby I absolutely cannot write here but my German comes on swimmingly and I know it is better to be writing in this infant’s mind than anywhere else. It certainly is astonishing that he should never wish to go home...

Thursday—tonight quietly at home. Jamie read me after dinner a little paper written by Hawthorne for the newsboys of Salem more than 30 years ago, an address to their patron after the old fashion. These addresses were usually in verse but this seems oddly enough to be a form of composition...

Feb. 3. Baby still here and I do not write at all. I have nearly finished Auerbach’s novel but otherwise nichts. William Greene, his wife & both children took tea here Monday. Sunday two old English ladies—Wells by name and last week Mrs Dresel. Beside these no company. The weather has been...

Feb. 4. Jamie has gone to the Thursday Club tonight and the wind is roaring as I write but the day has been delicious in point of atmosphere and we had a long walk. Mary Felton was just coming to see me as we went out and we wish to ask her to go to England by and by for a month.

Feb. 5. I was singing “Silver sails all out of the West” to baby, which he thought “beautiful Aunt Annie,” when Lucy Larcom dropped in to dine. A cold snowy day but cosy inside, where Lucy said it was always comfortable. She comes from the orthodox church but believes in no societies and...

Sunday Feb. 7th. Passed the morning at home with baby but found time for a letter to Laura giving the gist of Emerson’s lecture yesterday as well as I could.

Monday Feby 8th Auerbach speaks of people who read books away, as men smoke cigars! How good this is! How applicable to many who throng the circulating libraries for the last novel.

Friday night came Laura and her little girl. I had been a little “under the weather” which was spring-like all day and had gone to bed but dear J. went to the station in my place—or filled the two.

Feb 19th Found a moment this morning to open Auerbach and read “Gunther was entschlossen, nun die nächsten Wochen seine Morgenstille zu opfern; er wollte sich ganz der Freundin widmen, und er sah jenseits dieser Wochen wieder seine ungestörte Ruhe.”

Feby 20. Heard Emerson again and Laura was with me; we drank up every word eagerly. He read Donne, Daniel and especially Herbert; also “vers de société”; the facility of these old divines giving them a power akin to what has produced these familiar rhymes. He said Herbert was full of holy...

Feb. 25. Laura went yesterday. She has gone to pass a few days with the Dana’s at Cambridge, a sense of immense relief comes over us; to be at home once more in our own house—to be alone with our love and our work, is refreshing. I have been really ill but am about again only feeling a...

26th Laura came in to pass the morning. The snow began to fall impetuously and soon everything was covered as it has not been before this year—a most beneficent storm. Its coming was thoroughly mild and insidious. At breakfast the sky was lowering but the atmosphere so mild that a little...

Saturday. Miss Lowell came to lunch and we went together to hear Emerson’s lecture. He began by giving Herbert’s Easter day which he forgot last week—a touch of Marvell & then turned at once to Milton the poet of the day and the inspiring figure of all literature as he said.