Diary of Annie Adams Fields

Tuesday. Mr. Thomas Hughes came to town to attend a meeting of the Women’s Club. J and I both went, meeting there Mr. Mundella also a liberal M.P. who has been elected in the place & over the head of Roebuck our enemy. We invited him to come to us in the evening to a little supper we were to...

Wednesday night. Went to Roxbury to tea with Mrs Putnam & her daughter. After tea she read us the portions of her journals wh. she has prepared for the press upon the condition of France before and at the moment of the coup d’etat. It is done with great knowledge & a lofty spirit. I hope the...

Thursday. Petersen an artist and a Dane came to lunch. A large, free, grand looking norse man—with a quick head and a warm heart. He is young but growing. He repeated to us the Danish war-song and showed his appreciation of Longfellow by repeating also some of his verses. He knows Denmark well...

Friday. Jamie dined at the Somerset Club to meet Mr. Mundella again—a brilliant affair. Mr. Richard Fay a man of unlovely repute gave the dinner. As Holmes came away with Jamie & Longfellow he said to them “I didn’t want to go to this dinner. I don’t like the host and I tried to get off...

Saturday. Bôcher’s french lecture, Fechter in Monte Christo, and a tea-party at home absorbed us. J. went to a political meeting at night where Charles Sumner presided.

Sunday—such a sermon from Dr. Putnam! (Oct. 16—our engagement anniversary) Dr. Putnam spoke of worldly & unworldly gifts—and after our dear Lord & his teaching, showed how all good & wise revere the gifts of poets and heaven sent teachers.

Thursday October 20 [sic]. Whittier came to breakfast at 8 o’clk. He was looking paler even and thinner than usual but his presence was strong as ever and his warm friendliness a benediction. A day or two before he had returned my scrap-book of papers upon Dickens, saying how sad it was to...

Saturday. Fechter, Miss Putnam, Bessie & William Greene came to dine. We had a simple cozy time which we all enjoyed thoroughly I believe. We tried to induce Mr. Fechter to read Molière in public this winter. He will do this if he possibly can. He talked much and was entertaining and...

Heard Dr Putnam preach—upon Courage—We shall wear our crown and stand in our lot at the end of our days—as the prophet says somewhere—lunched with mother—Sunday School in the afternoon—tea with Louisa.

Tuesday November 1st 1870. We begin this month with different feelings from any I could have anticipated by the wildest stretch of imagination. J. is no longer to bear the weight of this great business house on his shoulders. That is all behind him and he is to occupy himself altogether with...

Thursday Nov. 4 [sic]. I have heard twice this week from Mrs Putnam. The sorrows of France have stirred her deeply. Also came yesterday from N.Y. a touching note of acknowledgment from Miss LeClerc for aid in behalf of her fair. The grief of the note brought back all the pains of our war.

Sunday afternoon. Mrs Putnam with eyes aglow read me letters from England touching the conditions of France. I have seldom seen, even Mrs Putnam so deeply stirred.

Wednesday Nov. 9. We have had a reception today for Miss Nilsson today. Longfellow & Henry Ward Beecher were here, beside Perabo and many excellent & talented people nearly 60 in all. It was a curious fact to give out 70 invitations and have sixty (or nearly that) present.

On Saturday she sang from Hamlet, the mad scene of Ophelia. As usual, her dress & whole appearance was of the most refined and perfect beauty and her singing we appreciated even more deeply than ever. She has not the remote “exalté” nature of highest genius, but she is the great singer of...

Sunday 13. Went to hear Dr. Putnam with James Parton & dear J. The former says he is a pagan, but somehow the service suited his case exactly.

Monday night went to see Fechter in Claude Melnotte. Longfellow & his daughter Edith sat in the box adjoining ours. It was the stage box where they were sheltered from observation; ours was the box next it, to be sure, but accessible to all eyes. During the evening Longfellow came into our box,...

Thanksgiving Day. Tom Appleton came in to call & stayed to lunch and until it was time for me to dress for dinner. He was interesting as he always is in talk. I sent to him to ask for money for my coffee-shop which he intends to give me, but he stayed all that time and went away without saying...

Saturday night Nov. 26 ’70. A Saturday Club day. Emerson was there, looking old, (yet age never touches his real self as we all know) and afterward John Dwight and George William Curtis came to tea & pass the evening here. Curtis has a little more grey hair but appears otherwise to have lost...

Sunday night. Gay the painter & Lucy Bradlee came to tea—and then we went to hear Curtis’s lecture on Dickens—a trifle sentimental & much more of Scott & Curtis and other things unhappily than of Dickens but it is always a failure when men try to talk of him. Afterward Curtis passed the...

Monday night. Longfellow looked in on his way out to dine. I think he fancied we might be going but with his perfect delicacy did not even mention where the dinner was to be.

Monday. Dec. 5. Whittier dropped down this morning to breakfast. He seems remarkably well. We did not have any very serious talk, until he became interested about our Coffee Room in which he believes and to which he gave us his “good speed”. He promises to come round there to see how we get...

Dec. 7th Last night Mr. Emerson lectured upon Immortality. The old lecture. I wished to go; but J. was too tired and obliged to rest. Afterward we met Mr. & Mrs E. at Dr. Jackson’s, her brother’s. They both looked old to us. So long a time has passed since all have talked much together that...

Dec. 9. I had hardly written the above words when we both, unknown to the other, fell to reading H.H. and saw in its great excellence entire “excuse for being.”

Sunday Eve. Dec. 11. Went to Mr. Bartols & met Mr. Collyer. He was pleased to hear what Fechter said of him Saturday night (by the by we met Fechter at Mrs Dorr’s dinner on Saturday) that he singled him out, found him a capital audience, and played to him. It was a fine house on Saturday and...

Wednesday Dec. 14. Longfellow, Osgood, Aldrich, Holmes, Dana, Howells, Lowell, & Bayard Taylor dined here. The statuette of Goethe was on the table surrounded by flowers. The occasion was the completion of the Translation of Faust by Mr. Taylor’s hand. We hoped to see Mrs Taylor here also &...