Diary of Annie Adams Fields

Monday. Dec. 19. I have just returned from seeing Fechter in Ruy Blas. The Public has just received the news that he is to leave the Globe Theatre and Boston in four weeks. The result was an enormous house and the most fashionable house I have seen this season. He played with great fire and...

Dec. 21. Received a call this morning from Mrs Francis G. Shaw. It was the first opportunity we have ever enjoyed of conversing together. Her sweet face wears a lambent grace and beauty which age has ripened but not destroyed. She said she considered herself the happiest of mothers. All her...

Saturday. Xmas Eve. 42 at my Christmas Tree! It was a very symmetrical and pretty tree and the children were in ecstacies not to speak of Grandmamas and everybody who was asked except Aunt Sarah and Fechter who did not get here. I was much disappointed because of the omission. Winnie Howells was...

Sunday, Jany 1st Dined with Tom Appleton. Mr Gay the artist was there. He showed us sketches by a French artists [sic] intended to be amusing in 1866 of the King of Prussia as Jack in the Box. It is now only too terrible. There were others also of the same dramatic and almost prophetic...

Monday Ja’y 2d Dined at William Hunt’s with Mrs & Miss Putnam and Miss LeClerc, all representative women but so different—Miss LeClerc, French Huguenot, has lived long in America as a teacher and is now the head and front after Miss Haines of Miss H.’s great school in N.Y. She is working...

Tuesday night. Dined at home with Mr & Mrs Darrah, Judge Russell & his wife. The two latter people of distinguished intellect. She has the savage element largely developed—a kind of freedom which she will never lose—a true child of Father Taylor and Mother Nature.

Saturday 7. Dined at Mr Longfellow’s with Mr. Fechter. The poet welcomed us with a cordiality perculiar to himself and his children with a simple sweet glad-to-see-you written over their faces which is worth a world of talk. We had a merry table-talk although Fechter was laboring under the...

Sunday afternoon. A short talk with Mrs Putnam about the necessity for a free Protestant church in France. In spite of the war, this work is the one Miss LeClerc never forgets. Undoubtedly could a free protestant church become powerful in France it would [do] no more to elevate the nation than...

Jany 13. Mrs H.B. Stowe came to lunch. She was more “distraite”, more undressed, and inclined to be more silent than ever. She had taken a severe cold I discovered and as she once described to me the anaconda propensities of their family for curling up and going off in spirit, so I...

Friday Jany 13 [sic for 20]. Passed the evening at Ernest Longfellows new house just completed opposite his father’s. They had tableaux arranged by the young artist himself. It was all very simple, “but as pretty a little party” as J. said on our return, “as he had seen for many a...

Jan’y 23. It proved an unnecessary alarm! The evening went off well enough but unenthousiastically & at last Fechter gave all the money to the poor!

Jan’y 26th Last Saturday was a notable day. The city fathers waited upon me and hope to establish Coffee houses all over the city at “5 cents a cup.”

Saturday Jany 28. Paris has surrendered.

Tuesday Feb. 21. Mrs Diaz, Lucy Larcom, Marianne Silsbee, “Grace Greenwood” and her daughter, Imogen Willis Eddy and ourselves made a Tea party together and were merry.

Wednesday. Washington’s Birthday.

Saturday night February 25. was Jamie’s Club again. After it was over a part of the company adjourned to our tea-table—Longfellow, Bret Harte (his first appearance among the literate of our shores) Holmes, Gay, Hunt, Ernest Longfellow, Frank Sanborn, & Jo. Bradlee. Bret Harte was the guest...

Friday March 10—Too many days full of interest have passed unrecorded. Chiefly I should record what I can recall of Francis Bret Harte who has made his first visit to the East just now, since he went to San Francisco in his early youth. He is now apparently about 35 years old. His mind is full...

Friday again and it rains hard.

Friday. March 24th—Mr. Emerson came to dine alone with us. “The Club” as our small evening party has named itself again taking place. He brought his journal in his bag, kindly, most kindly to read from to the company. Mr. & Mrs Hunt were here, Mrs. H. James & her son Harry, the novelist,...

Friday March 31. The last of “our Fridays” for this season. A most successful little series of parties where we have all had a “lovely time”. Last night Mr. Hunt played he was a mannakin [sic] figure of Napoleon at St. Helena—nothing could have been more absurd. He was also Mrs Smith,...

April 27. A whole month gone! I have been ill in New York, have been unfit to write. I am longing for country life—no more fire side and talk just now. I think of great Carlyle in the solitude of his Dumfries home or down in Cheney Row, I think of the good and great everywhere and how they...

29. Worked in garden. Visits from Mrs Bartol who brought me a noble red cactus which grew in her own chamber. Mrs James Lodge full of interest in life outside of herself; she is not the less interesting to me that she finds much of her own lot rather a dust-heap. The form of art most congenial...

Friday May 5. Little dinner at Mrs Addison Child’s in Mt. Vernon St. to meet Miss Charlotte Cushman. Mr. & Mrs William Hunt and H Wild (an artist). Miss Cushman looked better than almost ever before in her life,—her fine grey hair dressed full and high and her presence full of strength as...

May 12th Third meeting of the Officers of the Army of the Potomac. They came together in the morning at the Globe Theatre where “J.” read the poem for Bret Harte, preluding it with a few verses of his own. It was a beautiful and touching sight—the theatre was made beautiful with flags &...

Saturday. 13. A tea party of ten persons to meet a Mr. & Mrs Knox who were kind to my sister when she was alone in Europe this winter. Mrs Knox is a beautiful Contralto Singer. Her music gave great delight to everybody.