Part 16

In other places than Charles Street, Fields and Hunt were often meeting. One brief record of an encounter, at the end of a Saturday Club meeting, should surely be preserved, for all that it suggests of Hunt in amused rebellion against his surroundings.

_Sunday, August 26, 1874._—Hunt came to Jamie when the afternoon was nearly ended and asked him to go up to his studio. As they went along, he said, “I’ve made a poem! First time I ever wrote anything in my life. ’Tisn’t long, only four lines, but I’ve got it written down.” Whereat then and there he pulled out his pocketbook and read:

“Boston is a hilly place; People all are brothers-in-law. If you or I want something done They treat us then like mothers-in-law.

“This goes to the tune of Yankee Doodle,” Whereat he sang it out on the public highway. He looked very handsome, was beautifully dressed in brown velvet with a gold chain about his neck, but swore like a trooper and was in one of his most lawless moods.

He gave J. for me a photograph of a marvellous picture which he calls his Persian Sybil, Anahita. I see his wife in it as in so many of his best works. “I don’t mean to do any more portraits,” he said. “When I remember how I have wasted time on an eyebrow because somebody’s 14th cousin thought it ought to turn up a little more—it makes me mad!”

[Illustration: _Facsimile letter from Hunt to Fields_]

When the English painter, Lowes Dickinson, the father of G. Lowes Dickinson, was visiting the Fieldses in Boston, a photograph of Hunt’s portrait of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw so impressed him that he asked to be taken to the painter’s studio. In Miss Helen M. Knowlton’s “Art Life of William Morris Hunt” this circumstance is related, together with its sequel, which was the publication of Hunt’s “Talks on Art” from notes made by Miss Knowlton herself. It is a surmise but slightly hazardous that a characteristic note found among the Fields papers was written apropos of Dickinson’s visit to Hunt: “Send ’em along—I mean Painters,” he wrote to Fields. “I have had a delightful day with your friend—and I know he is a painter—why? because he likes what I do well and _hates_ what I do that ain’t worth....”

It has been seen that, as early as November, 1868, James Parton suggested that “a writer named Mark Twain” be engaged to contribute to the “Atlantic.”[32] In October, 1868, “F. Bret Harte” wrote to the editor of the “Atlantic” from San Francisco: “As the author of ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp,’ I have to thank you for an invitation to contribute to the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ but as editor of ‘The Overland,’ my duties claim most of my spare time outside of the Government office in which I am employed.... But I am glad of this opportunity to thank someone connected with the ‘Atlantic’ for its very gracious good-will toward me and my writings, particularly the book which G. W. Carleton of New York malformed in its birth. There was an extra kindness in your taking the deformed brat by the hand, and trying to recognize some traces of a parent so far away.”

It was in the discharge of his work as editor of the “Atlantic” that Fields, hospitable to practitioners of all the arts, entered especially into relations with writers whose paths might not otherwise have crossed his, and his wife’s. Of all the young Lochinvars of the pen who came out of the West while Mrs. Fields was keeping her diary, Bret Harte and Mark Twain were the daring and dauntless gallants who most captured the imagination and have longest held it. To each of them Mrs. Fields devoted a number of pages in her diary. We shall see first what she had to say about Bret Harte.

_Friday, March 10, 1871._—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 of the grand landscape of the West, and filled also with sympathetic interest in the half-developed natives who are to be seen there, nearer to the surface than in our Eastern cities. He told me of a gambler who had a friend lying dead in the upper room of a gambling house. The man went out to see about having services performed. “Better have it at the grave,” said the parson to whom he applied. Jim shook his head as if he feared the proper honors would not be paid his friend. The other then suggested they should find the minister and leave it to him. “Well,” said Jim, “yes, I wish you’d do just that, for I ain’t much of a funeral ‘sharp’ myself.” He told me also, as a sign of the wonderful recklessness which had pervaded San Francisco, that at one time there was a glut of tobacco in the market and, a block of houses going up at the same period, _the foundations of those houses were laid of boxes of tobacco_. Bret Harte, as the world calls him, is natural, warm-hearted, with a keen relish for fun, disposed to give just value to the strong language of the West, which he is by no means inclined to dispense with; at ease in every society, quick of sense and sight. Jamie, who saw him more than I, finds him lovable above all. We liked his wife too,—not handsome but with good honest sense, appreciative of him,—and two children. She is said to sing well, but poor woman! the fatigues of that most distressing journey across the continent, the fêtes, the heat (for the weather is unusually warm), have been almost too much for her and she is not certainly at her best. They dined and took tea here last Friday.

[Illustration: _Facsimile page from an early letter of Bret Harte’s_]

_Tuesday, September 5, 1871._—J. went to Boston. I wrote in the pastures and walked all the morning. Coming home, after dinner, came a telegram for me to meet J. and Bret Harte at Beverly station with the pony carriage. I drove hard to catch the train, but arrived in season, glad to take up the two good boys and show them Beverly shore. Stopped at Mrs. Cabot’s returning to see Mrs. ——, etc. They were all glad to have a glimpse of Bret Harte. The talk turned a little upon Hawthorne, and I was much amused to hear Mrs. —— say, drawing herself up, “Yes, he was born in Salem, but we never knew anything about him.” (The truth was, Mrs. —— was the last person to appreciate him.) ... Fortunately Miss Howes was present, whose father was one of Hawthorne’s best friends; so matters were made clear there. We left soon and came on to Manchester, where, after showing him the shore, we sat and talked during the evening.

Mr. Harte had much to say of the beautiful flowers of California, roses being in bloom about his own house there every month in the year. He found the cloudless skies and continued drought of California very hard to bear. For the first time in my life I considered how terrible perpetual cloudlessness would be! He thinks there is no beauty in the mountains of California, hard, bare, snowless peaks. Neither are there trees, nor any green grass.

He is delighted with the fragrant lawns of Newport and has, I believe, put into verse a delightful ghost story which he told us.[33] He has taken a house of some antiquity in Newport, connected with which is the story of a lady who formerly lived there and who was very fond of the odor of mignonette. The flower was always growing in her house, and after her death, at two o’clock every night, a strong odor has always been perceived passing through the house as if wafted along by the garments of a woman. One night at the appointed hour, but entirely unconnected in his thought with the story Mr. Harte had long ago heard, he was arrested in his work by a strong perfume of mignonette which appeared to sweep by him. He looked about, thinking his wife might have placed a vase of flowers in the room, but finding nothing he began to follow the odor, which seemed to flit before him. Then he recalled, for the first time, the story he had heard. He opened the door; the odor was in the hall; he opened the room where the lady died, but there was no odor there; until returning, after making a circuit of the house, he found a faint perfume as if she had passed but not stayed there also. At last, somewhat oppressed perhaps by the ghostliness of the place and hour, he went out and stood upon the porch. There his dream vanished. The sweet lawn and tree flowers were emitting an odor, as is common at the hour when dews congeal, more sweet than at any other time of day or night, and the air was redolent of sweets which might easily be construed into mignonette. The story was well told and I shall be glad to see his poem.

Many good stories came off during the evening, some very characteristic of California; ones such as that of an uproar in a theatre and a man about to be killed, when someone shouts, “Don’t waste him, but kill a fiddler with him.” Also one of the opening nights at the California theatre, the place packed, when a man who has taken too much whiskey wishes a noise; immediately the manager, a strong executive man, catches him up with the help of a policeman, and before anybody knows the thing is done or the disturber what is the matter, he finds himself set down on the sidewalk outside in the street. “Well,” said he with an oath, “is this the way you do business here; raise a fellow before he has a chance to draw?” (referring to the game of poker).

Mr. Harte is a very sensitive and nervous man. He struggles against himself all the time. He sat on the piazza with J. and talked till a late hour. This morning at breakfast I found him most interesting. He talked of his early and best-loved books. It appears that at the age of nine he was a lover and reader of Montaigne. Certain writers, he says, seem to him to stand out as friends and brothers side by side in literature. Now Horace and Montaigne are so associated in his mind. Mr. Emerson, he thinks, never in the least approaches a comprehension of the character of the man. With an admiration for his great sayings, he has never guessed at the subtle springs from which they come. The pleasant acceding to both sides in politics, and other traits of like nature, gives him affinity with Hawthorne. By the way, he is a true appreciator of Hawthorne. He was moved to much merriment yesterday by remembering a passage in the notes, where he slyly remarks, “Margaret Fuller’s cows hooked the other cows.” Speaking of Dr. Bartol, he said, “What a dear old man he is! A venerable baby, nothing more!” But Harte is most kindly and tender. His wife has been very ill and has given him cause for terrible anxiety. This accounts for much left undone, but he is an oblivious man oftentimes to his surroundings—leaves things behind!!

_January 12, 1872._—Bret Harte was here at breakfast. It is curious to see his feeling with regard to society. For purely literary society, with its affectations and contempts, he has no sympathy. He has at length chosen New York as his residence, and among the Schuylers, Sherwoods, and their friends he appears to find what he enjoys. There is evidently a _gêne_ about people and life here, and provincialisms which he found would hurt him. He is very sensitive and keen, with a love and reverence for Dickens almost peculiar in this coldly critical age. Bryant he finds very cold and totally unwilling to lead the conversation, as he should do when they are together, as he justly remarks, he being so much younger—but never a word without cart and horses to fetch it.

Bret Harte has a queer absent-minded way of spending his time, letting the hours slip by as if he had not altogether learned their value yet. It is a miracle to us how he lives, for he writes very little. Thus far I suppose he has had money from J. R. O. & Co., but I fancy they have done with giving out money save for a _quid pro quo_.

_February, 1872_ [during a visit to New York].—We had promised to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Harte early and go to the theatre afterward, therefore four o’clock found us at their door. He welcomed us by opening it himself and only this reassured Jamie. We had driven up in a “Crystal,” much to my amusement, in which J. had insisted I should sit until he discovered if that was the house. The scene was altogether comic. I shortened the ludicrousness as much as possible by jumping out and running quickly up the steps. Mrs. Harte was not ready to see me, but I found Mr. Barrett the actor with Mr. Harte in the parlor, and soon being invited upstairs, found Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Harte together. We had a merry dinner together, the young actor evidently quite nervous with respect to the evening’s performance. He went an hour before us to the play. We sat in the stage box; the play was “Julius Cæsar.” It is useless to deny Edwin Booth great talent, exquisite grace and feeling. Both the young men, the first, Barrett, a man of intellect, and Booth, a man of inherited grace and feeling as well as good mind, have the advantage moreover of being born to the stage. Their stage habits fit them more perfectly than those of the drawing-room and they walk the stage with the ease that most men do their own parlors. During the performance Booth invited us into his drawing-room; a short carpeted way led from the box into the small room where he was sitting in Roman costume, pipe in mouth; he rose and called “Mary,” as we approached, when the tiniest woman ever called wife made her appearance. She is an ardent little spark of human flame and he really looks large beside her.

But his grace, his grace! His dress too, was as usual perfect—more, far more than all, both the actors had such feeling for Shakespeare and for their parts with which they are filling the stage nightly, that they were deeply and truly enthusiastic. It was a sight to warm Shakespeare.

[Illustration: BRET HARTE AND MARK TWAIN

_From early photographs_]

_Saturday, September 18, 1875._—Bret Harte came on the ½ past 12 train. He came in good health, save a headache which ripened as the day went on; but he was bubbling over with fun, full of the most natural and unexpected sallies. He wished to know if I was acquainted with the Cochin China hen. They had one at Cohasset. They had named him Benventuro (after a certain gay Italian singer of strong self-appreciation who came formerly to America). He said this hen’s state of mind on finding a half-exploded firecracker and her depressed condition since its explosion was something extraordinary. His description was so vivid that I still see this hen perambulating about the house, first with pride, second with precipitation, fallen into disgrace among her fellows.

He said Cohasset was not the place to live in the summer if one wanted sea-breezes. They all came straight from Chicago!! He fancied the place, thinking it an old fishing village, not unlike Yarmouth. Instead of which they prided themselves upon never having “any of your sea-smells,” and, being five miles from the doctor, could not be considered a cheerful place to live in with sick children. He said he was surprised to find J. T. F. without a sailor’s jacket and collar. The actors among whom he had been living rather overdid the business; their collars were wider, their shirts fuller, and their trousers more bulgy than those of any real sailor he had ever observed, and the manner of hitching up the trousers was entirely peculiar to themselves and to the stage.

We went to call upon the Burlingames. In describing Harrisburg, Virginia, where he had lectured, he said a committee-man came to invite him to take a walk, and he was so afflicted with a headache that he was ready to take or give away his life at any moment; so he accepted the invitation and walked out with him. The man observed that Harrisburg was a very healthy place; only one man a day died in that vicinity. “Oh!” said Harte, remembering the dangerous state of his own mind, “has that man died yet today?” The man shook his head gravely, never suspecting a joke, and said he didn’t know, but he would try to find out. Whereat Harte, to keep up the joke, said he wished he would. He went to the lecture forgetting all about it and saw this man hanging around without getting a chance to speak. The next morning very early, he managed to get an opportunity to speak to him. “I couldn’t find out exactly about that man yesterday,” he said. “What man?” said H. “Why, the one we were speaking of; the Coroner said he couldn’t say precisely who it was, but the one man would average all right.”

Harte said in speaking of Longfellow that no one had yet overpraised him. The delicate quality of humor, the exquisite fineness in the choice of words, the breadth and sweetness of his nature were something he could hardly help worshipping. One day after a dinner at Mr. Lowell’s he said, “I think I will not have a carriage to return to town. I will walk down to the Square.” “I will walk with you,” said Longfellow. When they arrived at his gate, he said, he was so beautiful that he could only think of the light and whiteness of the moon, and if he had stayed a moment longer he should have put his arms around him and made a fool of himself then and there. Whereat he said good night abruptly and turned away.

He brought his novel and play[34] with him which are just now finished, for us to read. He has evidently enjoyed the play, and he enjoys the fame and the money they both bring him.

He is a dramatic, lovable creature with his blue silk pocket-handkerchief and red dressing slippers and his quick feelings. I could hate the man who could help loving him—or the woman either.

In the passages touching upon Mark Twain now to be copied from the journals, he is seen, not in Boston, but in Hartford. If Mrs. Fields had continued her diary until 1879, there would doubtless have been a faithful contemporaneous account of the humorist’s unhappy attempt to be funny both in the presence and at the expense of the “Augustans” assembled in honor of Whittier’s seventieth birthday.[35] But Mrs. Fields’s reports of talk and observations under his own roof, in the days when his fame rested entirely upon a handful of his earlier books, should take their place in the authentic annals of an extraordinary personality. On the first of the two occasions recorded, Fields went alone to deliver a lecture in Hartford, and in answer to a post-card invitation signed “Mark,” stayed in the new house of the Clemenses. On the second occasion, three weeks later, Mrs. Fields accompanied him. After her husband’s return from the first visit she wrote:—

_April 6, 1876._—He found Mrs. Clemens quite ill. They had been in New York where he had given four lectures hoping to get money for Dr. Brown. He had never lectured there before without making a great deal of money. This time he barely covered his expenses. He was very interesting and told J. the whole story of his life. They sat until midnight after the lecture, Mark drinking ale to make him sleepy. He says he can’t sleep as other people do; his kind of sleep is the only sort for him—three or four hours of good solid comfort—more than that makes him ill; he can’t afford to sleep all his thoughts away. He described the hunger of his childhood for books, how the “Fortunes of Nigel” was one of the first stories which came to him while he was learning to be a pilot on a Mississippi boat. He hid himself with it behind a barrel where he was found by the master, who read him a lecture upon the ruinous effects of reading. “I’ve seen it over and over agin,” he said. “You needn’t tell me anythin’ about it; if ye’re going to be a pilot on this river yer needn’t ever think of reading, for it just spiles all. Yer can’t remember how high the tides was in Can’s Gut three trips before the last now, I’ll wager.” “Why no,” said Mark, “that was six months ago.” “I don’t care if’t was,” said the man. “If you hadn’t been spiling yer mind by readin’ ye’d have remembered.” So he was never allowed to read any more after that. “And now,” says Mark, “not being able to have it when I was hungry for it, I can only read the Encyclopedia nowadays.” Which is not true—he reads everything.

The story of his courtship and marriage, too, was very strange and interesting. A portion of this has, however, leaked into the daily papers, so I will not repeat it here. One point interested me greatly, however, as showing the strength of character and rightness of vision in the man. He said he had not been married many months when his wife’s father came to him one evening and said, “My son, wouldn’t you like to go to Europe with your wife?” “Why yes, sir,” he said, “if I could afford it.” “Well then,” said he, “if you will leave off smoking and drinking ale you shall have ten thousand dollars this next year and go to Europe beside.” “Thank you, sir,” said Mark, “this is very good of you, and I appreciate it, but I can’t sell myself. I will do anything I can for you or any of your family, but I can’t sell myself.” The result was, said Mark, “I never smoked a cigar all that year nor drank a glass of ale; but when the next year came I found I must write a book, and when I sat down to write I found it wasn’t worth anything. I must have a cigar to steady my nerves. I began to smoke, and I wrote my book; but then I couldn’t sleep and I had to drink ale to go to sleep. Now if I had sold myself, I couldn’t have written my book, or I couldn’t have gone to sleep, but now everything works perfectly well.”

He and his wife have wretched health, poor things! And in spite of their beautiful home must often have rather a hard time. He is very eccentric, disturbed by every noise, and it cannot be altogether easy to have care of such a man. It is a very loving household though Mrs. Clemens’s mother, Mrs. Langdon, hardly knows what to make of him sometimes, it is quite evident.