Lucy Larcom's labor of love

I find that people are imagining I have been very industrious this winter, by the way they talk about my new book, which they suppose is something original. I don't want to give wrong impressions in that way, as the selections are more valuable on their own account than mine.

So wrote Lucy Larcom to publisher James T. Fields from Beverly, Massachusetts on May 20, 1866. The book in question was already receiving a little hype, though not yet officially announced. Titled Breathings of the Better Life when published the next year, it was not a book written by Larcom, but edited by her. The book compiled several prose sketches and poems, including several anonymous works and a few traditional hymns. All the selections follow a theme: finding inspiration in saints and Biblical quotes to apply to contemporary life. As Larcom described it, these are "voices that cannot fail to inspire the traveller struggling upward to a better life." Still, she told Fields, "It has been altogether a labor of love with me."

In fact, Larcom wanted to remove herself from the book as much as possible in the hopes of letting the content speak for itself. In her letter to Fields, she asked her name by listed only as "Miss Larcom" — or, better still, even less obtrusively as "L. L." She also emphasized to Fields that the book had to have the lowest cover price possible. Though the final publication did include her full name, the preface in the book carefully ascribed its purpose: an inexpensive book for those who did not have a large library, in a portable size that could be taken to "the workshop, the camp, or the sick-room," and serve like "the presence of a friend." Larcom goes on:

The soul, cramped among the petty vexations of earth, needs to keep its windows constantly open to the invigorating air of large and free ideas: and what thought is so grand as that of an ever-present God, in whom all that is vital in humanity breathes and grows? The want of every human being is a wider expansion to receive from Him, and to give of His; fuller inspirations and outbreathings of that Spirit by which man is created anew in Him, a living soul.

Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous. To forget self, to keep the heart buoyant with the thought of God, and to pour forth this continual influx of spiritual health heavenward in praise, and earthward in streams of blessing, — this is the essence of human, saintly, and angelic joy; the genuine Christ-life, the one life of the saved, on earth or in heaven.

The book includes both prose and poetry. Few of the listings include the full name of the author, but some are recognizable: Edmund Hamilton Sears, Henry Ward Beecher, and Larcom's friend John Greenleaf Whittier. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former minister, was represented by this excerpt from his long poem "Threnody":

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show,—
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned, —
Saying, "What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again."

Rebecca Harding Davis: a modern story

Rebecca Harding Davis submitted her manuscript for "David Gaunt" to James T. Fields, editor and publisher of The Atlantic Monthly and co-owner of Ticknor and Fields publishing house, on May 14, 1862. Davis, or, rather Miss Harding at the time, was also looking for affirmation for what she called "a very abolition story" and asked Fields if it would meet a "cordial welcome." While writing the work, she had been preparing for a visit to the Northeast to meet Fields and other literary notables in New England before passing through Philadelphia (where she would meet her future husband L. Clarke Davis). She worried that, if her latest work was not well received, the author would be equally poorly received. She was willing, she offered, to skip her trip and stay at home in Wheeling, [West] Virginia "and write something else."

But Davis was somewhat baiting Fields, the man who had a year earlier published her novella and landmark in literary realism Life in the Iron Mills. The work proved popular and Davis was being courted by another publisher — a fact which she revealed to Fields. If she could write something about the current Civil War, this publisher offered liberal payment. She was only then becoming aware that Ticknor and Fields had been more than stingy in publishing her book Margaret Howth, which also proved a solid seller. "What do you think?" she asked Fields. "Had I better still abide by the old flag? meaning T&F?" Within days, Fields sent payment for "David Gaunt" and it was published beginning in the September 1862 issue as the lead article. Still, she warned him: "Don't leave any thing out of it in publishing it... deformity is better than a scar you know."

"David Gaunt" follows the titular character, a Calvinist minister with a blind patriotism who has difficulty understanding the realities of war. It also follows a female character named Thoedora and her repressed life in conservative rural Virginia (representing "the drift of most women's lives"). Both characters, ordinary American residents generally outside of politics, find themselves on different sides of the issue of slavery, and are forced to redefine their lives amidst the harsh Civil War. From the first chapter of the story:

What kind of sword, do you think, was that which old Christian had in that famous fight of his with Apollyon, long ago? He cut the fiend to the marrow with it, you remember, at last; though the battle went hardly with him, too, for a time. Some of his blood, [John] Bunyan says, is on the stones of the valley to this day. That is a vague record of the combat between the man and the dragon in that strange little valley, with its perpetual evening twilight and calm, its meadows crusted with lilies, its herd-boy with his quiet song, close upon the precincts of hell. It fades back, the valley and the battle, dim enough, from the sober freshness of this summer morning. Look out of the window here, at the hubbub of the early streets, the freckled children racing past to school, the dewy shimmer of yonder willows in the sunlight, like drifts of pale green vapor. Where is Apollyon? does he put himself into flesh and blood, as then, nowadays? And the sword which Christian used, like a man, in his deed of derring-do?

Reading the quaint history, just now, I have a mind to tell you a modern story. It is not long: only how, a few months ago, a poor itinerant, and a young girl, (like these going by with baskets on their arms,) who lived up in these Virginia hills, met Evil in their lives, and how it fared with them: how they thought that they were in the Valley of Humiliation, that they were Christian, and Rebellion and Infidelity Apollyon; the different ways they chose to combat him; the weapons they used. I can tell you that; but you do not know — do you ? — what kind of sword old Christian used, or where it is, or whether its edge is rusted.

I must not stop to ask more, for these war-days are short, and the story might be cold before you heard it.

*For information in this post, I am heavily indebted to Sharon M. Harris's Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (1991).

Taylor: share also in those adventures

"I am over head and ears on my Journey to Central Africa," Bayard Taylor wrote to his publisher James T. Fields on June 12, 1854. He also promised that the book would include "a map and fifteen to twenty illustrations, and I am obliged to be my own illustrator." True to his word, Taylor's book was illustrated by himself (including the image of his companion Achmet, seen here).

In his preface to the over 500-page book, Taylor called it "the record of a journey... over fresh fields, by paths which comparatively few had trodden before me." It was not a book featuring serious study, but entertainment, he said, showing the "rich, adventurous life" he led in an effort to restore himself after being "exhausted by severe mental labor." His travels took him to Egypt, Ethiopia, and beyond. Most importantly, Taylor lived, as he described, as an Arab; the day after his letter to Fields, he reported that he had been photographed in traditional dress, an image which was later turned into an engraving (see image at left).

Though Taylor had already traveled extensively around the globe, he was smitten with Africa from the very beginning: "For no amount of experience can deprive the traveller of that happy feeling of novelty which marks his first day on the soil of a new continent. I gave myself up wholly to its inebriation." The book concludes with Taylor leaving Cairo:

I took the steamer for Alexandria, and two or three days afterwards sailed for fresh adventures in another Continent. If the reader, who has been my companion during the journey which is now closed, should experience no more fatigue than I did, we may hereafter share also in those adventures.

Guest post: Death of Henry David Thoreau

May 6, 1862: Henry David Thoreau died 150 years ago today. Throughout the winter of 1861-62 Thoreau was confined to the house as his health deteriorated. He had picked up a cold in the winter of 1860 from Bronson Alcott which eventually developed into bronchitis, then tuberculosis. Thoreau even took a trip to Minnesota in the early spring of 1861 in search of health, but the change of scenery and climate made him no better.

Now that he was house-bound, Thoreau began to busily prepare several of his old essays for publication. In February 1861 he had gotten a request from his publisher, James T. Fields, to submit his works for the Atlantic Monthly. Thoreau gladly accepted Fields's offer but his previous run-ins with publishers left him cautious. He wrote Fields, "Of course, I should expect that no sentiment or sentence be altered or omitted without my consent." Throughout the late winter and early spring Thoreau re-worked several of his old lectures and put them into publishable form. "Walking," "Life Without Principle," "Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" were all submitted to Fields for publication.

Thoreau was so weak at times that he couldn't even lift a pen, and his sister Sophia worked on the manuscripts while her brother dictated. By April Thoreau couldn't even climb the stairs to his bedroom, so his family brought his old Walden Pond cot downstairs to the front parlor. Bronson Alcott reported that Thoreau was "feeble," yet his spirits remained high. A friend later commented that he had never seen "a man dying with so much pleasure and peace." When asked by his aunt if he'd made his peace with God, Thoreau replied, "I did not know we had ever quarreled, Aunt."

On May 6, 1862 the end was near and, as his family gathered around him, Thoreau slipped into his final rest. He'd been working on his "Maine Woods" manuscripts and his thoughts remained on writing until the end; his sister and mother distinctly heard him say "moose" and "Indian" before he passed. Henry Thoreau died at 9:00 a.m. His sister Sophia commented that she felt as if "something very beautiful had happened — not death." Henry David Thoreau was just 44 years old. "Walking" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in June 1862.

*Richard Smith is an independent historian specializing in the antebellum period, with a special interest in the Transcendentalists. He has been involved in Living History for 20 years and for the last 11 years has portrayed Henry David Thoreau in and around Concord, Massachusetts. For more on today's guest blogger, visit www.MeetHenryDavidThoreau.com.

Taylor: my first near glimpse of Corsican scenery

The Leghorn steamer slid smoothly over the glassy Tyrrhene strait, and sometime during the night came to anchor in the harbor of Bastia. I sat up in my berth at sunrise, and looked out of the bull's eye to catch my first near glimpse of Corsican scenery; but, instead of that, a pair of questioning eyes, set in a brown, weather-beaten face, met my own. It was a boatman waiting on the gangway, determined to secure the only fare which the steamer had brought that morning. Such persistence always succeeds, and in this case justly; for when we were landed upon the quay, shortly afterwards, the man took the proffered coin with thanks, and asked for no more.

Thus begins the travel sketch "The Land of Paoli" by Bayard Taylor, describing the visit to the island of Corsica. Taylor was a poet and prose writer from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, but his travels took him across much of the globe (he ultimately died overseas in Germany). Nevertheless, it was in the United States that he sent the manuscript of "The Land of Paoli" to publisher James T. Fields on September 13, 1868. Hoping to see it published in The Atlantic Monthly, Taylor promised it wasn't too long: "I think it will make about fourteen pages, but not too much for the subject."

Among the observations and incidents he relates in his sketch, he relates his first interactions with native Corsicans:

We entered a bookstore, to get a map of the island. While I was examining it, an old gentleman, with the Legion of Honor in his button-hole, rose from his seat, took the sheet from my hands, and said: "What's this? what's this?" After satisfying his curiosity, he handed it back to me, and began a running fire of questions: "Your first visit to Corsica? You are English? Do you speak Italian? your wife also ? Do you like Bastia? does she also? How long will you stay? Will she accompany you?" etc. I answered with equal rapidity, as there was nothing obtrusive in the old man's manner. The questions soon came to an end, and then followed a chapter of information and advice, which was very welcome.

The same naive curiosity met us at every turn. Even the rough boy who acted as porter plied me with questions, yet was just as ready to answer as to ask. I learned much more about his situation and prospects than was really necessary, but the sum of all showed that he was a fellow determined to push his way in the world. Self-confidence is a common Corsican trait.

Death of Mrs. Hawthorne

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne outlived her husband Nathaniel Hawthorne by seven years. When Hawthorne died far from home in 1864, she wrote that he avoided "the pain of bidding us farewell." Publisher James T. Fields convinced the grieving widow that his various journals and notebooks, particularly those from his travels, should be published. Sophia became his posthumous editor and noted, "It is a vast pleasure to pore over his books in this way." The result was Notes in England and Italy, with "Mrs. Hawthorne" credited as author. As she prepared the book, she wrote:

I seem to be with him in all his walks and observations. Such faithful, loving notes of all he saw never were put on paper before. Nothing human is considered by him too mean to ponder over. No bird, nor leaf, nor tint of earth or sky is left unnoticed. He is a crystal medium of all the sounds and shows of things, and he reverently lets everything be as it is, and never intermuddles...

Even with these happy thoughts, however, Sophia was burdened with grief. As Annie Adams Fields (wife of James) remarked, "What an altered household! She feels very lonely, and is like a reed." Soon, the Hawthornes' home at The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts was unbearable, and she moved with their children to Europe. She had become distrustful of her husband's publisher and, at one point, accused him of not paying the royalties she was due for her husband's work. Fields blamed his former partner, the late William Davis Ticknor. Ticknor's close friendship with Hawthorne, he alleged, resulted in "the highest rate of copyright [the company] ever paid." The dispute was soon settled.

It was in England that Sophia died on February 26, 1871. She was 61. A week later, she was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. 135 years later, Sophia Hawthorne (as well as her daughter Una) was reburied in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where she remains next to her husband.

Birth of Phoebe Cary

Originally named Mount Pleasant, this small village in southwestern Ohio was renamed Mount Healthy in 1850, following an outbreak of cholera. It was in this town that poet Phoebe Cary was born on September 4, 1824; her older sister and fellow poet Alice Cary was born there four years earlier. Their family home is now a center for the blind and visually impaired.

The two sisters wrote poetry and were first collected in an anthology by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1848; Griswold also helped them publish their own book, The Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, in 1849. Its success inspired their move to New York. In that city, Phoebe published two books of her own poetry. Of the two sisters, Phoebe was the more outspoken one; she was involved with the women's rights movement and, for a time, she edited The Revolution, a newspaper published by Susan B. Anthony.

Phoebe's most famous poem is a hymn, "Nearer Home" — a somber piece which was often sung at funerals. However, she also had a humorous side and wrote many parodies (including one of Edgar Allan Poe and many of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). One example is "Ballad of the Canal," a parody of James T. Fields's "Ballad of the Tempest":

We were crowded in the cabin,
Not a soul had room to sleep;
It was midnight on the waters,
And the banks were very steep.

'Tis a fearful thing when sleeping
To be startled by the shock,
And to hear the rattling trumpet
Thunder, "Coming to a lock!"

So we shuddered there in silence,
For the stoutest berth was shook,
While the wooden gates were opened
And the mate talked with the cook.

And as thus we lay in darkness,
Each one wishing we were there,
"We are through!" the captain shouted,
And he sat upon a chair.

And his little daughter whispered,
Thinking that he ought to know,
"Isn't travelling by canal-boats
Just as safe as it is slow?"

Then he kissed the little maiden,
And with better cheer we spoke,
And we trotted into Pittsburg,
When the morn looked through the smoke.

*The image above is from "Old Pictures," an online resource collecting historic images.

Tramping over the soil

August 5, 1850 may have been the most exciting day in American literary history. A band of now-recognized literary giants (and a couple less gigantic) climbed Monument Mountain in western Massachusetts. According to the publisher James T. Fields:

I have just got back to my desk from the Berkshire Hills where we have been tramping over the soil with Hawthorne; dining with Holmes... and sitting... with Melville, the author of 'Typee.'

Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Herman Melville were joined by editor Evert Augustus Duyckinck and writer Cornelius Mathews. Once at the top, they read William Cullen Bryant's poem "Monument Mountain," and passed around a single silver mug frequently replenished with champagne (a prescription brought along for the trip by Dr. Holmes).

Perhaps most important to this incident is that it marks the beginning of the friendship of Hawthorne and Melville, who had never previously met. Melville was so taken by the author of the recently-published The Scarlet Letter that he would soon earn the dedication of Moby-Dick, which he was then writing. Some suggest that Melville's infatuation with Hawthorne was more than merely literary admiration and that, perhaps, the younger author was developing a romantic interest. "Where Hawthorne is known,” Melville wrote a few days later, “he seems to be deemed... a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and weighty thing would hardly be anticipated—a man who means no meanings.”

Melville soon wrote a particularly flattering review of Mosses from an Old Manse, then old by about four years. His pseudonymous review, "Hawthorne and his Mosses," was published by Duyckinck in his weekly periodical Literary World. He was the first to notice that Hawthorne's tales were significantly dark: "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." Hawthorne wrote to Duyckinck later that month that he had "a progressive appreciation" of Melville. "No writer ever put the reality before his reader more unflinchingly than he does."

*Image above is courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations.

The thing for your publishing list this fall

In the mid-19th century, an up-and-coming writer could get no better endorsement than one from John Greenleaf Whittier. On behalf of a young female poet he had befriended, Whittier wrote to his publisher James T. Fields on July 8, 1853:

I enclose to thee what I regard as a very unique and beautiful little book in MS. I don't wish thee however to take my opinion; but, the first leisure hour thee have read it, and I am sure thee will decide that it is exactly the thing for your publishing list this fall.

Whittier noted that these poems were "unlike anything in our literature" and would appeal to both "young and old." It was not until the postscript that Whittier mentioned the author's name: "Lucy Larcom of Beverly [Massachusetts]."

Larcom had published a few poems here and there, especially in the Lowell Offering, a publication which catered to the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. She met Whittier in the mid-1840s; the two became good friends and Whittier often promoted her work. Later, they co-edited three books together.

James T. Fields, however, did not see her potential. He passed on the manuscript. It later was given to John P. Jewett, who published it as Similitude from Ocean and Prairie. Whittier concluded Jewett, not Fields, was "the best publisher for it."

Thaxter: A Memorable Murder

Convicted murderer Louis Wagner was executed on June 25, 1875. In March of that year on the Isles of Shoals (Smuttynose, specifically), two young Norwegian women were bludgeoned to death. Wagner, a 28-year old Prussian immigrant, seemed to have no real motive for killing the two women.

Local resident Celia Thaxter, horrified by the ordeal in the relative quiet of the islands, tried to cope by writing about the incident. She spent hours reading newspaper accounts before writing "A Memorable Murder." She completed the manuscript shortly before Wagner's execution. As she waited for that day, she became concerned that an account of a true murder was in poor taste. She wrote to Annie Adams Fields:

I am only waiting for Wagner to be hung or not (next Friday is the day appointed for his execution) to rush to your threshold with my manuscript and read it to you and J. T. F. [James T. Fields] that you may tell me if I offend against good taste or the proprieties of existence. For it is a delicate subject to handle, so notorious, so ghastly and dreadful - and I would not dare to send it to [William Dean] Howells without asking Mr. Fields first.

Apparently both James and Annie Fields approved, as did William Dean Howells, who published it in The Atlantic Monthly. In the essay, Thaxter offered something the newspapers lacked. "The sickening details of the double murder are well known," she wrote, "...but the pathos of the story is not realized." Thaxter focused on the gentle, innocent lives of the two women, allowing them more than merely serving the role of victims.

So they abode in peace and quiet, with not an evil thought in their minds, kind and considerate toward each other... till out of the perfectly cloudless sky one day a bolt descended, without a whisper of warning, and brought ruin and desolation into that peaceful home.

Her description of the murderer Louis Wagner was quite different: "He was always lurking in corners, lingering, looking, listening, and he would look no man straight in the eyes."

*Much of the information in this post comes from Norma H. Mandel's The Garden Gate: The Life of Celia Laighton Thaxter.

Death of James T. Fields

James T. Fields changed the business of American publishing. More than serving as a publisher or literary agent, however, Fields was a close friend of all of his writers, fostered their work, and often made helpful (or sometimes unhelpful) suggestions. When he died on April 24, 1881, he was only 63 years old; he was soon buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Condolences from around the country (and the world) poured in to his widow, Annie Adams Fields.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson called him "the best and most sympathetic literary counselor I ever had." Harriet Beecher Stowe noted that "he did habitually and quietly more good to everybody he had to do with than common." Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that, "Very rarely, if ever, has a publisher enjoyed the confidence and friendship of so wide and various a circle of authors." Critic Edwin Percy Whipple told of how Fields was fond of teasing his friends but never to the point of offending them. "His wildest freaks of satire never inflicted a wound," he wrote, and "when he laughed at the expense of one of his companions, the laugh was always heartily enjoyed and participated in by the object of his mirth."

In addition to letters, there were many poetic tributes, including "Auf Wiedersehen" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and "In Memory" by John Greenleaf Whittier. One of the most touching came from the minor writer Parke Godwin, mostly known as a journalist. He wrote to Mrs. Fields in particular:

I cannot wish thee comfort in this hour
  Of life's supremest sorrow; for I know,
By aching memories, how little power
  The best words have to mitigate a woe,
With which, in its own bitterness alone,
  The heart, amid the silences, must deal.
But here, where ocean makes eternal moan,
  Along its melancholy shores, I feel
How mightier than nature's loudest voice
  Is that soft word, which to the ruler said,
Amidst his desolated home, 'Rejoice!
  Thy dear one sleepeth: think not he is dead:'
All death is birth, from out a turbid night,
Into the glories of transcendent light.

The year before her husband's death, Mrs. Fields opened their home to Sarah Orne Jewett for part of the winter and their vacation home for part of the summer, establishing a life-long "friendship." About a year after Mr. Fields's death, Jewett and the widow Fields moved in together. Their "Boston marriage" seemed very public, and was not criticized; it is unclear how close their relationship was.

*The image of Fields, above, is taken from the web site of author Matthew Pearl, who's first novel - The Dante Club - included a fictionalized Fields as a main character. Fields has a more minor role in Pearl's most recent novel, The Last Dickens.

Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to war, part 2

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already an established literary figure when he traveled to Washington, D.C. with his publisher William Ticknor in 1862. Perhaps that is why he was able to get an audience with the President himself, Abraham Lincoln.

Hawthorne visited Lincoln at the White House on March 13, 1862, partly by squeezing into a private presentation from Massachusetts factory of a commemorative whip, "handsomely encased." The party arrived, as scheduled, at 9:00 a.m. on that Thursday morning. Lincoln was late and sent word he was still having breakfast. "His appetite, we were glad to think, must have been a pretty fair one," wrote Hawthorne, "for we waited about half an hour in one of his ante-chambers." When the moment of meeting arrived, they were rushed into another room, where sat the Secretaries of War and of the Treasury (Stanton and Chase). Apparently, many appointments were delayed by the President's ample breakfast.

"By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure," Hawthorne described. His first impression on seeing Lincoln? "(Being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe." Hawthorne, whose old friend Franklin Pierce was an earlier president, was not star-struck. In fact, scrutinizing the man with "his lengthy awkwardness... [and] uncouthness of movement," Hawthorne concluded that it was easier to assume he was a back-country schoolmaster, rather than the President of the United States.

Yet, Hawthorne admired Lincoln instantly. "I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage," he concluded.

On returning home, Hawthorne immediately set to writing about his experience, particularly emphasizing his encounter with the President. When he submitted the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" to James T. Fields for the Atlantic Monthly, Fields accepted it from the respected author sight unseen. Hawthorne was, oddly, disappointed, hoping the editor would offer feedback. It turned out to be a mistake for Fields, too; he immediately took issue with the descriptions of Lincoln. "Leave out the description of his awkwardness & general uncouth aspect," Fields insisted.

Hawthorne acquiesced but was not happy about it. "What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!" he lamented. He decided to cut "Uncle Abe" out entirely, but noted it was "the only part of the article really worth publishing."

Birth of Edwin Percy Whipple

Edwin Percy Whipple (that's E. P. Whipple to his readers) was born March 8, 1819. He got his feet wet as a critic for the Philadelphia-based Graham's Magazine for a time before joining the Literary World as a correspondent to the Duyckinck brothers. Ultimately, as historian Perry Miller noted, he became "Boston's most popular critic."

In fact, by the end of his life he was one of the most prolific critics and essayists in the United States. His diverse work led him to write introductions to Charles Dickens ("A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction."), to oversee the publication of the speeches of Daniel Webster, to become a trustee of the Boston Public Library, and to collaborate with publisher James T. Fields on a massive compendium of the history of British poetry. He was popular and hung out with all the literary greats; Whipple dedicated a book to John Greenleaf Whittier ("the people's poet" and "loyal friend") and even served as a pallbearer for Nathaniel Hawthorne (who he advised in naming one of his novels) upon his death in 1864.

But, Whipple had one major problem, one which tends to haunt even the best of critics: personal bias. When others made fun of Boston as a "mutual admiration society," they were likely referring to Whipple (and Fields, but that's a different story). Boston became a world where critics, editors, and writers often offered to scratch one's back for a scratch in return. Much of it was innocent, of course, and done without malice; many of these Bostonians were sincere friends, after all. Such is the case of the Saturday Club, of which Whipple was a member.

The Saturday Club met once a month beginning in 1855 at the Parker House (now the Omni Parker Hotel) for extravagant meals — and equally extravagant conversation. The group included writers, philosophers, historians, and scientists, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's son Edward later wrote a history of the Saturday Club and its members, noting about Whipple (apparently without irony!): "No other member of the Saturday Club has ever been more loyally felicitous in characterizing the literary work of his associates." In other words, any Bostonian was guaranteed a good review from Boston critic E. P. Whipple.

Whittier's Winter Idyl

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.

Thus begins Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll, which was published on February 17, 1866. Its author, John Greenleaf Whittier, had primarily been known as an abolitionist poet. With the Civil War over and emancipation achieved, Whittier turned to more peaceful topics. He told his publisher James T. Fields it was "a homely picture of New England homes."

Snow-Bound was based on a storm which forced the Whittier family indoors (at what is now the Whittier Homestead, open to the public). To pass the time, the family told stories by the hearth. By the time Whittier wrote the poem, he lived only six miles away from his boyhood home and birthplace. Though it had been in the family for generations, it was then owned by others.

To Whittier's surprise, the book was an instant success, eventually earning him $10,000 (unadjusted) in royalties. Biographer Francis Henry Underwood noted its appeal: "The scenes glow with ideal beauty... We have afterwards nothing but recollections of cheerful piety, modest and steadfast truth, and heart-felt love."

Ultimately, the family-based narrative in a quaint New England home recalls the simple, peaceful days before the Civil War. Whittier, a Quaker, also stands defiant to emerging modernism (both culturally and poetically).

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.

Taylor responds to criticism from Fields

The travel writer, critic, and editor Bayard Taylor wrote to James T. Fields on January 22, 1869. Writing from his home in Kennett Square, PA named Cedarcroft (seen here as it looks today, from the side), Taylor was responding to constructive criticism Fields offered in preparation for publishing a poem in the Atlantic Monthly. A respected publisher and editor, Fields often gave very specific advice to his contributors; Taylor's poem "Notus Ignoto" was no exception. Its author, however, did not seem to take Fields's advice too kindly.

Each poet has his own individual mode of expressing his conceptions, and now and then inevitably makes use of words, lines, and rhymes which others would wish to see changed. Who does this more than Browning? Who in America, more than Lowell? Even the patient and fine-minded Longfellow sometimes commits flagrant offenses against my sense (and no doubt yours) of beauty. It is so, and must be so, with all poets.

Taylor also notes that two other poets (unnamed) agreed with the original wording. Taylor stubbornly notes, "I know perfectly well that I shall not change the line." His friends happen to think this poem better than his previous poem "The Sunshine of the Gods." Despite completely dismissing Fields's opinion, Taylor asks "don't let my paternal zeal prevent you from giving your views always and freely."

Fields responds by writing back:

I never quarrel with a poet's individuality, and offer any strictures on a piece of verse with great editorial modesty, but if the poem is really better than "The Sunshine of the Gods," I will eat a complete set of your works.

One may sing for the delight of singing

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to Annie Adams Fields, wife of his publisher James T. Fields, on January 18, 1864. Mrs. Fields had written a "charming note" praising Longfellow's poetry. By then a major poet and the first American earning a living solely through poetry, Longfellow held on to a humility that only grew in his later years. Here is his modest thank-you to Mrs. Fields:

It certainly is a great pleasure to give pleasure to others, and particularly to those whom we wish to please. Though one may sing for the delight of singing, I think it increases the delight to know that the song has been heard and liked.

Longfellow often referred to his poems as "songs" — a fairly appropriate term because of his many ballads and lyric poems. In this letter, Longfellow says that he likes writing poetry for the sake of writing it, but he feels much better knowing that a friend has read it too. It reminds me of one of his earlier poems, one which includes one of his most famous lines (one which few realize is Longfellow's). It is called "The Arrow and the Song."

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

 *The portrait above is by Longfellow's close friend George P. A. Healey.

Birth of James T. Fields

James Thomas Fields was born on December 31, 1817. That year, Sir Walter Scott published Rob Roy, Jane Austen published Northanger Abbey, and Lord Byron published Manfred. It would be three years before the first major American novelist (James Fenimore Cooper) published anything, and two years before Washington Irving published his Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon. In other words, when James T. Fields was born, quality American literature was nonexistent. By the end of his life, he had helped create it.

Though Fields dabbled in poetry and prose, he was not a writer. But, without him, American literature would not have had its Renaissance. He was only 14 when he took his first job at the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, Massachusetts. By 1839, he was junior partner with publisher William Davis Ticknor. In 1846, the company was named Ticknor & Fields — America's first major national publishing-house.

Nathaniel Parker Willis called it "the announcing-room of the country's Court of Poetry." George William Curtis called it "the hub of the Hub" (Boston's nickname) and that it "compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American literature."

What distinguished Ticknor & Fields was their interest in nationwide distribution. Other publishing houses were more regional, making them less influential outside of their center (such was the case with other publishing cities like New York, Philadelphia, Hartford). Fields in particular made it a point to seek out new talent, help them tap into their potential, and then he would personally promote them. In fact, Fields assisted them not only as writers but also in their personal lives. He built close relationships with all of his writers and can occasionally be given credit for inspiring their work: legend has it that Nathaniel Hawthorne was working on a short story about the Puritans; Fields urged him to expand it into a novel. The result was The Scarlet Letter, which Ticknor & Fields published in 1850.

The Old Corner Bookstore, the site of Ticknor & Fields, became a hang-out for authors. Among the bunch that Fields worked with: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry David Thoreau.

* In case I haven't dropped enough names, the image at the top of this page is by Julia Margaret Cameron, who photographed Fields when he was visiting Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at the Isle of Wight.

** The second image is Fields next to Hawthorne and Ticknor.