From a note of “Dear Whittier” to Mrs. Fields
July 12, 1873.—I shall not soon forget our talk one afternoon in the parlor at “The Shoals.” Whittier, as if inspired by that spirit residing in us which is the very ground-work of the Quaker belief, began to speak of Emerson’s faith and of the pain it gave him to see the name of Jesus placed in his writings as but one among many. When he discoursed with Emerson of these things, he could have no satisfaction. Celia, on the other hand, said she did not understand these things; she never prayed. “I am sure thee does without knowing it,” said W.; “else what do thy poems mean? Thee has not set prayer perhaps, but some kind of a prayer thee must have. No human being can exist without it. But what troubles me also in Emerson is that I can find no real faith in immortality.” Here I took up the question. I had heard Mr. Emerson at Thoreau’s grave, afterward speaking expressly on immortality, and in both discourses I felt deeply his faith in our future progress and enduring life. Whittier was inclined to think me mistaken. I think too that his use of Jesus’ name is to prevent the worship of him instead of the One God. Whittier asked Celia to read a discourse of Emerson’s, which she did aloud; and again he spoke of the beauty of childlike worship, the necessity for it in our natures, and quoted some lovely hymns. His whole heart was alive and poured out toward us as if he longed tenderly like the prophet of old to breathe a new life into us. I could seem to see that he reproached himself that so many days had passed without his trying to speak more seriously. He was not perfectly well after this—a headache overtook him before our talk was over and did not leave him until he found himself in Amesbury again. I trust it did so there....
Whittier said one day, when we were talking of the “Life of Charlotte Brontë” by Mrs. Gaskell, and I was saying how sad it was she should have made the old man, her father, suffer unto death, as she did, by telling the tale of his bad son’s life, and “still worse,” I said, “she came out in the Athenæum and declared that her story was false, when she knew it was true, hoping to comfort the old man,”—“I don’t know,” said Whittier; “I am inclined to think that was the best part of it, if her lie would have done the old man any good!”
After we had our long afternoon session of talk over Emerson and future existence and the unknowable, Celia stood up and stretched herself and said, “How good it has been with the little song-sparrow putting in his oar above it all!”
And what of Mrs. Fields herself, a woman of nearly forty when this last passage was written? For the most part the diary reveals her but indirectly. Yet in the midst of all her pictures of her friends, a fragment of self-portraiture is occasionally found; and to one of them the reader of these pages is entitled.
Proposed Dedication of Whittier’s “Among the Hills” to Mrs. Fields. In a letter to Mrs. Fields, Whittier wrote: “I would like thy judgment about it. Would this do?” In altered form it appears in the book.
December 18, 1873.—Have been looking over “Wilhelm Meister”! I struck upon that marvellous passage, “I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances; who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. How far his object may be great or little is the next consideration with me”; and much more quite as good to the same end. It prompts me to say what I wish to do in life.