VII
SARAH ORNE JEWETT

Such a statement about Mrs. Fields as that she “was to survive her husband many years and was to flourish as a copious second volume—the connection licenses the figure—of the work anciently issued,” almost identifies itself, without remark, as proceeding from the same friend, Henry James, whose words have colored a previous chapter of this book. The many years to which he referred were, indeed, nearly thirty-four in number, about a third of a century, or what is commonly counted a generation. For a longer period than that through which she was the wife of James T. Fields, she was thus his widow. Through nearly all of this period the need of her nature for an absorbing affectionate intimacy was met through her friendship with Sarah Orne Jewett. It was with reference to her that Mrs. Fields, in the preface to a collection of Miss Jewett’s letters, published in 1911, two years after her death, wrote of “the power that lies in friendship to sustain the giver as well as the receiver.” In the friendship of these two women it would have been impossible to define either one, to the exclusion of the other, as the giver or the receiver. They were certainly both sustained by their relation.

Miss Jewett, born in South Berwick, Maine, in 1849, and continuously identified with that place until her death in 1909, first entered the “Atlantic circle” in 1869, when she was but twenty years old, and Fields was still editor of the magazine. In that year a story by her, called “Mr. Bruce” and credited in the index of the magazine—for contributions then appeared unsigned—to “A. C. Eliot,” was printed in the “Atlantic.” Four years later, Consule Howells, “The Shore House,” a second story, appeared over her own name, the practice of printing signatures having meanwhile been instituted. In May, 1875, the “Atlantic” contained a poem by Miss Jewett, which may be quoted, not so much to remind the readers of those stories of New England on which her later fame was based, that in her earlier years she was much given to the writing of verse, as to explain in a way the union—there is no truer word for it—that came later to exist between herself and Mrs. Fields.

Thus it read:—

TOGETHER

I wonder if you really send

Those dreams of you that come and go!

I like to say, “She thought of me,