Reminiscences of James T. Fields

IF it he true, as has been said, of Dr. Johnson that his sturdy self-respect led him to invent the modern publisher as a substitute for the old-fashioned patron, a fresh item is added to the debt of gratitude which the world owes to the stout old lexicographer. Of the miseries of doing literary work at the

dictation or under the auspices of a munificent patron, few recent writers can have any idea, now that literature has come to be an acknowledged article of merchandise, as much as hops or calico. Yet these miseries were very substantial, and were no doubt injurious to the growth of good literature. The frequent liability to gross insult, hardly relieved by yet grosser flattery ; the fulsome dedications, composed in return for scanty stipends grudgingly doled out; the subjection of high scholarship and talent to the ignorant whim of some patronizing duke or princess,—such are the unwholesome conditions under which great writers have too often worked. Among the beneficial changes that have been wrought in the world since the beginning of the last century we should not forget the slow revolution which has substituted the agency of the publisher for that of the Mæcenas, in the creation and diffusion of literature.

If Dr. Johnson could have lived long enough to become a frequenter of the Old Corner Bookstore some twenty years ago. he would certainly have congratulated himself upon the fact that the publisher had been invented. To be an “ ideal ” publisher requires a rare combination of qualities ; but in no publisher of our times, perhaps, has such a combination been more admirably realized than in the late Mr. James T. Fields. His success in his own department of activity was certainly preëminent; and this was no doubt largely owing to the fact that he was much more than a publisher. The highest success in any profession whatever is usually achieved by men who are in some sense larger than their profession. The trade should not encompass the man, but the man should encompass the trade, and reach out beyond it; and this largeness was conspicuously illustrated in the whole career of Mr. Fields. From his childhood until the last day of his life on earth, he was a sincere and devoted student of literature. Though not strictly a man of letters, in the professional sense, he possessed in a large measure that sound taste and clear discrimination in literary matters which is the first and most indispensable qualification in a critic. He could recognize good work as soon as it was brought before him. This capacity was based, in his case, upon something wider even than a keen literary sense.

He possessed the faculty of distinguishing, almost intuitively, between sound and flimsy, between neat and slovenly, work of any sort, — a faculty as valuable as the more comprehensive gift (of which, indeed, it forms a large part) of understanding human nature in general. In the matter of scientific work, leading into departments of investigation of which he probably knew little or nothing, Mr. Fields was pretty sure to know whether he was dealing with a person of true merit or not. His intuitions on such a point were generally correct, just as in his youth he used to surprise his fellow clerks by divining beforehand what kind of a book was likely to be wanted by any chance customer who entered the store. Besides this appreciation of intrinsically good work, he had an equally quick sense of the demands of the general public. No publisher can always be sure, with respect to any literary enterprise, whether it is going to be profitable or not, from a pecuniary point of view ; but in such matters Mr. Fields exhibited more than ordinary shrewdness. While at the same time it must be said, to his credit, and to that of the house to which he belonged, that he set a high value upon that particular kind of advantage which accrues to a publisher from dealing only in first-rate wares. The imprint of “ Ticknor & Fields ” upon the title-page of a book was almost a sure guarantee of its excellence. It was generally understood that this was a firm which would publish nothing that was not believed to possess enduring merit.

These qualities made Mr. Fields very helpful to young authors of talent. But the general “ helpfulness ” which comes of a sympathetic heart and energetic temperament was one of his most conspicuous characteristics. As his biographer says, “ If money were to be taken in charge for aunts or cousins, James was the person called upon. . . . Public readers would come to rehearse their parts, and learn what to read as well as how to read; young lecturers with their lectures; graduates, girls and boys, to know what to do next in life; and of authors and their manuscripts he was never free.” Dr. Holmes is by no means the only author who can say, “ From a very early period in my own life of authorship, I have looked to Mr. Fields as one who would be sure to take an interest in whatever I wrote, to let me know all that he could learn about my writings which would please and encourage me, and keep me in heart for new efforts.” Hawthorne, if our memory serves us, was one who found the friendly counsel of Mr. Fields especially valuable. And this cordial sympathy, as we know, was not reserved for purely literary writers, but was extended to workers in science and philosophy as well.

This volume of biographical notes,¹ in which the principal incidents of Mr. Fields’s life are recalled with affectionate interest, is a very welcome memorial of a happy and well-spent life. The reminiscences and anecdotes, of which it is full, cannot fail to be interesting, both on account of Mr. Fields himself and of the many eminent men with whom, in the course of his life, he was on terms of more or less intimate friendship. We get glimpses here of Wordsworth, De

Quincey, and Landor, of Leigh Hunt and the Howitts and Procters and Brownings, of Tennyson and Thackeray, of Charles Mathews, of Ole Bull, and somewhat more than a glimpse of Dickens. We follow Mr. Fields through those country lanes of England, his love for which, as he said, “almost amounted to a disease; ” and we have quaint stories of his rustic experiences in New England, among the farmers of New Hampshire and the fishermen of Cape Cod. Beside the society of his fellow-creatures, it was from rural scenery, from flowers and music, that Mr. Fields got his chief enjoyments, — sure sign of a refined and healthy nature. In his later years he traveled much about the United States, lecturing on English literature, and no doubt did admirable work in awakening a popular interest in the study of literary history. One rustic matron “ was amazed to see how interested she got in hearin’ about these folks she’d never known nothin’ about before.” Of the critical value of these lectures it is impossible to judge from hearsay, and we are given to understand that they are not to be published. Of their general character, as of Mr. Fields’s work altogether, one gets a very good impression from this thoroughly entertaining volume.