Memories of a hostess : a chronicle of eminent friendships, drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs James T Fields . ime he camehome, instead of travelling about to receive the com-pliments of others. In giving the title, Glimpses of Emerson, to oneof the chapters in her Authors and Friends, described accurately the use she made of herrecords and remembrances of that serene Olympianwho glided in and out of Boston to the awe anddelight of those with whom he came into personal con-tact. Olympian must be the word, since Augus-tan connotes something quite too mundane to suggestthe effect
Memories of a hostess : a chronicle of eminent friendships, drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs James T Fields . ime he camehome, instead of travelling about to receive the com-pliments of others. In giving the title, Glimpses of Emerson, to oneof the chapters in her Authors and Friends, described accurately the use she made of herrecords and remembrances of that serene Olympianwho glided in and out of Boston to the awe anddelight of those with whom he came into personal con-tact. Olympian must be the word, since Augus-tan connotes something quite too mundane to suggestthe effect produced by Emerson upon his sympatheticcontemporaries. Did they realize, I wonder, how fit-ting it was that this prophet of the harmonies of lifeshould live in a place the name of which is spoken by allbut New Englanders as if it signified not a despairingVce victis^ but the very bond of peace ? All the adjec-tives of benignity have been bestowed upon Fieldss Glimpses of him suggest that atmos-phere, as of mountain solitudes, in which he moved;that air of the heights which those who moved beside. EMERSONFrom the marble statue by Daniel Chester French in the Concord Public Library CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 87 him were fain to breathe. His Conversations in pub-lic and private places, a form of intellectual refresh-ment suggested by Mrs. Fields and conducted, toEmersons large material advantage, by her husband,appear to-day as highly characteristic of their time, —the sixties and seventies, — and the light thrown uponthem by her journal illuminates not only him and her,but the whole society of superior persons in whichEmerson was so dominating a figure. By no means allof that light escaped from her manuscript journals tothe printed page of Authors and Friends. In thehitherto unprinted passages now given there are fur-ther shafts of it, sometimes slender in themselves, butjoining to show the very Emerson that came and wentin Charles Street. There was a furtive humor i
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