Charles Street

Sarah spent winters with Annie at her home, 148 Charles Street, a narrow four-story house overlooking a private garden and the Charles River in a somewhat stylish neighborhood of Boston. The area was a mixture of old wealth and new money, with many of Sarah and Annie’s friends of the literary world living within walking distance or carriage ride. The house is no longer extant, but at the time that Annie lived there first with her husband James T. Fields, and later with Sarah, it was the epicenter of Boston’s literary world. Friends might be invited for breakfast, luncheon, tea, or intimate evening, and Saturday afternoon they were “at home” for a salon of artists and writers. Sarah enjoyed the active social life and cultural pursuits she enjoyed with Annie living in Boston. While most of her focused writing was done in South Berwick, she did manage to eke out time to write at Charles Street, perhaps in the room pictured, the long and narrow library that Henry James called the Fields’ “waterside museum.”