Framed Photo and Note

O Pilgrim, comes the night so fast?

Let not the dark thy heart appall

Though loom the shadows vague and vast,

For Love shall save us all.

                 Celia Thaxter

                        1882

Celia Thaxter is believed to be the inspiration for one of Jewett’s most memorable characters, Almira Todd of The Country of the Pointed Firs and subsequent works. The herbalist storyteller who takes on mythical proportions, and the narrator, a driven writer resembling Jewett, form a profound friendship in Jewett’s masterpiece.

According to biographer Paula Blanchard, “having grown up in a place where time in the usual sense was largely irrelevant, [Celia Thaxter] could not help but embody Jewett’s favorite adjective: she was old fashioned.*”

*Blanchard, Paula. Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 1994), 183.