Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100Under the Firs D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 6 3 7 perspectives from left: Painting of Annie Fields by John Singer Sargent ca. 1889, Maine Women Writers Collection Abplanalp Library University of New England Society chronicler Annie Adams Fields played muse and Tory lover for Sarah Orne Jewett, author of Country of the Pointed Firs. The signs are everywhere. There are the stories of intimate intrigues sprinkled through two of Jewett’s best-known works, Deephaven (1877) and Country of Point- ed Firs (1896), relationships between wom- en that often mirror her own life stories and friendships. Indeed, there are love poems di- rected quite startlingly to women, dozens of them, in fact. Jewett wrote in the opening of an 1880 poem: Do you remember, darling, A year ago today When we gave ourselves to each other… Most telling of all are the myriad let- ters written back and forth between Jewett Terry Heller, Ph.D., had nev- er been to the small Maine town where Sarah Orne Jewett lived when he first fell in love with her books about the people and life of her rural New England world. But Jewett’s stories made the young teacher living in 1970s Iowa yearn for the 19th century South Berwick, to know Jewett herself, and to be a part of her inti- mate circle of friends. Today, Heller is a world authority on Jewett (1849-1909) and has spent decades amassing The Sarah Orne Jewett Text Proj- ect from his base at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Like most everyone fascinated by the life and times of this writer, he knows all about Jewett and Boston aristocrat Annie Fields: they were close friends, deeply and even passionately connected, travel compan- ions, and life partners. But even today, Hell- er is unwilling to definitively comment on the suggestion of romantic involvement that hovered over the women’s relationship be- tween 1882 and 1909. “There is no doubt about the deep and abiding affection between Sarah and An- nie,” says Heller, in a recent visit to South Berwick. “But there is plenty of doubt about an erotic component because so far there is a lack of unequivocally persuasive evidence.” and Fields, a Boston author whose relation- ship began while Fields was still married and continued for 30 years after Fields’s husband, Atlantic Monthly publisher James Fields, died in 1881. Jewett wrote to Fields in 1882: Oh my dear darling I had forgotten that we loved each other so much a year ago–for it all seems so new to me every day–there is so much for us to remember already… A cover-up uncovered Nina Maurer, regional administrator for the Jewett House in South Berwick and sev- eral other historic New England properties in the 1990s, recalls that even at a Jewett conference in 1995, no one was willing to go out on a limb and say Jewett was gay. “At the time, the people I talked to said they didn’t have any evidence or documents that would corroborate the fact or supposi- tion that she was gay,” says Maurer, a South Berwick resident. Enter Portland playwright Carolyn Gage, who includes Jewett and Fields’s relationship in her show “Theatrical Journey Through Maine’s Lesbian History.” According to Gage, the two women “attended séances to by amy miller