Emerson's. It is southeast of the public square, at the point where the
Cambridge Turnpike joins the Lexington Road. When Emerson bought it in
1835, it was on the outskirts of the village and not prepossessing. He
said, himself, "It is in a mean place, and cannot be fine until trees
and flowers give it a character of its own. But we shall crowd so many
books and papers, and, if possible, wise friends into it, that it shall
have as much wit as it can carry." In September of that year, Emerson
went to Plymouth and was married to Miss Lydia Jackson, in a colonial
mansion belonging to the bride, who suggested that they remain there.
But Concord had charms which the poet could not sacrifice, so the couple
established themselves in the big house at the southern edge of the
village, where, ere long, the philosopher was dividing time between his
study and the vegetable-garden, while Lidian, as her husband preferred
to call her, set out her favorite flowers transplanted from the garden
at Plymouth.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON]
The first thing that strikes your eye, as you pass the Emerson house, is
the row of great horse-chestnuts shading its front. Mr. Coolidge, of
Boston, who built the house in 1828, remembered the lofty chestnuts of
his boyhood home in Bowdoin Square and promptly set to work to duplicate
them when he completed his new country house. Emerson added to his
original two acres until he had nine, and planted an orchard of apple
trees and pear trees, on which Thoreau did the grafting. "When I
bought my farm," said Emerson, "I did not know what a bargain I had in
the bluebirds, bobolinks, and thrushes, which were not charged in the
bill. As little did I guess what sublime mornings and sunsets I was
buying, what reaches of landscape, and what fields and lanes for a
tramp." To appreciate the full extent, therefore, of Emerson's domain,
we must next visit the favorite objective of his Sunday walks, Walden
Pond, only a mile or two away.
Walden Pond is a pretty sheet of water, about half a mile long,
completely inclosed by trees, which grow very near to the water's edge.
I fancy the visitors who go there may be divided into two classes:
first, those who go for a swim in the cool, deep waters, as Hawthorne
liked to do; and second, those who go to lay a stone upon the cairn that
marks the site of Thoreau's hut. It is well worth a pilgrimage, in these
days, to see the place where a man actually built a dwelling-house at a
cost of $28.121/2 and lived in it two years at an estimated expense of
$1.09 a month. One of his extravagances was a watermelon, costing two
cents, and this was classified in his summary among the "Experiments
which failed!" The site of the hut was admirably chosen. It overlooks a
little cove or bay, and the still surface of the pond, glimpses of which
could be seen through the trees, reflecting the blue sky overhead, made
a beautiful picture.
We must now return to the village, for there are two more houses to be
seen, both on the Lexington Road. The first is the Alcott house, now
restored to something like its original condition and preserved as a
memorial to the author of "Little Women." A. Bronson Alcott came to live
in Concord in 1840, having visited there for the first time five years
earlier. Emerson at once hailed him as "the most extraordinary man and
the highest genius of his time." He marveled at the "steadiness of his
vision" before which "we little men creep about ashamed." The "Sage of
Concord" was too modest and time failed to justify his enthusiasm for
the new neighbor. He came to admit that Alcott, though a man of lofty
spirit, could not be trusted as to matters of fact; that he did not have
the power to write or otherwise communicate his thoughts; and that he
was like a gold-ore, sometimes found in California, "in which the gold
is in combination with such other elements that no chemistry is able to
separate it without great loss."
Alcott was a "handy man" with tools, could construct fanciful
summer-houses or transform a melodeon into a bookcase, as a piece of his
handiwork in the "restored" house will testify. But in intellectual
matters he fired his bullets of wisdom so far over the heads of his
fellow men that they never came down, and therefore penetrated nobody's
brain.
This lack of practical wisdom came near bringing disaster to the family.
But his daughter came to the rescue with "Little Women," a book that has
had an astonishing success from the first. Originally published in 1868,
it has had a circulation estimated at one million copies and is still in
demand.
In the winter of 1862-63, Louisa M. Alcott marched off to war, carrying
several volumes of Dickens along with her lint and bandages, determined
that she would not only bind up the soldiers' wounds, but also relieve
the tedium of their hospital life during the long days of convalescence.
When she was ready to start, Alcott said he was sending "his only son."
Girl visitors to the old "Orchard house" take great delight in the
haunts of Meg, Amy, Beth, and Joe, and particularly in Amy's bedroom,
where the young artist's drawings on the doors and window-frames are
still preserved.
Just beyond the Alcott house is a pine grove on the side of a hill and
then the "Wayside," Hawthorne's home for the last twelve years of his
life. When Hawthorne left the Old Manse, he went to Salem, then to
Lenox, and for a short time to West Newton. In the summer of 1852, he
returned to Concord, having purchased the "Wayside" from Alcott.
While living in Lenox he had written "The Wonder-Book," which so
fascinated the children, including their elders as well, that his first
task upon settling in the new home was to prepare, in response to many
urgent demands, a second series of the same kind to be known as "The
Tanglewood Tales."
[Illustration: THE WAYSIDE]
In the following spring the family sailed for Liverpool, where Hawthorne
was to be the American Consul, and from this journey he did not return
until 1860, seven years later. He was then at the height of his fame as
the author of "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and
"The Marble Faun." As soon as his family was settled in the Wayside, he
began extensive alterations, the most remarkable of which is the tower,
which not only spoiled the architecture of the building, but failed,
partially at least, to serve its primary purpose as a study. It was a
room about twenty feet square, reached by a narrow stairway where the
author could shut himself in against all intrusion. A small stove made
the air stifling in winter, and the sun's rays upon the roof made it
unbearable in summer. Nevertheless, Hawthorne managed to make some use
of it and here he wrote "Our Old Home." I fancy he must have composed
most of it while walking back and forth in the seclusion of the pine
grove which he had purchased with the house. And here in this pleasant
grove we must leave him for the present, while we go back to Boston and
thence to Salem, to search out a few more old houses, which would
fall into decay and finally disappear without notice, like hundreds of
others of the same kind, but for the one simple fact that the touch of
Hawthorne's presence, more than half a century ago, conferred upon these
dingy old buildings a dignity and interest that draw to them annually a
host of visitors from all parts of the United States.
II
SALEM
On arrival at Salem we inquired of a local druggist whether he could
direct us to any of the Hawthorne landmarks. He promptly pleaded
ignorance, but referred us to an old citizen who chanced to be in the
store and who admitted that he knew all about the town, having been
"born and raised" there. Did he know whether there was a real "House of
Seven Gables"? Well, he had heard of such a place, but it was torn down
long ago. Could he direct us to the Custom House? Oh, yes, right down
the street: he would show us the way. Any houses where Hawthorne had
lived? Well, no,--he hadn't "followed that much." Had any of his family
ever seen Hawthorne, or spoken of him? Yes--but he didn't amount to
much: kind of a lazy fellow. People here didn't set much store by him.
We were moving away, fearing that the old fellow would offer to
accompany us and thereby spoil some of our anticipated enjoyment of the
old houses, when he called after us--"Say, there's an old house right
down this street that I've heard had something to do with Hawthorne. I
don't know just what, but maybe the folks there can tell you. It's just
this side of the graveyard." We thanked the old man, and following his
directions, soon stood before an old three-story wooden house, with
square front, big chimneys, and its upper windows considerably shorter
than those below--a type common enough in Salem and other New England
towns. It stood directly on the sidewalk and had a small, inclosed
porch, with oval windows on each side, through which one could look up
or down the street. In all these details it agreed exactly with
Hawthorne's description of the house of Dr. Grimshawe. Adjoining it on
the left was the very graveyard where Nat and little Elsie chased
butterflies and played hide-and-seek among the quaint old tombstones,
which had puffy little cherubs and doleful verses carved upon them. That
corner room, no doubt, that overlooks the graveyard, was old Dr. Grim's
study, so thickly festooned with cobwebs, where the grisly old
monomaniac sat with his long clay pipe and bottle of brandy, with no
better company than an enormous tropical spider, which hung directly
above his head and seemed at times to be the incarnation of the Evil One
himself.
How could Hawthorne, in his later years, conceive such horrible
suggestions in connection with a house which must have been associated
in his mind with the happiest memories of his life? For here lived the
Peabody family, Dr. Nathaniel Peabody and his highly cultivated wife,
their three sons, only one of whom lived to maturity, and their three
remarkable daughters--Elizabeth Palmer, who achieved fame as one of the
foremost kindergartners of America and died at a ripe old age; Mary, who
became the wife of Horace Mann; and the gentle, scholarly, and
high-minded Sophia, who refused to come down to see Hawthorne, on plea
of illness, the first time he called at the house, but fell in love with
him at a subsequent visit. The calls were frequent enough after that,
and before the family left the old house to reside in Boston, the lovers
were engaged to be married.
During the period of the courtship, Hawthorne lived with his mother and
two sisters in a house on Herbert Street not far distant, and the two
families came into close neighborly relations. Of course, we walked over
to Herbert Street to find this house, but what remains of it has been
remodeled into an ordinary tenement house and no longer resembles the
house to which Sophia Peabody once sent a bouquet of tulips for Mr.
Hawthorne, only to have it quietly appropriated by his sister Elizabeth,
who thought her brother incapable of appreciating flowers, though she
kindly permitted him to look at them! In the rear of this building,
fronting on Union Street, is the plain, two-story-and-a-half house, with
a gambrel roof, where Hawthorne was born.
When the Hawthornes returned to Salem, after their residence in the Old
Manse, they occupied the Herbert Street house, with Madam Hawthorne and
her two daughters, Elizabeth and Louisa. This proved inconvenient for so
large a family and they moved into a three-story house on Chestnut
Street, well shaded by some fine old elms. This was only a temporary
arrangement, and soon afterward, the family took a large three-story
house on Mall Street, where the mother and sisters occupied separate
apartments. Hawthorne's study was on the third floor--near enough his
own family for convenience, but sufficiently remote for quiet. It was to
this house that he returned one day in dejected mood and announced that
he had been removed from his position at the Custom House. "Oh! then,
you can write your book!" was the unexpectedly joyous reply of his wife,
who knew that he had a story weighing on his mind. And then she produced
the savings which she had carefully hoarded to meet just such an
emergency. "The Scarlet Letter" was begun on the same day.
It was to this same house that James T. Fields came in the following
winter and found Hawthorne in despondent mood sitting in the upper room
huddled over a small stove. The preceding half-year had been the most
trying period in his life. Discouragement over the loss of his position
and the prospect of meager returns for his literary work was followed by
serious pecuniary embarrassment, for Mrs. Hawthorne's store of gold was,
after all, a tiny one. The illness and death of his mother had left him
in a nervous state from the great strain of emotion, and this was
followed by the sickness of every member of the household, himself
included. The story of how Fields left the house with the manuscript of
"The Scarlet Letter" in his pocket is well known. The immediate success
of the novel proved to be the tonic that restored the author to health
and happiness, and when he left Mall Street in the following spring he
was no longer the "obscurest man of letters in America."
The old Salem Custom House is the best-known building in the town. As we
stood before it and looked upon the great eagle above the portico, with
"a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw"
and a "truculent attitude" that seemed "to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community," it seemed as though we might fairly expect the
former surveyor, or his ghost, to open the door and walk down the old
granite steps.
[Illustration: THE MALL STREET HOUSE]
I have already mentioned the apparent indifference toward Hawthorne of a
certain old citizen of Salem--a feeling which characterizes a large part
of the population, particularly those whose ancestors have lived longest
in the town. One would naturally expect Salem to be proud of her most
distinguished citizen, to delight in honoring him, and to extend a
cordial welcome to thousands of strangers who come to pay him homage.
Shakespeare is the principal asset of Stratford-on-Avon, Scott of
Melrose, Burns of Ayr, and Wordsworth of the English Lakes. Every
citizen is ready to talk of them. Not so of Hawthorne and Salem. The
town is quite independent, and would hold up its head if there had never
been any Hawthorne. The later generation, it is true, recognize his
greatness, but the prejudice of the older families is sufficient to
check any manifestation of enthusiasm.
This old Custom House upon which we are looking furnishes the
explanation. When Hawthorne took possession as surveyor, he found
offices ornamented with rows of sleepy officials, sitting in
old-fashioned chairs which were tilted on their hind legs against the
walls. These old gentlemen made an irresistible appeal to his sense of
humor, such that he could scarcely have avoided the impulse to write a
description of their whimsicalities. After his "decapitation" he yielded
to the impulse and prepared in the best of good humor the amusing
description of his former associates in the "Introduction" to "The
Scarlet Letter." It brought the wrath of Salem upon his head. These old
fellows did not fancy being caricatured as "wearisome old souls," who
"seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom
which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most
carefully to have stored their memories with the husks." Especially
enraged were the family of the Old Inspector of whom Hawthorne said
nothing worse than that he remembered all the good dinners he had eaten.
"There were flavors on his palate that had lingered there not less than
sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of
the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast," said
Hawthorne with fine humor. "He called one of them a pig," said a
Salemite to me, indignantly.
After all, Salem never really knew Hawthorne. Though the town was his
birthplace, he had little liking for it, and was seldom there. During
the four years of his incumbency of the Custom House, he kept aloof from
the townspeople, most of whom had no knowledge whatever of his literary
efforts. When the fame of "The Scarlet Letter" had made Hawthorne's name
a familiar one throughout America and England, the author was no longer
a resident of Salem, for immediately after the publication of his first
and most famous novel, he was glad to seek relief from the gloomy
memories of Mall Street in the fresh mountain air of the Berkshires.
Hawthorne, though apparently glad to escape, still allowed his thought
to dwell in Salem, for in the same year of the completion of "The
Scarlet Letter" and his removal to Lenox, Massachusetts, he began "The
House of the Seven Gables." The identity of this house has long been a
matter of curiosity. Three old Salem houses, two of which have since
disappeared, have been pointed out as originals, the authenticity of all
of which has been denied by George Parsons Lathrop, Hawthorne's
son-in-law, who maintains that the author's statement, that he built his
house only of "materials long in use for constructing castles in the
air," must be taken literally.
It must not be supposed that an author need ever describe such a
building in detail or provide for its future identification. He may do
as Scott often did, put the details of three or four houses into one
structure, taking his material, not "out of the air," but from
recollections of many places he has seen. It does not detract from the
supposed "original" to find that the author has made material, even
radical, departures from the original plan. The real point of interest
is to know whether the old landmark suggested anything to the author,
and if so, how much.
To those who follow this line of reasoning, an old house at the foot of
Turner Street, now commonly known as "The House of the Seven Gables,"
has many points of interest. It is a weather-stained old building dating
back to 1669, and contains so many gables that you are reasonably
content to accept seven as the number, though I believe it has eight,
not counting the one over the rear porch, recently added.
The identification of this house as the one which, more than any other,
suggested to Hawthorne the idea of a house of seven gables, rests upon
two facts. The first is that in 1782 it came into the possession of
Captain Samuel Ingersoll, whose wife was a niece of Hawthorne's
grandfather. It passed, later, to their only surviving daughter,
Susannah. Her portrait, which now hangs in the parlor of the old house,
shows that, as a young woman, she was not unattractive. An unfortunate
love affair caused her to withdraw from society and to live a life of
solitude in the old house, from which all male visitors were rigidly
excluded. An exception seems to have been made in favor of her cousin
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, it is said, was a frequent visitor and
listened with interest to the legends of the house as told by his elder
cousin.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES]
The second fact of identification rests upon more recent evidence. The
building was purchased in 1908 by a generous resident of Salem and
turned into a settlement house. This lady, who possesses the highest
antiquarian instincts, determined to restore the house to its original
form. In doing so she discovered traces of four gables which had been
removed. These, with three that remained, made the desired seven, but,
unfortunately, about the same time an old plan was unearthed which
proved that the house at one time must have had eight gables! So the
house has been restored to its full quota of eight. When Hawthorne
was calling there it had only three gables, and his elderly kinswoman
must have told traditions of the time when it had seven or eight, as the
case may be. And so the question of gables becomes as bewildering as Tom
Sawyer's aunt's spoons.
Aside from this not very profitable speculation, the house is an
interesting survival of the time when Salem was a seaport town of some
importance. A secret staircase has been reconstructed according to the
recollections of the man who took it down a quarter of a century ago. It
opens by a secret spring in a panel of the wall in the third-story front
room, now known as "Clifford's chamber," and ascends through a false
fireplace in the dining-room. It will be remembered how Clifford
mysteriously disappeared from his room, and as mysteriously reappeared
in the parlor where Judge Pyncheon sat in the easy-chair, dead. Perhaps
he came down this secret stairway, though Hawthorne forgot to mention
it.
A little shop, where real gingerbread "Jim Crows" are sold, makes the
present "House of the Seven Gables" seem real, so that when the bell
tinkles as you open the door, you would not be at all surprised if
Hepzibah Pyncheon herself should appear, entering from the quaint little
New England kitchen on the right. A sunny chamber upstairs now called
"Phoebe's room," and a pleasant little garden in the rear, still
further heighten the illusion and make one feel that if this is not the
real "House of the Seven Gables," it certainly ought to be.
The conditions under which "The House of the Seven Gables" was written
were quite the reverse of those which brought forth "The Scarlet
Letter." Instead of obscurity, ill health, and financial difficulties,
the author was now in the full flush of his fame, reveling in the
friendship of the most distinguished men of letters, enjoying the best
of health himself, and happy in the consciousness that his dear wife was
also well, and living amid the most delightful surroundings, free from
care and taking no anxious thought for the morrow.
The people of Salem are now preparing to make ample amends for any
neglect of Hawthorne in the past. A committee of prominent citizens has
been at work for several years upon a plan to erect a handsome statue
upon the Common, the design for which has been made by a well-known
artist, and a portion of the funds collected. With this monument before
them, we may reasonably hope that future generations will be able to
forgive the frankness which irritated their ancestors, though it was
kindly meant, and eventually open their hearts to adopt Hawthorne as
their very own, just as Stratford does Shakespeare, acknowledging the
full extent of their obligation for the luster which his brilliant
genius has shed upon their town.
III
PORTSMOUTH
If Thomas Bailey Aldrich were living to-day and could enter the front
door of his grandfather's house in Court Street, Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, he would be likely to have a strange feeling of suddenly
renewed youth, for his eyes would rest upon the same rooms and many of
the same furnishings as those which greeted him in 1849, when he
returned to the old house, a lad of twelve, to enter upon those happy
boyish experiences so pleasantly related in "The Story of a Bad Boy."
And then, as he passed from room to room and gazed once more upon the
old familiar sights, he would experience a deeper and richer joy--a
sense of pride, mingled with love and gratitude, for this unique and
splendid tribute to his memory, from his faithful wife and many loyal
friends.
In the summer of 1907, following the death of Mr. Aldrich, which
occurred in the spring of that year, it was suggested in a local
newspaper of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that the old Bailey house, where
"Tom Bailey" lived with his "Grandfather Nutter," should be purchased by
the town and refurnished as a permanent memorial to its distinguished
son. The response was instant and hearty. The Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Memorial Association was at once formed, and a fund of ten thousand
dollars was raised by popular subscriptions, in sums varying from one
dollar to one thousand dollars. The house, which had fallen into alien
hands and had not been kept in good repair, was purchased and restored
to its original condition, and the heirs gladly gave back all that had
been taken away at the death of Grandfather Bailey. On June 30, 1908,
the restored house was formally dedicated by a distinguished
representation of Aldrich's friends, including Richard Watson Gilder,
William Dean Howells, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Thomas Nelson Page, Samuel L. Clemens, and many others whose names are
well known.
[Illustration: THE BAILEY HOUSE]