Truly Yours,
Nath. Hawthorne.]
His task occupied him all winter. To Mr. Fields at length, on the 27th
of January, 1851, he sent the following message:--
"I intend to put 'The House of the Seven Gables' into the expressman's
hands to-day; so that, if you do not soon receive it, you may conclude
that it has miscarried--in which case, I shall not consent to the
universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the
wildest scribble of a first draught; so that it could never be restored.
"It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the public
to whose judgment it has been submitted: viz. from my wife. I likewise
prefer it to 'The Scarlet Letter;' but an author's opinion of his book,
just after completing it, is worth little or nothing; he being then in
the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too high or too
low. It has undoubtedly one disadvantage in being brought so close to
the present time, whereby its romantic improbabilities become more
glaring."
The fac simile of a part of the above letter which is reproduced here
serves as a fairly good specimen of Hawthorne's handwriting. At the time
when it was written, he was not very well, and the fatigue of his long
labor upon the book rendered the chirography somewhat less clear in this
case than it often was. The lettering in his manuscripts was somewhat
larger, and was still more distinct than that in his correspondence.
After the new romance had come out and had met with a flattering
reception, he inquired of Bridge (July 22, 1851): "Why did you not write
and tell me how you liked (or how you did not like) 'The House of the
Seven Gables?' Did you feel shy about expressing an unfavorable opinion?
It would not have hurt me in the least, though I am always glad to
please you; but I rather think I have reached the stage when I do not
care very essentially one way or the other for anybody's opinion on any
one production. On this last romance, for instance, I have heard and
seen such diversity of judgment that I should be altogether bewildered
if I attempted to strike a balance;--so I take nobody's estimate but my
own. I think it is a work more characteristic of my mind, and more
natural and proper for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter'--but for
that very reason less likely to interest the public.... As long as
people will buy, I shall keep at work, and I find that my facility of
labor increases with the demand for it."
In the May of 1851 another daughter was added to his family. Hawthorne,
like his father, had one son and two daughters. Of this youngest one he
wrote to Pike, two months after her birth: "She is a very bright and
healthy child.... I think I feel more interest in her than I did in the
other children at the same age, from the consideration that she is to be
the daughter of my age--the comfort (so it is to be hoped) of my
declining years." There are some other interesting points in this
communication. "What a sad account you give of your solitude, in your
letter! I am not likely ever to have that feeling of loneliness which
you express; and I most heartily wish you would take measures to remedy
it in your own case, by marrying.... Whenever you find it quite
intolerable (and I can hardly help wishing that it may become so soon),
do come to me. By the way, if I continue to prosper as hitherto in the
literary line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a place; and if
you should hear of one, say worth from $1,500 to $2,000, I wish you
would keep your eye on it for me. I should wish it to be on the
sea-coast, or at all events within easy access to the sea. Very little
land would suit my purpose, but I want a good house, with space
inside.... I find that I do not feel at home among these hills, and
should not consider myself permanently settled here. I do not get
acclimated to the peculiar state of the atmosphere; and, except in
mid-winter, I am continually catching cold, and am never so vigorous as
I used to be on the sea-coast.... Why did you not express your opinion
of 'The House of the Seven Gables?'... I should receive friendly
censure with just as much equanimity as if it were praise; though
certainly I had rather you would like the book than not. At any rate, it
has sold finely, and seems to have pleased a good many people better
than the other; and I must confess that I myself am among the number....
When I write another romance I shall take the Community for a subject,
and shall give some of my experiences at Brook Farm."
On the first day of December, 1851, he left Lenox with his wife and
children, betaking himself for the winter to West Newton, a suburban
village a few miles west of Boston, on the Charles River; there to
remain until he could effect the purchase of a house which could serve
him as a settled home. The house that he finally selected was an old one
in the town of Concord, about a mile easterly from the centre of the
village on the road to Lexington, and was then the property of Mrs.
Bronson Alcott. During the winter at West Newton he wrote "The
Blithedale Romance," which was published early in 1852. In the brief
term of two years and a half from the moment of his leaving the Custom
House at Salem, he had thus produced four books,--"The Scarlet Letter,"
"The House of the Seven Gables," "A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and
"The Blithedale Romance,"--three of them being the principal works of
his lifetime, with which "The Marble Faun" alone stands in the same
category. Early in the summer of 1852 he took up his residence in his
new home, The Wayside, of which he thus discoursed to Mr. George William
Curtis, on the 14th of July, 1852:--
MY DEAR HOWADJI,--I think (and am glad to think) that you will find
it necessary to come hither in order to write your Concord
Sketches; and as for my old house, you will understand it better
after spending a day or two in it. Before Mr. Alcott took it in
hand, it was a mean-looking affair, with two peaked gables; no
suggestiveness about it and no venerableness, although from the
style of its construction it seems to have survived beyond its
first century. He added a porch in front, and a central peak, and a
piazza at each end, and painted it a rusty olive hue, and invested
the whole with a modest picturesqueness; all which improvements,
together with its situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a
place that one notices and remembers for a few moments after
passing it. Mr. Alcott expended a good deal of taste and some money
(to no great purpose) in forming the hill-side behind the house
into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems
and branches and trees, on a system of his own. They must have been
very pretty in their day, and are so still, although much decayed,
and shattered more and more by every breeze that blows. The
hill-side is covered chiefly with locust-trees, which come into
luxuriant blossom in the month of June, and look and smell very
sweetly, intermixed with a few young elms and some white-pines and
infant oaks,--the whole forming rather a thicket than a wood.
Nevertheless, there is some very good shade to be found there. I
spend delectable hours there in the hottest part of the day,
stretched out at my lazy length, with a book in my hand or an
unwritten book in my thoughts. There is almost always a breeze
stirring along the sides or brow of the hill.
From the hill-top there is a good view along the extensive level
surfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, that
characterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as a gleam
of lake or river in the prospect; if there were, it would add
greatly to the value of the place in my estimation.
The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston road
(along which the British marched and retreated), divided from it by
a fence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Alcott's setting out.
Whereupon I have called it "The Wayside," which I think a better
name and more morally suggestive than that which, as Mr. Alcott has
since told me, he bestowed on it,--"The Hill-Side." In front of the
house, on the opposite side of the road, I have eight acres of
land,--the only valuable portion of the place in a farmer's eye,
and which are capable of being made very fertile. On the hither
side, my territory extends some little distance over the brow of
the hill, and is absolutely good for nothing, in a productive point
of view, though very good for many other purposes.
I know nothing of the history of the house, except Thoreau's
telling me that it was inhabited a generation or two ago by a man
who believed he should never die.[9] I believe, however, he is
dead; at least, I hope so; else he may probably appear and dispute
my title to his residence....
I asked Ticknor to send a copy of "The Blithedale Romance" to you.
Do not read it as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm (which
essentially it has not), but merely for its own story and
character.
Truly yours, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Quite possibly the name of The Wayside recommended itself to him by some
association of thought like that which comes to light in the Preface to
"The Snow-Image," where, speaking of the years immediately following his
college course, he says: "I sat down by the wayside of life like a man
under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprung up around me, and the bushes
grew to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no exit
appeared possible through the entangling depths of my obscurity." If so,
the simile held good as to his home; for there, too, the shrubbery has
sprung up and has grown to saplings and trees, until the house is
embosomed in a wood, except for the opening along the road and a small
amphitheatre of lawn overlooked by the evergreen-clad hill.
Hawthorne's old college friend, Franklin Pierce, after having been to
Congress and having risen to the rank of general in the Mexican War, was
nominated by the democratic party for the presidency of the United
States, at the time when the romancer had established himself in this
humble but charming old abode; and it became manifest that the
candidate wanted Hawthorne to write a life of him, for use in the
campaign. Hawthorne, on being pressed, consented to do so, and a letter
which he addressed to Bridge, October 13, 1852, contains some extremely
interesting confidences on the subject, which will be entirely new to
readers. As they do Hawthorne credit, if considered fairly, and give a
striking presentment of the impartiality with which he viewed all
subjects, it seems to be proper to print them here.
He begins by speaking of "The Blithedale Romance," regarding which he
says: "I doubt whether you will like it very well; but it has met with
good success, and has brought me (besides its American circulation) a
thousand dollars from England, whence likewise have come many favorable
notices. Just at this time, I rather think your friend stands foremost
there as an American fiction-monger. In a day or two I intend to begin a
new romance, which, if possible, I intend to make more genial than the
last.
"I did not send you the Life of Pierce, not considering it fairly one of
my literary productions.... I was terribly reluctant to undertake this
work, and tried to persuade Pierce, both by letter and vivâ voce, that I
could not perform it as well as many others; but he thought differently,
and of course after a friendship of thirty years it was impossible to
refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at the great pinch of his life. It
was a bad book to write, for the gist of the matter lay in explaining
how it happened, that with such extraordinary opportunities for eminent
distinction, civil and military, as he has enjoyed, this crisis should
have found him so obscure as he certainly was, in a national point of
view. My heart absolutely sank at the dearth of available material.
However, I have done the business, greatly to Frank's satisfaction; and,
though I say it myself, it is judiciously done; and, without any
sacrifice of truth, it puts him in as good a light as circumstances
would admit. Other writers might have made larger claims for him, and
have eulogized him more highly; but I doubt whether any other could have
bestowed a better aspect of sincerity and reality on the narrative, and
have secured all the credit possible for him without spoiling all by
asserting too much. And though the story is true, yet it took a romancer
to do it.
"Before undertaking it, I made an inward resolution that I would accept
no office from him; but to say the truth, I doubt whether it would not
be rather folly than heroism to adhere to this purpose, in case he
should offer me anything particularly good. We shall see. A foreign
mission I could not afford to take;--the consulship at Liverpool I
might.... I have several invitations from English celebrities to come
over there; and this office would make all straight. He certainly owes
me something; for the biography has cost me hundreds of friends here at
the North, who had a purer regard for me than Frank Pierce or any other
politician ever gained, and who drop off from me like autumn leaves, in
consequence of what I say on the slavery question. But they were my real
sentiments, and I do not now regret that they are on record."
After discussing other topics, he observes further of Pierce: "I have
come seriously to the conclusion that he has in him many of the chief
elements of a great man; and that if he wins the election he may run a
great career. His talents are administrative; he has a subtle faculty
of making affairs roll around according to his will, and of influencing
their course without showing any trace of his action." Hawthorne did not
feel very confident of his friend's election. "I love him," he adds,
"and, oddly enough, there is a kind of pitying sentiment mixed with my
affection for him just now."
* * * * *
Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard has set down his reminiscences of two visits
paid to Hawthorne at the beginning and after the end of the campaign. In
the summer of 1852, Mr. Stoddard was making a short stay in Boston, and
dropped in at the Old Corner Bookstore to call upon Mr. Fields, who then
had his headquarters there. He found Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, the lecturer
and critic, sitting with the publisher.
"'We are going to see Hawthorne,' Mr. Fields remarked, in an off-hand
way, as if such a visit was the commonest thing in the world. 'Won't you
come along?' He knew my admiration for Hawthorne, and that I desired to
meet him, if I could do so without being considered an infliction. 'To
be sure I will,' I replied.... When we were fairly seated in the train
we met a friend of Hawthorne, whom Mr. Fields knew--a Colonel T. I.
Whipple--who, like ourselves, was _en route_ for Concord, ... and as
General Pierce was then the democratic candidate for the presidency, he
was going to see Hawthorne, in order to furnish materials for that work.
"We reached The Wayside, where Hawthorne, who had no doubt been
expecting visitors, met us at the door. I was introduced to him as being
the only stranger of the party, and was greeted warmly, more so than I
had dared to hope, remembering the stories I had heard of his
unconquerable shyness. He threw open the door of the room on the left,
and, telling us to make ourselves at home, disappeared with Colonel
Whipple and his budget of biographical memoranda. We made ourselves at
home, as he had desired, in what I suppose was the parlor--a cosy but
plainly furnished room, with nothing to distinguish it from a thousand
other "best rooms" in New England, except a fine engraving on the wall
of one of Raphael's Madonnas. We chatted a few moments, and then, as he
did not return, we took a stroll over the grounds, under the direction
of Mr. Fields.
"We had ascended the hill, and from its outlook were taking in the
historic country about, when we were rejoined by Hawthorne in the old
rustic summer-house. As I was the stranger, he talked with me more than
with the others, largely about myself and my verse-work, which he seemed
to have followed with considerable attention; and he mentioned an
architectural poem of mine and compared it with his own modest mansion.
"'If I could build like you,' he said, 'I, too, would have a castle in
the air.'
"'Give me The Wayside,' I replied, 'and you shall have all the air
castles I can build.'
"As we rambled and talked, my heart went out towards this famous man,
who did not look down upon me, as he might well have done, but took me
up to himself as an equal and a friend. Dinner was announced and eaten,
a plain country dinner, with a bottle or two of _vin ordinaire_, and we
started back to Boston."
Pierce having become President-Elect, Mr. Stoddard made another trip to
Concord, in the winter of 1852-3, to ask Hawthorne's advice about
getting a place in the Custom House. He was taken into the study (at
that time in the southeast corner, on the ground-floor and facing the
road), where there was a blazing wood-fire. The announcement of dinner
cut short their conversation, but after dinner they again retired to the
study, where, as Mr. Stoddard says, Hawthorne brought out some cigars,
"which we smoked with a will and which I found stronger than I liked.
Custom House matters were scarcely touched upon, and I was not sorry,
for while they were my ostensible errand there, they were not half so
interesting as the discursive talk of Hawthorne. He manifested a good
deal of curiosity in regard to some old Brook Farmers whom I knew in a
literary way, and I told him what they were doing, and gave him my
impressions of the individuality of each. He listened, with an
occasional twinkle of the eye, and I can see now that he was amused by
my out-spoken detestation of certain literary Philistines. He was
out-spoken, too, for he told me plainly that a volume of fairy stories I
had just published was not simple enough for the young.
"What impressed me most at the time was not the drift of the
conversation, but the graciousness of Hawthorne. He expressed the
warmest interest in my affairs, and a willingness to serve me in every
possible way. In a word, he was the soul of kindness, and when I forget
him I shall have forgotten everything else."