"I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes in favor of the
forthcoming work ['The Marble Faun'], and sincerely join my own prayers
to yours in its behalf, without much confidence of a good result. My own
opinion is, that I am not really a popular writer, and that what
popularity I have gained is chiefly accidental, and owing to other
causes than my own kind or degree of merit. Possibly I may (or may not)
deserve something better than popularity; but looking at all my
productions, and especially this latter one, with a cold or critical
eye, I can see that they do not make their appeal to the popular mind.
It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is for quite
another class of works than those which I myself am able to write. If I
were to meet with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe
I should be able to get through them." At another time he had written of
Anthony Trollope's novels: "They precisely suit my taste; solid and
substantial, written on the strength of beef and through the
inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great
lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its
inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that
they were made a show of."
Before leaving England for the last time, Hawthorne went up alone to
London, and spent a week or two among his friends there, staying with
Motley, and meeting Lord Dufferin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, Leigh
Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and many other agreeable and noted persons. "You
would be stricken dumb," he wrote to his wife, who remained at Bath, "to
see how quietly I accept a whole string of invitations, and, what is
more, perform my engagements without a murmur.... The stir of this
London life, somehow or other, has done me a wonderful deal of good, and
I feel better than for months past. This is strange, for if I had my
choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do." In the midst
of these social occupations he gave sittings to a young German-American
sculptor named Kuntze, who modelled a profile portrait of him in
bas-relief. A farewell dinner was given him at Barry Cornwall's; and in
June, 1860, he sailed for America, from which he had been absent seven
years.
There was not yet any serious sign of a failure in his health; but the
illness in his family, lasting through two winters, had worn severely
upon him; his spirits had begun to droop. "I would gladly journalize
some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the
same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to
England:" thus he had written in his Note-Book, while making that final
London visit. In Italy, however, he had already shown symptoms of
fatigue, saying to Mr. Fields: "I have had so many interruptions from
things to see and things to suffer, that the story ['The Marble Faun']
has developed itself in a very imperfect way.... I could finish it in
the time that I am to remain here, but my brain is tired of it just
now." The voyage put fresh vigor into him, apparently. Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe and Professor Stowe were on board, with their daughters,
and Mr. Fields, who was also a passenger, has said: "Hawthorne's love
for the sea amounted to a passionate worship, and while I (the worst
sailor probably on this planet) was longing, spite of the good company
on board, to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was constantly
saying in his quiet, earnest way, 'I should like to sail on and on
forever, and never touch the shore again.'" His inherited susceptibility
to the fascination of the sea no doubt intensified his enjoyment, and he
is reported to have talked in a strain of delightful humor while on
shipboard.
For nearly a year after his return to The Wayside, there is an
uneventful gap in his history, concerning which we have very few
details. He set about improving his house, and added to it a wing at the
back, which, having three stories, rose above the rest of the building,
and thus supplied him with a study in the top room, which had the effect
of a tower. Meanwhile the political quarrel between the North and the
South was rapidly culminating; in a few months the Slave States began
their secession, and the Civil War broke out. This affected Hawthorne so
deeply that for some time he was unable to engage in imaginative work,
and he now relinquished the custom he had maintained for so many years,
of keeping a journal. But there are letters which define his state of
mind, which make his position clear with regard to the question of the
Union, and show the change in his feeling brought on by the course of
events.
Several years before, while he was still consul, he thus confided to
Bridge (January 9, 1857) his general opinion respecting the crisis which
even then impended:--
"I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of the Union;
for I should like well enough to hold on to the old thing. And yet I
must confess that I sympathize to a large extent with the Northern
feeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelled
to choose, I go for the North. At present, we have no country--at least,
none in the sense in which an Englishman has a country. I never
conceived, in reality, what a true and warm love of country is, till I
witnessed it in the breasts of Englishmen. The States are too various
and too extended to form really one country. New England is quite as
large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.... However, I have
no kindred with nor leaning toward the Abolitionists."