Notes

Books and articles about Hawthorne are voluminous—and have been appearing at an astonishing rate ever since Hawthorne’s death in 1864. As a consequence, I try to confine my citations to the primary sources consulted or quoted. Otherwise the notes (already lengthy) would be longer than this book. However, I do cite secondary sources when I think they might amplify some particular issue or guide further reading, for I’m obviously indebted to decades and decades of superb critical writing about Hawthorne’s work.

Anyone interested in my evaluation of recent Hawthorne scholarship may consult the annual American Literary Scholarship, 1997–2001, edited by David J. Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst (Duke University Press). I learned a great deal from writing this chapter during the last five years; and I’m grateful to the editors, two fine scholars quick with humor and help.

I used the Hawthorne family letters in the possession of Evelyn Hamby, with permission, before the archive was sold to Stanford University, where it now resides. With permission, I’ve quoted from these materials, crediting both Mrs. Hamby and Stanford.

In quoting any primary materials, I’ve retained the writer’s original spelling so that the reader may better hear the author’s voice, and as a consquence I keep the use of [sic] to a minimum.

COMMONLY USED ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited names:

ECH:	Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hawthorne (mother)
EH:	Elizabeth Hawthorne (sister Ebe)
MLH:	Maria Louisa Hawthorne
JH:	Julian Hawthorne
NH:	Nathaniel Hawthorne
SH:	Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
RH:	Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (Mother Mary Alphonsa)
UH:	Una Hawthorne
HB:	Horatio Bridge
ED:	Evert Duyckinck
RWE:	Ralph Waldo Emerson
AF:	Annie Adams Fields
JTF:	James T. Fields
MF:	Margaret Fuller
GH:	George Hillard
HWL:	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
HM:	Herman Melville
EPP:	Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Mrs. EPP:	Elizabeth Peabody, mother-in-law
FP:	Franklin Pierce
MM:	Mary Mann
WDT:	William D. Ticknor

For frequently cited libraries or manuscript depositories, the following abbreviations are used:

AAS: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts

Amherst: Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts

Antioch: Antiochiana, Antioch College Library, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio Bancroft: Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley

BY: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

BPL: Rare Books Department, Boston Public Library, Boston

Berg: Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, New York

Bowdoin: George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

Butler: Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York

Houghton: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Huntington: Huntington Library, San Marino, California

LC: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

MHS: Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston

Morgan: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

NHHS: New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire

NYPL: Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York

OSU: Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus

PE: Phillips Library (formerly Essex Institute), Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts

Rosary Hill: Rosary Hill Home, Hawthorne, New York

Smith: Peabody Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts

Stanford: Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California

UVA: Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited books:

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Hawthorne’s letters published in The Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. William Charvat et al., in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vols. XV–XVIII (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press), will be cited as C followed by the volume number. I have also provided recipient and date.

American Claimant Manuscripts: The Ancestral Footstep, Etherege, Grimshawe in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Edward H. Davidson and Claude M. Simpson, vol. XII (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1977), cited as American Claimant Manuscripts.

American Notebooks, ed. Claude Simpson, in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. VIII (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1972), cited as AN.

The Elixir of Life Manuscripts in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Edward Davidson, Claude Simpson, and L. Neal Smith, vol. XIII (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1977), cited as Elixir of Life.

English Notebooks, ed. Thomas Woodson and Bill Ellis, in the Centenary Edition of the

Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vols. XXI and XXII (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1997), cited as EN (followed by vol. 1 or 2, to specify volume number). The French and Italian Notebooks, ed. Thomas Woodson, in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. XIV (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1980), cited as FIN.

Our Old Home, ed. Claude Simpson and Fredson Bowers, in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. V (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1970), cited as OOH.

True Stories from History and Biography, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce and Fredson Bowers, in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. VI (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1970), cited as True Stories.

Hawthorne’s novels, cited by title, all appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels, ed. Millicent Bell (New York: Library of America, 1983).

Hawthorne’s tales and sketches, cited by title, all appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce (New York: Library of America, 1996), also cited as Tales.

Horatio Bridge, Personal Recollections (New York: Harper & Bros., 1893), cited as Personal Recollections.

James T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), cited as Yesterdays.

Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Circle (New York: Harper & Bros., 1903), cited as HHC.

Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1884), cited as NHHW. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), cited as Memories.

CHAPTER ONE: THE PRISON DOOR—INTRODUCTORY

1     The second-born child: Exhibits A and B, Southern District Court Criminal Dockets C 4–5, National Archives, New York City.

2     “always handicap”; “To be the son”: James Russell Lowell to JH, Nov. 28, 1885, in C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., ed., Hawthorne at Auction, 1884–1971 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1972), p. 136; Henry James, “Julian Hawthorne,” in Henry James: Literary Criticism, vol. 1, Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers, ed. Leon Edel (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 295.

3     “This idea is”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 511.

4     Like him: See MM to Horace Mann Jr., Jan. 8, 1865, Antioch; see also UH to Horace Mann Jr., Oct. 4, 1859, BY.

5     “The more I feel”: UH to EPP, Oct. 4, 1859, BY.

6     Una had worshipped: See SH to Mrs. EPP, June 9, 1850, Berg.

7     “It was impossible”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Part of a Man’s Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), p. 268.

8     “Theirs is the greater”: “Wise Flays Hawthorne,” New York Times, Mar. 13, 1913 p. 3.

9     His conviction disgraced: “Hawthorne Seeks Apology,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1913, p. 20.

10   “In such extremities”: JH, The Subterranean Brotherhood (New York: McBridge, Nast, 1914), p. 16.

11   “I was sure”: “Convict Three Men in Hawthorne Case,” New York Times, Mar. 15, 1913, p. 2.

12   “It is a very common”: “Etherege,” American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 328.

13   “his tendencies”: Feb. 1, 1849, AN, p. 420.

14   In 1908 … he managed: Hawthorne’s letters to prospective dupes usually included this sentence: “I have dropped literature, and taken up the development—and the exploitation—of a mine.” See, for instance, JH to Paul Hodgeland, Sept. 24, 1908, Minnesota Historical Society.

15   “Why not go on”: JH, Confessions and Criticisms (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1886), p. 9.

16   “I think we take”; “a bread-and-butter calling”: JH, Confessions and Criticisms, p. 16; “Julian Hawthorne Dead on Coast, 88,” New York Times, July 15, 1934, p. 22.

17   “better than I do”: JH, diary, July 3, 1879, Bancroft.

18   “I cannot sufficiently”: JH, Confessions and Criticisms, p. 16.

19   Friends thought she: SH to FP, Mar. 31, 1865, NHHS; see Charlotte Cushman to EPP, July 25, 1869, MHS.

20   “But he is he”: RH to Clifford Smythe, Apr. 6, 1913, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

21   “I know that he really”: Vernon Loggins, The Hawthornes (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1951), p. 331.

22   “I am consoled”: RH to JH, Mar. 15, 1913, Bancroft.

23   “What had I to do”: JH, The Subterranean Brotherhood, p. 11.

24   “She is to be”: NH to William B. Pike, July 24, 1851, C XVI, p. 464.

25   “I think you inherited”: SH to RH, May 20, 1868, Morgan.

26   Rose wanted to write: Memories, pp. 422–23.

27   “I have not the smallest”: SH to EPP, Feb. 16, 1851, Berg.

28   “The men of our family”: EH to Rebecca Manning, Mar. 2, 1874, PE.

29   “Love is different”: RH, “For a Lord,” Harper’s Bazaar 25:3! (July 30, 1892), p. 615.

30   George … got a job: Factual details about Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and George Lathrop’s life during this period, where not otherwise indicated, are taken from Theodore Maynard, A Fire Was Lighted: The Life of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1948), chap. 3, or Maynard’s research notes and primary documents in the Theodore Maynard Collection, Georgetown University Library.

31   “abrupt and strange”; “usefulness”: JH, “A Daughter of Hawthorne,” Atlantic Monthly 142 (Sept. 1928), p. 372; RH to Charlotte Holloway, Apr. 22, 1895, Berg.

32   “He was as earnest”: RH, memoir, Morgan.

33   “I gave up”: RH to Katherine Lee Bates, Apr. 11, 1902, Amherst Archives.

34   “From close observation”: RH, “Resolution,” manuscript, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

35   “The ice in the blood”: Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), p. 219. It should be noted that on February 4, 2003, Mother Alphonsa was proposed a candidate for sainthood.

36   Una Hawthorne installed: UH to EPP, n.d., Berg; NHHW, vol. 2, p. 371.

37   “I do indeed love”: UH to Rebecca Manning, Apr. 18, 1871, PE.

38   “Sometimes I wish”: Memories, p. 354.

39   “Her natural bent”: Jan. 28, 1849, AN, p. 411.

40   “If there were not”: Feb. 6 [1849], AN, p. 422.

41   She was educated … A few years later: SH to Mrs. EPP, July 15, 1851, Berg; SH to EPP, Oct. 26, 1853, Berg.

42   TO vanquish the vanquishers: In his perceptive reinterpretation of the Hawthorne marriage, Walter Herbert reads Una’s “misery” as “a parable of the psychic entrapment of women.” See T. Walter Herbert, Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993), p. 176.

43   Calm again: EH to Rebecca Manning, Dec. 31 [1861], PE.

44   “insanity”; “nearly took”: Nathaniel Cranch Peabody (SH’s brother) to Dora Inwood, Oct. 11, 1871, PE.

45   “She will fulfil”: SH to EPP, Oct. 31, 1854, Berg.

46   When the effort: See Valerie Bonham, A Joyous Service: The Clewer Sisters & Their Work (Windsor, England: Valerie Bonham and the Community of St. John the Baptist, 1989), p. 43. Sister Mary Ashpitel, who presided over St. Andrew’s Cottage, where Una died, was an especial friend.

47   “Has Una had”: JH, diary, Feb. 3, 1877, Bancroft.

48   “The idea that you”: UH to Mrs. Horton, Aug. 6 [1877], PE.

49   “almost at the time”: RH to EH, n.d. [1877], Rosary Hill.

50   From afar: RH to EH, n.d. [1877], Rosary Hill. It may have been similar, especially if father and daughter suffered from a similar infection or from ulcerative colitis. See Chapter 26.

CHAPTER TWO: HOME

1     Called Naumkeag: For information and statistics on early Salem, see C. H. Webber and W. S. Nevins, Old Naumkeag (Salem, Mass.: A. A. Smith, 1877); Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921); and Salem: Maritime Salem in the Age of Sail (National Park Service, Peabody Museum, and Essex Institute: National Park Handbook 126, 1987).

2     Bandanna handkerchiefs: In addition to Samuel Morison, see Luther S. Luedtke, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1989), chap. 1, for a good composite history of the Salem trade.

3     Generals, jurists: Charles E. Trow, The Old Shipmasters of Salem (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), p. 49. See also James Duncan Phillips, Salem and the Indies: The Story of the Great Commercial Era of the City (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), who irately defends Salem against its imagined detractors: “It is not the flamboyant morons of Hollywood or Broadway, however smart, who make for the eventual good of a community,” Phillips observes, “but people of taste, culture, and mental activity, living decent, restrained lives” (p. 191).

4     One Salem daughter: Eleanor Putnam, Chronicles of Old Salem, ed. Arlo Bates (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), p. 27.

5     Nathaniel Hathorne, as the name: See William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., 1784–1819 (reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), vol. 3, p. 5.

6     “No family”: Bentley, Diary, vol. 3, p. 167.

7     “Azure, a lion’s head”: “The White Old Maid,” in Tales, p. 320.

8     William Hathorne was a man: For an account of the early years and political and civic accomplishments of Major William Hathorne (1606/7–1681), see Loggins, The Hawthornes, pp. 29–95, and Margaret B. Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1998), pp. 28–37, as well as the related excerpts in Sidney Perley, A History of Salem, Massachusetts, 3 vols. (Salem, Mass.: Sidney Perley, 1928); for his son John Hathorne (1641–1717), see Loggins, The Hawthornes, pp. 96–141, and Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, pp. 37–46, as well as Joseph B. Felt, Annals of Salem (Salem, Mass.: W. & S. B. Ives, 1827); NH to WDT, Mar. 16, 1855, C XVII, p. 319. James T. Fields recalls having seen a copy of Sidney’s Arcadia in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s library. See Yesterdays, p. 62, and “Grandfather’s Chair,” in True Stories, p. 32.

9     200-acre land grant: Copies of the land grant stipulation can be found in Essex Institute Historical Collections 4 (1862), p. 113.

10   He voted to banish: Felt, Annals of Salem, p. 179.

11   He ordered Ann Coleman: Perley, A History of Salem, vol. 2, p. 254; Felt, Annals, pp. 183, 195.

12   For his own pains: Perley, A History of Salem, vol. 2, p. 250. See also Land Grant to William Hauthorne [sic], UVA.

13   “Let us thank God”: “Main Street,” Tales, p. 1039.

14   “I cannot remember”: Fragments [from the letters of EH] in the hand of JH, Bancroft.

15   “dim and dusky grandeur”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 126.

16   According to his family: Putnam, Chronicles of Old Salem, p. 27. See, among other sources, Loggins, The Hawthornes, p. 133. NH uses these legends, as well as stories about Hathorne’s claim to land, in The House of the Seven Gables. See also Chapter 17.

17   Federalists and Republicans: M. C. D. Silsbee, A Half-Century in Salem (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), p. 2. See also Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 174.

18   “The jealousy & envy”: Bentley, Diary, vol. 1, p. 248.

19   In 1804 the Federalists … The congregation: Bentley, Diary, vol. 3, pp. 96–97; Salem: Maritime Salem in the Age of Sail, p. 58.

20   The bride, Betsy Manning: Elizabeth was born on March 7, 1802. Betsy Hathorne’s pregnancy and its possible impact on her is mentioned in James Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), p. 12, as possibly accounting for her later, so-called reclusive tendencies; it is discussed more specifically in Nina Baym, “Hawthorne and His Mother: A Biographical Speculation,” American Literature 54 (1982), pp. 1–27. However, since the Mannings and the Hathornes were neighbors and friends, it is unlikely that the Hathornes would have judged the pregnant ECH as harshly as she suggests. See also Gloria Erlich, Family Themes and Hawthorne’s Fiction(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1984) p. 188; unfortunately, Erlich also takes for granted an estrangement between the families. Yet Baym does try to quell the speculation concerning the supposed rift between the Hathornes and Elizabeth Hathorne after the death of the captain by saying ECH was not “overly fond of his family” (p. 63). On similarly scant evidence, Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980), p. 11, mentions the “distance and coolness” between ECH and her Hathorne relatives after the captain’s death. Since EPP is evidently the sole source of the presumed estrangement, it should be handled with care. See also Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 71, who provides a balanced view of the pregnancy and discounts rumors about any disaffection. But none of these critics mentions the close relations between ECH and her sisters-in-law.

21   Old even by Salem standards: Daniel Hathorne (1731–1796) and Rachel Phelps (1734–1813) married in 1756. In 1772 Hathorne purchased the house on Union Street from his father-in-law, Jonathan Phelps. Daniel and Rachel Phelps Hathorne had eight children: Rachel (1757–1823), Daniel (1759–1763), Sarah (1763–1829), Eunice (1765–1827), Daniel (1766–1804), Judith (1770–1827), Ruth (1778–1847), and Nathaniel (1775–1808). See Vital Records of Salem, vol. 1, pp. 45–48; Loggins, The Hawthornes, pp. 168–89; Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, pp. 50–55. Rachel married the wealthy merchant Simon Forrester, befriended by her father even before Forrester first came to America.

22   The Hathorne place sat: Elizabeth Manning, “The Boyhood of Hawthorne,” Wide Awake 33:6 (Nov. 1891), p. 500.

23   Not surprisingly: Bentley, Diary, vol. 2, p. 323; shipping records, PE.

24   Robert Manning put: Nathaniel Hathorne (father), Manning invoice, shipping papers, PE.

25   He was also hitching: For an overview of the Manning family and a genealogy, see William H. Manning, The Manning Families of New England (Salem, Mass.: Salem Press, 1902), pp. 714–32.

26   She was a bashful: Personal Recollections, p. 33; Yesterdays, p. 43.

27   “strange reserve”: NH to SH, Feb. 27, 1842, C XV, p. 611. ECH’s own correspondence does not suggest that she was undemonstrative or cold.

28   “capacity for placid”: EH to JTF, Dec. 13 and 16 [1870], BPL. Hildegarde Hawthorne, Romantic Rebel (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932), p. 11.

29   “looked as if”; “full of sensibility”: EPP to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, n.d., Berg; EPP to Francis Henry Lee, 1882, PE.

30   Hathorne’s father: Loggins, The Hawthornes, p. 176; Salem Gazette, Apr. 26, 1796.

31   By then his son: “Domestic Affairs,” Salem Gazette, May 3, 1796.

32   “In Storms when”: Nathaniel Hathorne, logbook, 1795–96, PE. Hathorne was at the time chief mate on the Perseverance, which was owned by brother-in-law Simon Forrester and which traveled to Batavia, Manila, and Canton.

33   “I hear your darter”: EPP to JH, transcript by JH, notebooks, Morgan.

34   “inclined to melancholy”: Yesterdays, p. 43.

35   Granite, he said: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 96.

36   Hathorne had brought home: As first mate on the Herald under Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, Hathorne had been authorized by President John Adams in 1800 to subdue or seize any French ships within jurisdictional limits of the United States. JH, flyleaf of logbook, Nathaniel Hathorne, Bancroft. JH writes of his own father: “In particular he was interested in the fight with the French privateer, recorded on Nov. 3rd or 4th 1800, when Hathorne’s ship, The Herald, beat her off when she was attacking the ship Cornwallis of the British East India Co.”

37   From these books: Nathaniel Hathorne, logbooks, Bancroft and PE.

38   Having shipped … third child: Maria Louisa Hathorne was baptized on March 18, 1808, First Church Records.

39   In 1804, after the birth: Walter Muir Whitehill, The East India Marine Society and the Peabody Museum of Salem: A Sesquicentennial History (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Museum, 1949), p. 162.

40   In 1808 no ships: For the tribulations faced by Salem in this period, see Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, chap. 13. For a partisan view, see Phillips, Salem and the Indies, chap. 17.

41   On April 10: Bentley, Diary, vol. 3, p. 353.

42   “I remember very well”: EH to UH, Nov. 12, 1865, transcript by JH, notebooks, Bancroft.

43   “died in India”: SH to EPP, n.d., Morgan.

44   Captain Hathorne had died: Nathaniel Hathorne, shipping papers, PE.

45   “He left very little”: EH to UH, Nov. 12, 1865, transcript by JH, notebooks, Bancroft.

46   In later years: Elizabeth Manning, “The Boyhood of Hawthorne,” p. 504; ECH to Richard Manning III, Jan. [26], 1820, PE.

47   “The billowy Ocean”; “those for whom we weep”: “Poetry,” Spectator, Sept. 25, 1820, PE, quoted in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 44; “The Ocean,” n.d., in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 6.

48   “Of what mysteries,” “Of sunken ships”: “Foot-prints on the Sea-shore,” in Tales, p. 568.

49   “The rovers of the Sea”: See EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft. JH omits part of this passage in NHHW, vol. 1, pp. 123–24, which he loosely transcribes, and George Parsons Lathrop has changed “rovers” to “pirates” in his summary of NH’s early work. See George Parsons Lathrop, A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1876; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1969), p. 134.

50   “The weather not looking”: Nathaniel Hathorne, logbook, inscribed by NH in 1825, Huntington.

51   A friend recalled: JTF, Yesterdays, p. 92; F. B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1909), p. 523.

52   “came fresh”: NH to SH, Apr. 3, 1940, C XV, p. 434.

53   He wanted to do “everything”: Richard Manning Jr. (father) to Richard Manning III (son), Feb. 4 [1804], PE. Richard Manning III is henceforward referred to as Richard Manning.

54   “There were four Uncles”: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL. The aunts and uncles were Mary, born June 1, 1778; William, Nov. 27, 1780; Elizabeth Clarke Manning (Hawthorne’s mother), Sept. 6, 1780; Richard, July 31, 1782; Robert, July 19, 1784; Maria, June 18, 1786; John, Feb. 10, 1788; Priscilla, Jan. 10, 1790; and Samuel, Dec. 17, 1791.

55   According to relatives: Rebecca Manning, “Some Facts about Hawthorne,” PE.

56   It was a singular case: After Maria Manning’s death in May 1814, the Reverend Dr. Bentley also noted that “the d. [daughters] have united elsewhere [First Church] & the youngest became one of the fanatics.” See Bentley, Diary, vol. 4, p. 257.

57   “All have something”: Mary Manning to Richard Manning, Dec. 14, 1814, PE.

58   Reputedly he removed: RH, “Memoir,” Morgan.

59   At one time he owned: EH to UH, Dec. 20, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

60   He played … theological questions: Manning Hawthorne, “A Glimpse of Hawthorne’s Boyhood,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 83 (1947), p. 160. See also undated newspaper clipping, John M. Conklin, “Hawthorne,” address at the Franklin Literary Society, pp. 7–8, PE.

61   He was especially good-looking: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL.

62   Forrester angrily informed: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL.

63   In later life: NH to SH, Apr. 14, 1844, C XVI, p. 30.

64   “Study the hard lessons”: Robert Manning to NH, Aug. 14, 1813, Berg.

65   On Saturday, April 17 … The funeral: Bentley, Diary, vol. 4, p. 163; Salem Gazette, Apr. 20, 1813.

66   No more would: EH to JTF, Dec. 13, 1870, BPL; See Bentley, Diary, vol. 4, p. 163.

67   “The heart never breaks”: “Grimshawe,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 439.

68   The Maine holdings: Manning legal papers, estate of Richard Manning, PE. Taken together, the property was assessed at more than thirty thousand dollars, a figure that did not include Manning’s personal worth of about twenty thousand dollars, judging from promissory notes, mahogany furniture, his jewelry and his pewter, three tea sets from China, and his horse and carriage.

69   “Uncle Richard he can grow”: Robert Manning to NH, Aug. 14, 1813, Berg.

70   “I do not forget”: Richard Manning to ECH, Jan. 29, 1815, PE.

71   “I should rather live”: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Dec. 18, 1820, PE.

72   So he put off moving: Robert Manning was also encumbered by the family stage business, run for a time by Samuel and William Manning until “illicit trade” (likely gunrunning) threatened to bankrupt it, and Robert was forced to take it over in early 1815. See Bentley, Diary, vol. 4, p. 307, and (Salem) Essex Register, Jan. 4, 1815, p. 2.

73   It seems a strange choice—except: His twenty-seven-year-old aunt, the beloved and intelligent Maria Manning, died May 20, 1814.

74   In one of his early: See “Sights from a Steeple,” in Tales, pp. 42–48.

75   Less than six weeks: EH to JTF, [Salem, Dec. 12, 1870], BPL.

76   “work at his Trade”: Joseph Lakeman to Nathaniel Wells, Feb. 25, 1814, BY. Wrote NH: “I had an Uncle John, who went a voyage to sea, about the beginning of the war of 1812, and has never returned to this hour” (EN, vol. 1, June 30, 1854, pp. 98–99).

77   With Grandfather Manning dead: EH to JTF, Dec. 13 and 16 [1870], BPL.

78   “Like a lame man”: “The Gentle Boy,” in Tales, p. 119; the story’s troubled depiction of Ilbrahim’s mother has been exhaustively examined elsewhere: see, for instance, Frederick C. Crews, The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), and Edwin Haviland Miller, Salem Is My Dwelling Place (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1991).

79   “Nathaniel was particularly”: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL.

80   “Everybody thought”: EH to UH, Nov. 23, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

81   Legend says: Elizabeth Manning, “The Boyhood of Hawthorne,” p. 503.

82   There was talk: See, for instance, Putnam, Chronicles of Old Salem, p. 54.

83   Robert and Priscilla Manning … sent all three: In 1808 both NH and EH were sent to Elizabeth Carlton, on Union Street, for instruction. During 1810–11, NH attended the school of Francis Moore, on Herbert Street. EH was instructed by Nathaniel’s future mother-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, and then by her sister, the more orthodox Amelia P. Curtis, 1812–15. Receipts and, in the case of EH, certificates of merit may be found in PE and the Berg. Because no receipts are available for MLH, much less is known about her education, but eventually she too was taught by Mrs. Curtis.

84   “One of the peculiarities”: Quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 95.

85   During school recess: Personal Recollections, pp. 34–35.

86   Taking refuge: JH, notes, PE.

87   “If he had been educated”: EH to UH, Nov. 12, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

88   “He used to invent”: EH to JTF, Dec. 13 and 16 [1870], BPL.

89   By the winter of 1815: See Mary Manning to Richard Manning, Dec. 14, 1814, PE; ECH to Richard Manning, Jan. 20, 1815, Bowdoin.

90   Thrilled by the news: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Nov. 16, 1814.

CHAPTER THREE: THE FOREST OF ARDEN

1     Of the three Hathorne: NH to SH, Apr. 14, 1844, C XVI, p. 31.

2     “I have a better opinion”: EH to UH, Mar. 1, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

3     “You are learning”: Robert Manning to EH, Aug. 14, 1813, Berg.

4     “Elizabeth in particular”; an early teacher: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Nov. 10, 1816, PE; Certificate of Merit, Oct. 1814, signed by A. P. Curtis, preceptoress, Berg. Amelia Curtis was Sophia Peabody’s aunt.

5     “Useful knowledge”; “if you ever”: EH to UH, June 19, 1868, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to Rebecca Manning, n.d., PE.

6     “Elizabeth is not available”: SH to Mrs. EPP Sept. 27, 1849, Berg. Manning Hawthorne, “Aunt Ebe: Some Letters of Elizabeth M. Hawthorne,” New England Quarterly 1:20 (1947), p. 215.

7     She rose late: EH to UH, Dec. 20, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to UH, Mar. 10 [1872], transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

8     “People can talk”: EH to Mary Manning, Aug. 1816, Bowdoin.

9     “The only argument”: EH to UH, Mar. 1, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

10   “The very best way”: EH to UH, June 7, 1872, Huntington.

11   “I am something”: EH to Rebecca Manning, Aug. 7, 1875, PE.

12   “I should not like to feel”: EH to SH, June 15, 1842, Berg.

13   “it was a love disappointment”: JH, notebook, Morgan; see Norman Holmes Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 94 (1958), p. 263.

14   “The beautiful Miss”: “Domestic Intelligence,” Jan. 1822, Spectator, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 53.

15   Nathaniel may have: Briggs married Hepsebeth Collins, whose name anticipates Hepzibah Pyncheon’s in The House of the Seven Gables. Alluding to Elizabeth Hawthorne, the unwed “Hepzibah” devotes herself not to a Captain Briggs but to her brother. For information on Briggs, see “Catalogue of Portraits in the Museum of Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 73 (1937), pp. 187–88.

16   As her nephew: JH, “My Aunt Elizabeth Hawthorne,” typescript, Bancroft.

17   “She is the most sensible”: NH to WDT, May 17, 1852, C XVIII, p. 456.

18   “The only thing I fear”: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 5.

19   “You must never expect”: NH to SH, Apr. 17, 1839, C XV, p. 298.

20   As children: Copybook, circa 1815, UVA. An untitled poem of Nathaniel’s reads: “The charms of sweet Music no pencil can paint/They calm the rude Savage, enliven the Saint,/Make sweeter our pleasures, more joyous our joy/With raptures we feel, yet those raptures ne’er cloy.” See Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 3.

21   “made it the habit”: EPP to Francis Henry Lee, n.y. [1885], PE.

22   If the Hathornes took: Rebecca Manning, “Some Facts about Hawthorne,” PE; Hawthorne-Manning, receipts, PE. They included boarding expenses dated from July 1, 1808, to July 1, 1815. Interestingly, NH’s board, at 1.50 per week, was the most expensive; EH cost her mother 28 pence per week, and Maria Louisa, 18 pence.

23   “improving property”: Mary Manning to Richard Manning, Dec. 14, 1814, PE.

24   “You say he is”: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, May 3, 1815, PE. Many of Richard Manning’s letters link him to NH, as the family no doubt did as well.

25   Linked once again: See EH to Richard Manning, May 29, 1815, Bowdoin.

26   Having married Susan Dingley …“Manning’s Folly”: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Aug. 16, 1815, PE; Ernest Knight, The Origin and History of Raymondtown (Norway, Maine: Oxford Hills Press, 1974), p. 81. Robert Manning shipped the glass from Salem; its origin is unknown.

27   “Stay here one summer”: EH to Mary Manning, Aug. 1816, Bowdoin.

28   “It is true we”: ECH to Priscilla Manning, Sept. 14, 1816, Bowdoin. A week earlier, in Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Sept. 9, 1816, PE, her brother had said that ECH has “almost concluded to send for her Furniture & remove with Samuel on the [Bridgton] Farm,” even though he would have preferred to see her settled in a more profitable place closer by.

29   To that end, she asked: EH to Miriam Manning, Oct. 28, 1816, Bowdoin.

30   The Hathornes packed: See Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Nov. 10, 1816, PE. It’s not clear where NH went to school at this time; Worcester had given up his classes, and even Ebe did not yet know when she wrote her grandmother in October asking for details. For some interesting speculations, see Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, pp. 85–86.

31   Plain, symmetrical: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Feb. 25, 1818, PE; Jeremiah Briggs to Robert Manning, Mar. 21, 1818, PE.

32   “I do not feel”: EH to Priscilla Manning Dike, Dec. 15, 1818, Bowdoin. Priscilla Manning had married John Dike the year before.

33   He tracked bears … Aunt Mary warned: Mary Manning to ECH, Nov. 17, 1818, PE.

34   One could live best: EH to UH, Feb. 14, 1862, Bancroft.

35   “I ran quite wild”: NHHW, vol. 1, pp. 95–96.

36   “It did him”: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL.

37   “upon any and all”: Samuel T. Pickard, Hawthorne’s First Diary, With an Account of its Discovery and Loss (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), p. 37. The date of the inscription is given as June 1, 1816, which accords with the Hathornes’ first visit to Raymond.

38   “clumsy,” “singularly destitute”: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 94.

39   She remembered … Uncle Robert Manning’s son: See Richard C. Manning to HB, Feb. 16, 1871, Bowdoin.

40   “a literary curiosity”: Samuel T. Pickard, “Is ‘Hawthorne’s First Diary’ a Forgery?,” Dial 33 (Apr. 16, 1902), p. 155; Samuel T. Pickard to Joseph McDonough, July 24, 1906, Univ. of Rochester Library.

41   Indeed it is: Pickard admitted, “I am puzzled, and have lost hope of ever solving the mystery.” Not only did Manning’s literate inscription seem suspect, but he had learned that one of the incidents recounted had not occurred until 1828. Pickard tentatively concluded, then, that only parts of the diary may have been genuine. See Pickard, “Is ‘Hawthorne’s First Diary’ a Forgery?,” p. 155. The matter remains a mystery despite Gloria Erlich’s meticulous case against Pickard, suggesting he was the author of the entire hoax. See “Who Wrote Hawthorne’s First Diary?” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1977, ed. C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., pp. 37–70.

42   “I have made”: Hawthorne’s First Diary, p. 97.

43   “This morning I saw”: Hawthorne’s First Diary, p. 68.

44   “Since the loss”: Hawthorne’s First Diary, p. 49.

45   “I was almost sorry”: Hawthorne’s First Diary, p. 88.

46   We glimpse Robert Manning: William H. Manning, The Manning Families of New England (Salem, Mass.: Salem Press, 1902), p. 729.

47   “An orchard has”: Preface to Mosses from an Old Manse, in Tales, p. 1130.

48   In it, Manning praises: Robert Manning, The Book of Fruits (Salem, Mass.: Ives & Jewett, 1838), p. 10.

49   “Though he had”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, pp. 175–76.

50   He corrected the grammar: Mary Manning to Robert Manning, Dec. 1, 1818, PE.

51   “The older ‘dear uncle’ ”: Robert Manning to NH, Aug. 14, 1813, Berg.

52   Richard went to Portland; “dolefull complaints”: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Jan. [19], 1819, PE; Robert Manning to Miriam Manning, Mar. 9,1819, PE.

53   “I have no chance”: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Apr. 28, 1819, PE.

54   The Mannings ignored him: Richard Manning to Robert Manning, Dec. 18, 1820, PE.

55   “I am sorry”: NH to Robert Manning, May 16, 1819, C XV, p. 111.

56   “He sighs for”: Mary Manning to ECH, July 6 [1819], Bowdoin.

57   “I have no employment”: Robert Manning to MLH, Feb. 8, 1820, Bowdoin.

58   “Aunt Mary is continually” … “If I ever”: NH to ECH, Mar. 7, 1820, C XV p. 117.

59   “It seems very lonesome”: NH to Robert Manning, July 26, 1819, C XV, p. 112.

60   “How often do I”: NH to MLH, Mar. 21, 1820, C XV, p. 119.

61   “Oh how I wish”: NH to ECH, Mar. 7, 1820, C XV, p. 117.

62   “I shall never be”: NH to MLH, Sept. 28, 1819, C XV, p. 114.

63   “I dreamed the other”: NH to ECH, Mar. 13, 1821, C XV, p. 138.

64   “pressed to explain”: Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times, p. 611.

65   “having spent so much”: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 97.

66   “Tell Ebe she’s not”: NH to MLH, Sept. 28, 1819, C XV, p. 114.

67   A “Departed Genius”: See, for instance, NH to MLH, Sept. 28, 1819, C XV p. 114.

68   “that lone cottage”: “Poetry,” Aug. 21, 1820, Spectator, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 24.

69   “and when Robin”: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” in Tales, p. 80.

70   “Those may be my rhymes”: NH to MLH, Sept. 28, 1819, C XV, p. 114.

71   “One thing only”: ECH to Richard Manning Jan. 20, 1815, Bowdoin.

72   Salem offered: See NH to ECH, Mar. 6, 1821, C XV, p. 137.

73   “How far preferable”: Sept. 4, 1820, Spectator, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 26.

74   “raises man above”: [Jan. 31, 1822], Spectator, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, pp. 51, 52.

75   “What do you think”: NH to ECH, Mar. 13, 1821, C XV, p. 138–39.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS

1     “I have almost”: NH to EH, Oct. 31, 1820, C XV, p. 132.

2     “We must not have”: Mary Manning to ECH, Feb. 29, 1820, Bowdoin.

3     “So you are in”: NH to ECH, Mar. 7, 1820, C XV, p. 117.

4     “Much time & money”: Robert Manning to ECH, Oct. 24, 1820, PE.

5     “with all my might”: NH to EH, Oct. 31, 1820, C XV, p. 132.

6     “Do you not regret”: NH to ECH, Mar. 6, 1821, C XV, p. 137.

7     “Shall you want me”: NH to ECH, Mar. 7, 1821, C XV, p. 117.

8     “How proud you would”: NH to ECH, Mar. 13, 1821, C XV, pp. 138–39.

9     “An angel would fail”: EH to ECH, May 14, 1822, Bowdoin.

10   At Harvard: See Manning Hawthorne, “Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin,” New England Quarterly 13:1 (1940), p. 247; Bowdoin College Catalogue, 1825, Bowdoin.

11   “I am quite reconciled”; “shut out”: NH to ECH, Mar. 13, 1821, C XV, p. 138; NH to ECH, June 19, 1821, C XV, p. 150.

12   “I encouraged him”: Robert Manning to Miriam Lord Manning, Oct. 5, 1821, PE.

13   “a short, thick little”: NH to EH, Oct. 28, 1821, C XV, p. 159.

14   Uncle Robert hunted … paid the bill: Robert Manning to Miriam Lord Manning, Oct. 5, 1821, PE. In guaranteeing the payment of all NH’s expenses, Robert Manning was joined by his brother-in-law John Dike and his brother Samuel Manning, at least in 1823. See the expense contract sent to Bowdoin from these men, Sept. 28, 1823, PE. 46. “has money enough”: NH to William Manning, Oct. 9, 1821, C XV, p. 155.

15   “I am very well”: NH to EH, Oct. 28, 1821, C XV, p. 159.

16   “to induce your Son”: William Allen to ECH, May 5, 1822, PE.

17   He resented regulations: Laws of Bowdoin College, 1822, Bowdoin.

18   In 1826: Wilmot Brookings Mitchell, A Remarkable Bowdoin Decade (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 1952), p. 25.

19   “Meeting for this day”: NH to EH, Oct. 28, 1821, C XV, p. 160.

20   Longfellow’s more dissolute: See Louis C. Hatch, The History of Bowdoin College (Portland, Maine: Loring, Short & Harmon, 1927), p. 310.

21   Nathaniel Hathorne, an Athenaean: Personal Recollections, p. 32.

22   One of them, Franklin Pierce: See Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860–1866, ed. Linda Allandt, David Hill, et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), vol. 15, p. 361.

23   “noisy, foul-mouthed”: Quoted in Thomas Woodson, “Introduction,” C XV p. 35.

24   “I got it from Stowe’s”: Nehemiah Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College, ed. Alpheus Spring Packard (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1882), p. 92.

25   “seemed always,” “power of sympathy”: “Jonathan Cilley,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII p. 111. Commissioned by their friend John Louis O’Sullivan for the Democratic Review, this memorial to Cilley originally appeared in that publication in September 1838.

26   “elder brother,” “simplicity of one”: “Jonathan Cilley,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 116.

27   “If Nathaniel Hathorne”: Personal Recollections, p. 47.

28   “stretched in his own blood”: “Jonathan Cilley,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 118.

29   “shrinking almost”: Samuel P. Benson to JTF, Dec. 18, 1870, copy, Bowdoin.

30   “I know not whence”: Preface to The Snow-Image, in Tales, p. 1155.

31   “stands and looks”: HWL, journals, Mar. 17 [1836 or 1838, Bridge on way to Washington], MS Am 1340(194), Houghton.

32   “Polished, yet natural”: July 5, 1837, AN, p. 33.

33   Bridge long remembered: Personal Recollections, p. 46.

34   “so much of danger”: Personal Recollections, p. 5.

35   “two idle lads”: Preface to The Snow-Image, in Tales, p. 1155.

36   “the best friend”: NH to HB, Feb. 8, 1838.

37   Then, after they ate: For admission, according to the Bowdoin College Catalogue, Mar. 1822, students were already expected “to write Latin grammatically, and to be well versed in Geography, in Walsh’s Arithmetic, Cicero’s Select Orations, the Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Aeneid of Virgil, Sallust, the Greek Testament and the Collectanea Graeca Minora [of the late Professor Andrew Dalzel]. They must produce certificates of their good moral character.” See also Jesse Appleton, “Miscellaneous and Literary Intelligence,” North American Review 2 (1816), p. 433.

38   By their senior year … They studied: See Bowdoin College Catalogue and Mitchell, A Remarkable Bowdoin Decade, pp. 17–18.

39   “timidity prevented”: Samuel P. Benson to JTF, Dec. 18, 1870, copy, Bowdoin.

40   “He stood hardly”: Personal Recollections, p. 33.

41   “In Latin and Greek”: Samuel P. Benson to JTF, Dec. 18, 1870, copy, Bowdoin.

42   Otherwise he shirked: See Richard Harwell, Hawthorne and Longfellow: A Guide to an Exhibit (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 1966), p. 12.

43   “enchanting topicks”: Thomas C. Upham, American Sketches (New York: David Longworth, 1819), p. 11.

44   “reluctant step”: George Thomas Packard, “Bowdoin College,” Scribner’s Monthly 12 (1876), p. 52.

45   “I love Hawthorne”: Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College, p. 303.

46   “I know that”: EH to ECH, May 14, 1822, Bowdoin.

47   “As steady as”: NH to EH, Aug. 5, 1822, C XV, p. 174.

48   His braggadocio …“De Patris”: Minutes, Executive Government, Bowdoin College, July 26, 1824. The speech is in the Bowdoin College Library.

49   He often stopped: George J. Little to unknown, n.d., PE.

50   “I verily beleive”: NH to EH, Oct. 1, 1824, C XV, p. 184.

51   “rarely sought”: Personal Recollections, p. 47.

52   “My term bills”: NH to EH, Oct. 1, 1824, C XV, p. 185.

53   “Uncle Richard seemed”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194.

54   “I am perfectly satisfied”: EH to NH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 195.

55   “The family had before”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194. NH alludes to his embarrassment at unmerited praise in “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” calling it a “miserable and humiliating torture.” See “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 97.

56   “say this for the purpose,” “I did hope”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194.

57   Bridge declined … Nathaniel was Commander: Personal Recollections, p. 41.

58   The graduation took place: Courtesy Carolyn Moseley, Bowdoin College Archives.

59   “Already has a voice”: Lawrance Thompson, Young Longfellow (New York: Macmillan, 1938), p. 71.

CHAPTER FIVE: THAT DREAM OF UNDYING FAME

1     “without mercy”: Preface to Twice-told Tales,” in Tales, p. 1150; see also NH to Cornelius Mathews and ED, Dec. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 600.

2     “I am as tractable”: NH to Charles W. Webber, Dec. 14, 1848, C XVI, p. 251.

3     “He always puts”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., Apr. 24, 1864, Antioch.

4     “formed several plans”: Personal Recollections, p. 67.

5     “Uncle Manning’s counting-house”: Personal Recollections, p. 67.

6     But even before graduating: “The Ocean” and “Moonlight,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, pp. 6–7. Both were published before his graduation, the former appearing in the Salem Gazette, Aug. 26, 1825, and the latter in the Gazette, Sept. 2, 1825.

7     Then he’d walk … Or he’d hike: George Holyoke to G. M. Williamson, Nov. 10, 1901, BY; Rebecca Manning, “Some Facts about Hawthorne,” PE; EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

8     Ebe recalled: See Chapter 2; EH also remembered that two stories, “Alice Doane” and “Susan Grey,” were tales of witchcraft, EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft. “Alice Doane” is likely an earlier version of the story “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” published in The Token in 1835. For the best account and possible dating of NH’s early tales, see Nelson F. Adkins, “The Early Projected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 39 (1945), pp. 119–55, and Nelson F. Adkins “Notes on the Hawthorne Canon,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 60 (1966), pp. 364–67. Although most scholars agree with Adkins and the Centenary editors in doubting that NH wrote “The Interrupted Nuptials,” published on Oct. 12, 1827, in the Salem Gazette, the crudely melodramatic story could represent NH’s earliest style; and with its tale of a sister and brother about to wed one another, it thematically fits the sketchy outline of “We Are Seven.” See C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., “ ‘The Interrupted Nuptials’: A Question of Attribution,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1971, ed. C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., pp. 49–66.

9     “That wild fellow”: “P’s Correspondence,” in Tales, p. 1020.

10   “It is American”: John Neal, American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine, ed. Fred Lewis Pattee (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1937), pp. 10, 200. See also David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 198–214.

11   However, in his earliest: John Neal’s own Quaker upbringing and the mistreatment he endured in boyhood bear comparison to Hawthorne’s tale of the woebegone Quaker child of “The Gentle Boy.” See Benjamin Lease, That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972).

12   Two of the stories: “The Hollow of the Three Hills” was published without attribution in the Salem Gazette (Nov. 12, 1830), and “An Old Woman’s Tale” appeared without attribution in the Gazette (Dec. 21, 1830). The setting of “The Hollow of the Three Hills” suggests a very early composition date, for its visionary landscape loosely refers to Portland, Maine, a city set in a hollow among two hills—as well as Boston, the standard interpretation.

13   “Then came a measured”: “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” in Tales, p. 33. See Dan McCall, Citizens of Somewhere Else (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1999), chap. 2, whose fine analysis of this story also links it to several Dickinson poems and to John Gibson Lockhart’s Adam Blair, an understated connection.

14   “Oho!”: “An Old Woman’s Tale,” in Tales, p. 33.

15   Identifying with: See Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin.

16   “All really educated men”: “New York University,” in Hawthorne as Editor, ed. Arlin Turner (University: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1941), p. 195. Likely the comment is NH’s, or at least was approved by him, if written by EH.

17   His reading … He relished: EH to JTF, Jan. 28, 1871, BPL.

18   They used Aunt Mary Manning’s: The most complete list of the borrowings from the Salem Athenaeum remains Marion L. Kesselring, “Hawthorne’s Reading, 1828–1850,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 53:2 (Feb. 1949), pp. 55–71, 121–38, 173–94. But Kesselring, like later biographers, tends to forget that these books served the entire Hawthorne family, who were avid readers. For example, the course in French literature that Kesselring says Hawthorne planned for himself was doubtless planned by EH for herself, and many of the novels were doubtless intended for LH or ECH and perhaps other family members. When she visited relatives, LH, herself a proud reader, told her mother in mock horror that “I heard a young lady the other day talking about Goldsmith the author of Rasselas!” Then she asked plaintively, “Have you read anything new since I came away? There is nothing to read here. I should really like a good book” (LH to ECH, Aug. 12, 1827, Berg).

19   “I am sure nobody”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

20   “fantastic dreams”: “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” in Tales, p. 7.

21   “The knowledge, communicated,” “Fancy must”: “Sir William Phips,” in Tales, p. 12.

22   “a mood half savage”: Personal Recollections, p. 68.

23   In another version of events: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft. See also Lathrop, A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 135.

24   “inexorable”: Personal Recollections, p. 68.

25   “He did not wish”: JH, “Hawthorne’s Philosophy,” holograph manuscript, Huntington. See also J. Donald Crowley, “Historical Commentary,” in Twice-told Tales, CIX, p. 486.

26   Presumably he put: AF to JH, Feb. 27, 1904, bMS Am 1745(4), Houghton.

27   Similarly, he burned: See, for example, Personal Recollections, p. 69. See also SH to JTF, Oct. 14, 1865, BPL: “If he journalized before 1835, he destroyed the books.”

28   “Knowing the impossibility”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 183. See Chapter 6: three tales sent to Samuel Goodrich in 1830, “Alice Doane,” “The Gentle Boy,” and “My Uncle Molineux,” were doubtless modified versions, if not the actual stories, originally intended for Seven Tales.

29   On March 30, 1826: Elizabeth Manning, “The Boyhood of Hawthorne,” p. 501.

30   In 1825: Nathaniel Hathorne, logbook, inscribed by NH in 1825, Huntington.

31   “Nath. Hawthorne”: See the logbook of NH’s father, inscribed by NH in 1825 as “Nathaniel Hathorne, Salem 1825; Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Huntington. He also inscribed his name “Nath. Hawthorne” on the 1825 Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy (Boston: Hilliard, 1825). Hawthorne likely changed the spelling of his name when he reached his majority, although I have found no corroborating legal documents.

32   “We were in those days”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

33   When Samuel introduced … a great-uncle: Colonel John Hathorne (1749–1834), the nephew of NH’s grandfather Daniel, was a moderately wealthy merchant involved in the shipping, dry goods, and goldsmith businesses (the possible model for Peter Hovenden in “The Artist of the Beautiful”) and a gentleman farmer who retired to his estate near Salem Neck. He remained a close friend of the Reverend William Bentley and a Republican. His children died young, with the exception of Ebenezer (1789–1858), a Custom House clerk and Democrat whom NH knew. But doubtless NH’s animosity toward the Hathornes came in part from the stories told him by his second cousin Susanna Ingersoll. See Chapter 11.

34   “Perhaps that is”: Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin. In old documents, the name was variously spelled Hathorn, Hathorne, Harthorne, and Hawthorne.

35   Whatever the reason: George William Curtis, who met Hawthorne at Brook Farm, wrote soon after Hawthorne’s death that he’d changed the spelling of his name after discovering the original spelling. See George William Curtis, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Essays from the North American Review, ed. Allen Thorndike Rice (New York: D. Appleton, 1879), p. 336; the essay originally appeared as “Hawthorne,” North American Review 99 (Oct. 1864), pp. 539–57.

36   The other youth: Another model for the character is his classmate Gorham Deane, who died before graduation, and to a lesser extent Cotton Mather’s brother Nathanael, buried at Charter Street. Cotton Mather said that “study kill’d him.” See Kenneth Silverman, Cotton Mather and His Times (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 76–77. The inscription is still visible, its irony intact and not lost on Hawthorne: “An Aged person that had seen but Nineteen Winters in the World.” See also “Lost Notebook,” n.d., in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 205.

37   Made for and by: Walcott also bears comparison with Bridge, who began to call himself Edward in his letters to Hawthorne. Also, taking the epigraph of the first chapter from Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hawthorne compares the all-male Harley College to the commonwealth of learning ridiculed by Shakespeare. Thus Hawthorne implies that Fanshawe ultimately chooses not just celibacy but a celibacy sanctioned by (and performed in) the company of men.

38   “dreams of undying fame”: Fanshawe, p. 18.

39   “The road, at all times”: Fanshawe, p. 89.

40   “She knew not”: Fanshawe, p. 97.

41   “tie that shall”: Fanshawe, pp. 99, 111.

42   “drew her husband”: Fanshawe, p. 114.

43   “Theirs was a long”: Fanshawe, p. 114.

44   Grandmother Manning died: In addition, at her death Maria Manning had bequeathed half of the property due her from their father’s estate.

45   “It was my fortune”: Quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 96, and corroborated almost verbatim in Richard Stoddard, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” National Magazine 2:1 (1853), p. 18.

46   Reportedly given: Master’s degree, Huntington. One suspects that some sort of proof of advanced scholarship was required, although the degree was conferred routinely, according to the Laws of Bowdoin College, 1825 printing, courtesy Carolyn Moseley: “Law 61. Every Bachelor, who, in the third year after the first degree given to his class, having preserved a good moral character, shall attend at commencement and perform the appointed public exercises, unless excused, may receive the degree of Master of Arts. The part to be performed by a Bachelor shall be presented to the President for his examination as early as the Monday before commencement. The candidates for a Medical degree shall also, unless excused, attend at commencement, and must possess a good moral character. Law 62. Each candidate for the second degree shall pay the sum of five dollars for the public dinner. Candidates for either degree shall pay five dollars each to the Treasurer for the President. Candidates for either degree, if they seasonably request it, may be furnished with a diploma, signed by the President and Secretary of the Trustees, for which three dollars shall be paid to the Treasurer, one of which is for the President.”

When Hawthorne was awarded his degree, so were John S. C. Abbot, Samuel P. Benson, Cyrus H. Coolidge, David Hayes, William Hale, John D. Kinsman, Josiah S. Little, Stephen Longfellow, Henry W. Longfellow, Thomas Macdougall, George W. Pierce, and Edward J. Vose.

Hawthorne’s master’s degree was recorded in the Sept. 3, 1828, Votes of the Trustees.

47   “I wish to God”: Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin.

48   “not going to work”; “as so much”: EH to JTF, Dec. 13 and 16 [1870], BPL; Rebecca Manning, “Some Thoughts about Hawthorne,” PE.

49   “not to be forgotten” … “He could have borne”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 301.

50   “it is our nature”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 303.

51   “The story had been told”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 306.

52   “Who has not heard”: “The Ambitious Guest,” Tales, p. 306.

53   “Fame—some very”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 169.

54   They were all killed: NH visited the scene of the disaster in 1832 but may have begun the story, or an early version of it, much earlier. “The Ambitious Guest” first appeared in the New-England Magazine 8 (June 1835), but the date of the composition of this and other early stories is far from certain. I would date it quite early, perhaps shortly after the Willey disaster and/or around when Fanshawe was written. Parts of “The Ambitious Guest” also resemble Fanshawe (which EH said was begun early, in college). The villain dies below a precipice in an unmarked grave, “but the legend, though my version of it may be forgotten, will long be traditionary in that lonely spot, and give to the rock, and the precipice, and the fountain, an interest thrilling to the bosom of the romantic wanderer” (p. 108).

Although many scholars assume Hawthorne destroyed most of the manuscripts for “We Are Seven,” I tend to think that he probably saved ample portions of them to rework later, as in the case of “Alice Doane.” There is also reason to believe that some of Hawthorne’s unattributed work has yet to be discovered. In any case, given the obscure chronology of composition, I tend to group several stories thematically and on occasion, as in the case of “The Ambitious Guest” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” I willingly entertain the notion that some stories were conceived or composed earlier than traditionally assumed and then recycled for the later volume, Provincial Tales. Certainly Hawthorne did just this when gathering materials for Twice-told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse.

55   The surrogate father’s: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” first published in 1831 in The Token (dated 1832). See also Nina Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 15–53.

56   “I have loved you”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 90.

57   “mental horrors”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 98.

58   “one secret thought”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 98.

59   “not unlike a gigantic gravestone”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 88.

60   “The vow that”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 107.

61   Fusing psychological obsession: Frederick Crews, The Sins of the Fathers, pp. 80–95, remains the best psychological reading of the story; similarly, Michael Colacurcio’s historicist reading, in The Province of Piety (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 107–30, has not been surpassed, but see Diane Naples, “ ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’: A Parable for Historians?,” American Transcendental Quarterly 13 (1972), pp. 45–48. Gloria Erlich usefully follows Crews but insists on interpreting Roger Malvin solely as Robert Manning, when the initials “RM” refer to Grandfather Manning as well as his two sons; see Erlich, Family Themes and Hawthorne’s Fiction, pp. 113–17

62   “Your tears” … “sin was”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 107.

63   “Your father”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

64   A stalwart Democrat: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

65   “At that time”: According to EH, NH met “Susan” circa 1833. See EH to UH, transcribed by JH, Feb. 14, 1862, Bancroft.

66   “I should have feared”: EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

67   Children of the night: See “The Interrupted Nuptials,” published Oct. 12, 1827, Salem Gazette.

68   “they know not what”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 206.

69   “Thoughts meant”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 207.

70   “my very,” “with indisputable”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 209.

71   “as if a fiend”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 211.

72   The women don’t: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 216.

73   “We are a people”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 206.

74   The narrator: A fine discussion of the artist in Hawthorne’s work remains Millicent Bell, Hawthorne’s View of the Artist (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1962).

CHAPTER SIX: STORYTELLER

1     “By some fatality”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

2     They moved: The family sold Mary Manning the Herbert Street property for two thousand dollars on June 2, 1829; she converted the house for tenants.

3     “When sorrow”: MM to Sarah Forbes, May 29, 1864, MHS.

4     “I, being heir”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 175.

5     By that spring: Conolly insisted that Hawthorne’s visit to the graves of the Connecticut “regicides,” Edward Whalley, William Goff, and John Dixwell, inspired his story “The Gray Champion.” See Horace Conolly to William D. Northend, transcribed by Miss Pendleton, Nov. 1901, Bowdoin. See also Manning Hawthorne, “Hawthorne and ‘The Man of God,’ ” Colophon 2:2 (winter 1937), p. 263.

6     “a fair prospect”: Quoted in Benjamin Lease, That Wild Fellow John Neal (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 133.

7     “the superstitions”: NH to Samuel Goodrich, Dec. 20, 1829, C XV, p. 199.

8     He mailed a few: The fullest account of Goodrich’s business practices and its relation to Hawthorne appears in Wayne Allen Jones, “The Hawthorne-Goodrich Relationship,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1975, ed. C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., pp. 91–140.

9     “which seemed to me”: Samuel G. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856), vol. 2, p. 270.

10   More likely: See Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College, p. 304. Of course, by the time these men looked backward, there was no dearth of self-congratulatory friends eager to credit themselves with engendering Hawthorne’s career. Regardless, Cheever and Hawthorne knew each other at Bowdoin and in Salem, although, as Hawthorne’s sister pointed out, they were “not in the … same set [at Bowdoin].” Cheever supported capital punishment and abolition, and in 1835 published a temperance article about a fictional deacon who owned a distillery. John Stone, the Unitarian deacon who in fact did own a distillery, sued for libel. Cheever was flogged and jailed for thirty days, during which time Hawthorne, who did not share his views about temperance or abolition, visited him, according to EH. See EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

11   “unsettled”: Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime, vol. 2, p. 271.

12   “You do not anticipate”: NH to Samuel Goodrich, Dec. 20, 1829, C XV, p. 199.

13   Other stories: See also Richard P. Adams, “Hawthorne’s Provincial Tales,” New England Quarterly 30 (1957), pp. 39–57, and Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career, pp. 30–40, whose inclination, as she puts it, is “to stick with the known group [which includes “The Wives of the Dead”] and reject the others.” I am not convinced about putting “The Wives of the Dead” in this group. “The Wives of the Dead” appeared in an early Token but the rest were published separately in 1835, after Hawthorne abandoned any hope of a collection. The Centenary editors assume that the publication date precludes their inclusion in Provincial Tales; I disagree. However, “The Wedding-Knell” may also have been one of the stories, or a version of one, originally written for Provincial Tales.

14   “It was near”: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” in Tales, p. 68.

15   “Deep as Dante”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses, by a Virginian spending July in Vermont,” Literary World, Aug. 17, 24, 1850, pp. 125–27, 145–57, in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, eds. Buford Jones and John Idol (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), p. 113.

16   “without the help”: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” in Tales, p. 87. Exegesis of this story is a cottage industry. My discussion profits from Colacurcio, The Province of Piety, pp. 135–53; Roy Harvey Pearce, “Robin Molineux on the Analyst’s Couch: A Note on the Limits of Psychoanalytic Criticism,” Criticism 1 (1959), pp. 83–90, and T. Walter Herbert Jr., “Doing Cultural Work: ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineux’ and the Construction of the Self-made Man,” Studies in the Novel 23:1 (spring 1991), pp. 20–27. Readers interested in a historical interpretation of the novel should consult Colacurcio and Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 18–21, 126–29, 210–31.

17   “the loudest there”: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” in Tales, p. 87.

18   He rejected “Alice Doane”: Samuel Goodrich to NH, Jan. 19, 1830, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 132.

19   “born to do”: NH to EPP, Aug. 13, 1857, C XVIII, p. 89.

20   For his part, Goodrich: Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime, vol. 2, pp. 269–70.

21   Goodrich paid him: The stories are: for the Token dated 1831, “Sights from a Steeple,” “Dr. Bullivant,” and “The Haunted Quack”; for the Token dated 1832, “The Wives of the Dead,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” “Major Molineaux,” and “The Gentle Boy”; and “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” “The Seven Vagabonds,” and the sketch “Sir William Pepperell” for the 1833 Token. See also Jones, “The Hawthorne-Goodrich Relationship,” p. 102.

22   “particularly” he rationalized: Samuel G. Goodrich to NH, May 31, 1831, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 132.

23   Historical sketches: I tend to agree with Donald C. Gallup (“On Hawthorne’s Authorship of ‘The Battle-Omen,’ ” New England Quarterly 9:4 [Dec. 1936], pp. 690–99), who places “The Battle Omen” among NH’s early sketches. It appeared in the Gazette on Nov. 2, 1830; “The Hollow of the Three Hills” on Nov. 12, 1830; “Sir William Phips” on Nov. 23, 1830; “Mrs. Hutchinson” on Dec. 7, 1830; “An Old Woman’s Tale,” Dec. 21, 1830; and “Dr. Bullivant,” Jan. 11, 1831. The Gazette’s Federalist/Whig politics may have influenced Hawthorne’s attitudes toward these figures, or at least deepened his own satire. By this time the Gazette was edited by NH’s friend Caleb Foote. NH to Carey & Lea, Jan. 27, 1832, C XV, p. 222.

24   “He never liked”: EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

25   “was resolved not”: JH, “Hawthorne’s Philosophy,” holograph, Huntington.

26   He’d planned: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

27   “I nourished”: EH to JTF, Dec. 12 [1870], BPL; “The Journal of a Solitary Man,” in Tales, pp. 490–91.

28   So he got hold: EH to JTF, Jan. 28, 1871, BPL; Personal Recollections, p. 68.

29   His argument …“medium” … “naked mind”: “Mrs. Hutchinson,” in Tales, pp. 18–19. Note that Hawthorne uses almost identical language in the “Custom-House” introduction to The Scarlet Letter. Overall the sketch also bears comparison with Harriet Vaughn Cheney’s “A Peep at the Pilgrims,” to which he may be responding; see Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance, p. 344. And the matter of Hawthorne’s identification with women is provocatively explored by Robert K. Martin, “Hester Prynne, C’est Moi,” in Engendering Men, eds. Joseph Boone and Michael Cudder (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 122–39.

30   “It is one of my”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 183.

31   “a flash”: “Mrs. Hutchinson,” in Tales, p. 23.

32   “relinquishing the immunities”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 183.

33   But “Mrs. Hutchinson”: The monomaniacal mother of the gentle boy is somewhat more complex. For an extended, if reductive, discussion of her role, see Miller, Salem Is My Dwelling Place.

34   Funeral bells: I refer to “The Wedding-Knell,” “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” “The White Old Maid,” “The Prophetic Pictures,” and “The Minister’s Black Veil.”

35   “I very often say”: Richard Manning to Mary Manning, Feb. 18, 1831, PE.

36   “The loss of Brother”: Robert Manning to Mary Manning, Aug. 22, 1830, PE.

37   “Brother William”: Mary Manning to Priscilla Dike, Mar. 17, 1831, PE.

38   “on account of a book”: From this leg of the journey came the story “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” in which a young couple fleeing the Shakers meet with a group of pilgrims, who gloomily foretell what the couple can expect from the clutches of the world. Merchant, yeoman, yeoman’s wife, and poet: all lament their fortunes, most notably the poet, who cries “shame upon the unworthy age.” See “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” in Tales, p. 159. NH to FP, June 28, 1832, C XV, p. 224.

39   With two hundred … To judge from: NH to ECH, Sept. 16, 1832, C XV, p. 226. Sketches like “The Notch of the White Mountains,” “Old Ticonderoga,” “My Visit to Niagara,” and “The Canal-Boat,” published in 1835–36, provide a rough itinerary; some of these sketches were later republished as “Sketches from Memory” in MOM. The best reproduction, though speculative, of NH’s itinerary is the excellent article by Nelson F. Adkins, “The Early Projected Work of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” pp. 119–55. My discussion is indebted to this essay. For an overview of the framework of The Story Teller and an itemization of what section of the collection may have been published where, see also Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chap. 7.

40   “extemporaneous fictions”: “The Seven Vagabonds,” in Tales, p. 152.

41   “dull race”: “Sketches from Memory,” in Tales, p. 347.

42   “I had not of”: “The Seven Vagabonds,” in Tales, p. 141.

43   “I manufactured”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 183.

44   He flirts: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 185.

45   “We kept together”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 182.

46   According to his sister-in-law: Moncure Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne (London: Walter Scott [1890]), p. 32.

47   These sketches: “The Canterbury Pilgrims” and “The Seven Vagabonds,” along with the biographical sketch “Sir William Pepperell,” all appeared in the 1833 Token, which had merged with the Atlantic Souvenir, bought by Goodrich the previous year. “Sketches from Memory by a Pedestrian, No. 1” appeared in the New-England Magazine, November 1834, with the second installment appearing the following month as “Sketches from Memory by a Pedestrian, No. 2.” “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” was published alone in Twice-told Tales in 1837, and the remainder of the “Sketches from Memory” were published in Mosses from an Old Manse, second edition, as “Passages from a Relinquished Work.” See also the argument that Park Benjamin, not Joseph Buckingham, was responsible for Hawthorne’s early publication in the magazine: Lillian B. Gilkes, “Hawthorne, Park Benjamin, and S. G. Goodrich: A Three-Cornered Imbroglio,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1971, pp. 83–112. Having looked at the Benjamin archive at Columbia University, I tend to agree with her.

48   “So they tore up”: Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 32.

49   “It had been long”: “Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man,” in Tales, p. 497. Published originally in the American Monthly Magazine, July 1837, this section, “My Return Home,” appears to have been written earlier. The rest of the story provides a frame, evidently added later, to correspond in part with “The Devil in Manuscript.” See note below.

50   “It was only after”: EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

51   It features a cadaverous: Personal Recollections, p. 49. Elizabeth Peabody assumed Hawthorne was given the name by classmates who recognized his talent and beauty, but HB insisted Hawthorne took the name himself. The section of the Story Teller series in which Oberon appears, “Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man,” was not published until July 1837 in the American Monthly Magazine. (Interestingly, Hawthorne never republished it in his collected stories.)

52   Hawthorne’s Oberon: A motive for Oberon’s return and his outlook also lies in Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the 14th Minstrel,” canto 6: “Breathes there the man with soul so dead”; Hawthorne quotes it in his story. Says Oberon, “I am to die ‘Unwept, unhonored, and unsung’ ” (“The Journal of a Solitary Man,” in Tales, p. 490).

53   “Adopt some great”: “Fragments of the Journal of a Solitary Man,” in Tales, p. 499.

54   “I have become”: “The Devil in Manuscript,” in Tales, p. 331. The story was published in the November 1835 issue of the New-England Magazine along with “Sketches from Memory I,” evidently another piece of The Story Teller. The following month the magazine printed “Sketches from Memory II”; both detailed his journey through Vermont and western New York.

55   “the beaten path,” “a strange”: “The Devil in Manuscript,” in Tales, p. 331.

56   “like a father,” “Would you”: The Devil in Manuscript,” in Tales, pp. 333, 334.

57   “the obscurest”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, p. 1150.

58   “public opinion,” “and felt”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 176.

59   “In the depths”: “The Haunted Mind,” in Tales, p. 202; in “The Devil in Manuscript” this tale is obliquely mentioned as one of those to be burned.

60   And with a psychological: See [William Henry Channing], “Mosses from an Old Manse,” Harbinger 3:3 (June 27, 1846), pp. 43–44, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 75. The phrase was much liked and often quoted by Sophia Hawthorne.

61   Nowhere is this more: Published in the 1836 Token and appearing the preceding fall. In “One Hundred Fifty Years of ‘The Minister’s Black Veil,’ ” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 13:2 (fall 1987), pp. 5–12, Lea Bertani Vozar Newman suggests the story could’ve been written in 1829, but other scholars suggest that the tale may have been part of the Story Teller series. See also Adkins, “The Early Projected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” pp. 119–55.

62   “two folds,” “probably did not”: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” in Tales, p. 372. Two excellent and very different interpretations of the story may be found in Colacurcio, The Province of Piety, pp. 314–85, and J. Hillis Miller, Hawthorne and History (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991), esp. pp. 56–128.

63   “He has changed”: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” in Tales, p. 373.

64   “I can’t really feel”: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” in Tales, p. 372.

65   “that a simple”: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” in Tales, p. 374.

66   “Have I dreaded”: “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” in Tales, p. 159.

67   “So far as I am”: Preface to Mosses from an Old Manse, in Tales, p. 1147.

CHAPTER SEVEN: MR. WAKEFIELD

1     “Crafty nincompoop”: “Wakefield,” in Tales, p. 294.

2     Wakefield is a drab; “his place”: “Wakefield,” in Tales, p. 297; “Sights from a Steeple,” in Tales, p. 43.

3     “Amid the seeming”: “Wakefield,” in Tales, p. 298.

4     And Boston women: FP to George Pierce, July 30, 1830, Bowdoin. Among other sources I’ve gleaned much information about Boston from William and Jane Pease, Web of Progress: Private Values and Public Styles in Boston and Charleston, 1828–1843 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985).

5     “It is no small point”: HB to NH, Feb. 20, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 133.

6     “a truly Yankee idea”: “Fashionable Wigs,” American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge 2 (Boston: Bewick, 1836), p. 284.

7     “I approve”: NH to EH, Mar. 22 [23], 1836, C XV, p. 243.

8     “There was little”: “The Duston Family,” American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge 2 (Boston: Bewick, 1836), p. 397.

9     “You should not make”: NH to EH, Mar. 22 [23], 1836, C XV, p. 243.

10   “You may extract”: NH to EH, Feb. 10, 1836, C XV, p. 234.

11   “The Bewick Co.”: NH to EH, Feb. 10, 1836, C XV, p. 234.

12   “Ebe should have”: NH to LH, Mar. 3 [1836], C XV, p. 239.

13   “I am ashamed”: NH to LH, Feb. 5, 1836, C XV, p. 232.

14   “For the Devil’s sake”: NH to LH, Feb. 15, 1836, C XV, p. 236.

15   “a good-natured sort”: NH to LH, Feb. 15, 1836, C XV, p. 236.

16   “If you are willing”: NH to EH, May 5, 1836, C XV, p. 245.

17   “It is a poor”: NH to EH, May 12, 1836, C XV, p. 247.

18   For eight contributions: “The Great Carbuncle” may have been one of the Story Teller series.

19   “The brevity”: For pertinent correspondence, see NHHW, vol. 1, p. 137. “Editorial Notice,” in Turner, Hawthorne as Editor, p. 224.

20   This is how: “Lost Notebook,” Aug. 31, 1836, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 148.

21   “Brighter days”: Personal Recollections, p. 70.

22   “My worshipful self”: NH to EH, Jan. 25, 1836, C XV, p. 230. The Register reprinted “The Gentle Boy” in May 1835 and on June 4, 1835, “The Ambitious Guest.” (It’s not clear whether Hawthorne was paid.)

23   “What is the plan”: HB to NH, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, pp. 138–39.

24   “It is a singular”: Personal Recollections, p. 70.

25   “How few have”: [Park Benjamin], “Critical Notices,” American Monthly Magazine 8 [n.s. 2] (Oct. 1836), pp. 405–7. Benjamin knew that Hawthorne intended to publish just such a volume—perhaps he’d even encouraged him to do so—and, knowing this, took the opportunity to compare Hawthorne and Nathaniel Willis, to Hawthorne’s advantage to goad Samuel Goodrich, for Willis was Goodrich’s friend.

26   “I fear you are”: HB to NH, Oct. 22, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 142.

27   “You have the blues”: HB to NH, Oct. 16, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 140.

28   “desperate coolness”: HB to NH, Oct. 22, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 142.

29   “It will cost”: Samuel G. Goodrich to HB, Oct. 20, 1836, Bowdoin.

30   “You will have more”: Personal Recollections, p. 73.

31   “I expect, next summer”: Personal Recollections, p. 73.

32   “an editorship”: HB to NH, Feb. 1, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 149.

33   “I rejoice”: HB to NH, Dec. 25, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 147.

34   “best worth offering”: NH to HWL, Mar. 7, 1837, C XV, p. 249.

35   By June: NH to HWL, June 4, 1837, C XV, p. 253.

36   “spoken of in the highest”: J. B. Russell to NH, Mar. 17, 1837, NHHW, p. 151.

37   “The Boston Daily Advertiser”: See Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, pp. 20–23.

38   “It had the credit”: HB to NH, Mar. 19, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 151.

39   “There is little”: [Horatio] B[ridge], “Twice-told Tales,” Age 6:17 (Apr. 5, 1837), p. 3.

40   “aerial,” “this fault”: [Horatio] B[ridge], “Twice-told Tales,” Age 6:17 (Apr. 5, 1837), p. 3.

41   “the soul,” “rose”: [Park Benjamin], “Twice-told Tales,” American Monthly Magazine 5 (Mar. 1838), p. 281; see also SH to EPP, Apr. 23, 1838, Berg.

42   “the veterans”: “The Gray Champion,” in Tales, p. 237.

43   “Quakers, esteeming”: “The Gentle Boy,” in Tales, p. 109.

44   And though reviewers: See Kesselring, “Hawthorne’s Reading, 1828–1850,” pp. 55–71, 121–38, 173–94. My own investigations of Hawthorne’s borrowings coincide. Samuel Johnson’s style also influenced Hawthorne’s.

45   “We were not”: NH to HWL, Mar. 7, 1837, C XV, p. 249. Hawthorne refers to Longfellow’s travel book.

46   “Though something”: HWL to NH, Mar. 9, 1838, PE.

47   Although the review: HWL, North American Review 45 (July 1837), pp. 59–73.

48   “the whole Maine delegation”: HB to NH, Mar. 26, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 153.

49   “not subject”: HB to J. Reynolds, Mar. 28, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, pp. 154, 156. See also FP to HB, Apr. 20 and May 2, 1837, Bowdoin.

50   “set your heart,” “you will be”: HB to NH, Apr. 7, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 157.

51   “What! suffer”: Jonathan Cilley to NH, Nov. 17, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 144.

52   “Why should you”: HB to NH, Dec. 25, 1836, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 147.

53   “For the last ten” … “I have made a captive”: NH to HWL, June 4, 1837, C XV, p. 251–52.

54   “I have now”: NH to HWL, June 4, 1837, C XV, p. 251.

55   “I confess that”: HB to NH, Apr. 14, 1837, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 158.

56   “intellectual style”: HWL, diary, June 15, 1839, MS Am 1340(194), Houghton.

57   “a grave & beautiful”: SH, journal, Nov. 9, 1832.

58   “much that is”: “The Letters of Ann Gillam Storrow to Jared Sparks,” Smith College Studies in History 6:3 (Apr. 1921), pp. 230–31.

59   “She was a handsome”: JH, notebook, Morgan.

60   It was Mary Silsbee: EPP recalls that NH met Silsbee through O’Sullivan, which would place their meeting after April 19, 1837 (see NHHW, vol. 1, p. 159)—and after NH announced to Bridge his intention of marrying. However, the extant correspondence among all parties leads me to believe that NH met Silsbee earlier.

61   “With her father”: M. C. S. [Mary Crowninshield Silsbee] Sparks, Hymns, Home, Harvard (Boston: A. Williams, 1883), p. 294. I have not discovered the tale.

62   What’s more: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 166.

63   Hawthorne did plan: July 5, 1837, AN, p. 34.

64   “My circumstances”: July 5, 1837, AN, p. 34. JH, notebook, Morgan.

65   “Then here is,” “so independent”: July 5, 1837, AN, p. 34.

66   “Of female society,” “has never yet,” “We live”: July 13 [1837], AN, pp. 44, 46.

67   “A man tries”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, pp. 176, 175.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE WEDDING KNELL

1     Her charity: Henry James, The Bostonians (New York: Library of America, 1985), pp. 824–27; 1165–70.

2     One could see: See Lilian Whiting, Boston Days (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902), pp. 181–82, and M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Later Years of the Saturday Club, 1870–1920 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), pp. 156–57.

3     “the joy of the Ideal”: EPP to MM, Aug. 19 [1877], typescript, Antioch.

4     Sarah Clarke: Sarah Clarke to Ednah Dow Cheney, Jan. 22, 1894, Smith.

5     “Miss Peabody”: EH to her cousins, [1875], PE.

6     Peabody told her own: JH, notebooks, Morgan. See Norman Holmes Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 94 (July 1958), p. 264.

7     “and with no regard”: EPP to SH, July 31, 1838, Berg.

8     “I think she”: EH to her cousins, April [1875], PE.

9     “Presently Louisa”: EPP to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Berg. See also Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” p. 256.

10   By then she’d heard: EPP to Francis Lee [1885], in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, ed. Bruce Ronda (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press), pp. 420–21. EPP later recalled that the pretext for bringing Hawthorne to Charter Street was to ask about the terms of the Democratic Review. Either Silsbee or Hawthorne may have introduced Peabody to O’Sullivan. Her unsigned review of Emerson’s Nature and “The American Scholar” appeared in the Democratic Review in February 1838.

11   On Saturday evening: The content of this story dates it as a first meeting, especially since Peabody notes that Hawthorne invited her to call on his sisters, promising to take her home. Also, the conversation takes place after a meeting at Judge White’s, which accords with Sarah Clarke’s memory of the first meeting. Doubtless, then, a reasonable reconstruction of events suggests Peabody had called on the Hawthornes but, as she said, never called again despite the invitation to do so. Then she met Hawthorne himself at Judge White’s, in the presence of Sarah Clarke. He walked Peabody home, telling him something about himself, and sometime after this conversation—how long is not known—he called at the Peabody house. See JH, notebook, Morgan, quoted in Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” pp. 262–67.

12   “He has a temple” … “He has promised”: MM to George Mann, Nov. 16, 1837, Berg.

13   False in particulars: JH, notebook, Morgan, quoted in Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” p. 261.

14   Your brother has no: EPP to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, n.d., Berg. See also Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” p. 256.

15   “An extreme shyness”: EPP to Horace Mann, Mar. 3 [1838], MHS.

16   “His early & his college”: EPP to William Wordsworth, Feb. 1838, quoted in Margaret Neussendorfer, “Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to William Wordsworth: Eight Letters, 1825–1845,” Studies in the American Renaissance (1984), pp. 197–98.

17   “He is a man”: EPP to Horace Mann, Mar. 3 [1838], MHS.

18   “I see that you”: EPP to EH, n.d., quoted in JHHW, vol. 1, p. 166.

19   Fidelity of purpose: EPP, “Mental Photograph in 20 Questions,” Aug. 1871, UVA.

20   “Not that you can”: NH to HB, Feb. 8, 1838, C XV, p. 262.

21   Hawthorne’s intended trip … quarrel: JH, notebook, Morgan. The episode is recounted in Norman Holmes Pearson, “Hawthorne’s Duel,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 94 (1958), p. 232.

22   “And you, Master Edward”: Fanshawe, p. 59. Hawthorne or his sister also condemned dueling in the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge 2 (Boston: Bewick, 1836), p. 504.

23   At age eighty: She may also have the story of Frank White’s death by dueling, which Hawthorne confided to his notebooks of the time. See “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 193.

24   “real heart felt”: Jonathan Cilley to Deborah Cilley, Oct. 1, 1837, Thomaston Historical Society.

25   “My labors”: Jonathan Cilley to Deborah Cilley, Feb. 22, 1838, Thomaston Historical Society.

26   The ostensible reason: Much of this account is taken from “The Martyrdom of Cilley,” Democratic Review 1:4 (Mar. 1838), pp. 493–508, and the various papers in the Thomaston Historical Society.

27   “to put the brilliant”: Personal Recollections, pp. 19–21.

28   The uproar didn’t: “Jonathan Cilley,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 119.

29   John O’Sullivan remembered: John Louis O’Sullivan to Henry A. Wise, Nov. 24, 1843, Maine Historical Society.

30   Hawthorne supplied: The twenty stories were “Foot-prints on the Sea-shore,” “Snow-flakes,” “Chippings with a Chisel,” “Howe’s Masquerade,” “Edward Randolph’s Portrait,” “Lady Eleanore’s Mantle,” “Old Esther Dudley,” “John Inglefield’s Thanksgiving” (published under the pseudonym “Rev. A. A. Royce”), “The New Adam and Eve,” “Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent,” “The Procession of Life,” “The Celestial Railroad,” “Buds and Bird-Voices,” “Fire-Worship,” “The Christmas Banquet,” “The Artist of the Beautiful,” “A Select Party,” “A Book of Autographs,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and “P.’s Correspondence.”

31   “one of the truest”: NH to William C. Bennett, Sept. 12, 1854, C XVII, p. 256.

32   “The Devil has”: NH to SH, Feb. 7, 1856, C XVII, p. 438.

33   “The Best Government”: In addition to the back issues of the Democratic Review, the best sources of information on O’Sullivan include Robert Dean Sampson’s dissertation, “Under the Banner of the Democratic Principle: John Louis O’Sullivan, the Democracy, and the Democratic Review” (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 1995), and Edward L. Widmer, Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

34   “The eye of man,” “Democracy is the cause”: “The Best Government Is That Which Governs Least,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1:1 (Oct. 1837), pp. 9, 11.

35   “I cannot believe”: HWL, journal, Oct. 25, 1838, MS Am 1340(194), Houghton.

36   “as gentle as a girl”: John O’Sullivan to William Meredith, June 22, 1849, U.S. Treasury—Personnel: Notable Persons, Nathaniel Hawthorne, National Archives.

37   According to O’Sullivan: John Louis O’Sullivan to Henry A. Wise, Nov. 24, 1843, Maine Historical Society.

38   “We would not yoke”: [EPP], “Twice-told Tales,” New-Yorker 5:1/105 (Mar. 24, 1838), p. 2. She also uses this phrase in the interesting fragment, subsequently quoted, of the letter in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 165, and the phrase “better for a man to be harnessed to a draycart” dates the letter as having been written around the time of the review. Moreover, internal evidence further suggests that the letter was written shortly after Cilley’s death, but unfortunately I haven’t found the original letter.

39   “such a view,” “he has been”: EPP to EH, n.d., quoted in JHHW, vol. 1, pp. 165–66.

40   At the time of Cilley’s death: In NHHW, vol. 1, p. 165, JH quotes from this letter of Elizabeth Peabody and from which he excises substantial portions. See also NH to EPP, July 20, 1863, C XVIII, p. 591.

41   “he felt as if”: NHHW, vol. 1, p.174. Julian Hawthorne obviously printed the story without investigating it deeply, as his fanciful narration of Cilley’s duel reveals. (Remarkably, a number of historians swallow the story.) But Julian writes that Cilley’s challenger was Henry Wise, not Graves; he misstates the cause of the argument, and alleges that Cilley hesitated before accepting the challenge, which he did not. Further, the analogy between Hawthorne and Cilley is skewed. Hawthorne did not receive the challenge, he sent it; it was O’Sullivan who refused to fight—as Cilley could have done, had he conferred with O’Sullivan. In fact, into this period of hesitation Julian inserts an incredibly fanciful, apolitical interpretation of his father and his father’s friends: “At length, however,” JH writes, “some one said, ‘If Hawthorne was so ready to fight a duel without stopping to ask questions, you certainly need not hesitate’; for Hawthorne was uniformly quoted by his friends as the trustworthy model of all that becomes a man in matters of honorable and manly behavior.”

42   “knew something”: NH to John L. O’Sullivan, Nov. 5, 1838, C XV, p. 278.

43   “provided I have time”: NH to HWL, Mar. 21, 1838, C XV, pp. 266–67.

44   “He is much”: HWL, journal, Mar. 24–25, 1838, MS Am 1340(194), Houghton.

45   Meantime, though: See Bruce A. Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own Terms (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999), chap. 4.

46   “one great moral” … “He says”: EPP to Horace Mann, Mar. 3 [1838], MHS.

47   “We want something”: Horace Mann to EPP, Mar. 10, 1838, MHS.

48   The gossips of Salem: NH to J. L. O’Sullivan, Apr. 19, 1838, C XV, p. 272.

49   A family silhouette: Anna Q. T. Parsons, “Reminiscences of Miss Peabody,” Kindergarten Review 14 (1904), p. 539.

50   Of course, no silhouetted: HHC, pp. 17–18.

51   “on acct of his engagement”; “Sophia never knew”: Laura Johnson to AF, July 7, 1864, Laura Winthrop Johnson Papers, NYPL; Carolyn H. Dall to Mr. Niles, Jan. 24, 1894, quoted in Carroll A. Wilson, Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), p. 131.

52   “An engagement”: Norman Holmes Pearson, “Hawthorne’s Two Engagements” (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1963), p. 12.

53   “Everybody thought”: Carolyn H. Dall, “Reminiscences of Rebecca Hull Clark,” p. 59, MHS.

54   “Circumstances are such”: MM to Sally Gardiner, Apr. 10, 1838, MHS.

55   “And afterwards”: JH, notebook, Morgan; see Pearson, “Elizabeth Peabody on Hawthorne,” p. 265.

56   “Rather, I should say”: SH to EPP, May 2, 1838, Berg.

CHAPTER NINE: THE SISTER YEARS

1     But the general: See SH to EPP, Sept. 23, 1825, courtesy Kent Bicknell. For my subsequent description of the Peabody family, I have drawn on the typescript of Nathaniel Cranch Peabody’s reminiscences in the Mann archive, Antioch, as well as its collection of Peabody family correspondence; the incomplete Mary Mann reminiscence, Antioch; the Peabody papers at the Berg; Julian Hawthorne’s transcriptions of Elizabeth Peabody’s reminiscences, Morgan; Louise Hall Tharp’s fine The Peabody Sisters of Salem (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950); Claire M. Badarocco’s 1978 Ph.D. thesis, “ ‘The Cuba Journal’ of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Volume I” (Rutgers Univ.); and Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: Reformer on Her Own Terms.

2     Better yet, the “Peabodie Race”: SH to EPP, Sept. 23, 1825, courtesy Kent Bicknell.

3     Dr. Peabody turned: SH to Maria Chase, Apr. 15, 1825, Peabody Family Papers, Smith.

4     “It is dreadful”: SH, journal, 1832, Berg.

5     That left Nathaniel Peabody: See Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own Terms, p. 14. Despite the seeming cruelty of the comment, Ronda pays fair tribute to Nathaniel Peabody.

6     “I wish you now”: EPP to SH, June 23, 1822, Berg.

7     The throbbing increased: MM, typescript reminiscences, Antioch.

8     “They would think”: SH to EPP, [1823], Berg. 05. “I thank you”: SH to EPP, [1822–29], Berg.

9     “I have often told”: SH to EPP, July 1833, Berg.

10   “Your loveliness”: SH to MM, Feb. 2, 1851, Berg.

11   Trim and tasteful: Lilian Whiting, Boston Days (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902), p. 22.

12   The cannons boomed: Nathaniel Cranch Peabody, reminiscences, typescript, Antioch.

13   The physician, Walter Channing: JH, notebook, Morgan.

14   “I only fear”: Mrs. EPP to MM, [1827], Antioch.

15   “Home is best”: Mrs. EPP to EPP and MM, Jan. 26, 1827, Antioch.

16   She struck visitors: MM to Maria Chase, n.d., Peabody Family Papers, Smith.

17   “I still keep”: SH to Maria Chase, [Oct. 16, 1829], Peabody Family Papers, Smith.

18   “Superior to what”: SH to Mrs. EPP, May 12, 1832, Berg. 07. “I am rather”: SH to EPP, June 1822, Berg.

19   Painting and pain: MM to Maria Chase, Jan. 17, 1830, Peabody Family Papers, Smith.

20   “Her nature was”: NCP, reminiscences, typescript, Antioch.

21   “One is, it would”: MM to Horace Mann, July 29 [1834], MHS; SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 21 [1834], Berg.

22   “It gives queer ideas”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 205.

23   “a decent respectability”: “Grimshawe,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 347.

24   Only Sophia: Sarah Clarke to James Freeman Clarke, Dec. 31, 1837, and Jan. 1, 1838, MHS.

25   “Mr. Hawthorne endeavored”: SH to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Oct. 28, 1866, bMS Am 1429(2008–2009), Houghton.

26   The Peabodys offered: [Elizabeth Peabody], Holiness; or, The Legend of St. George: A Tale from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, by a mother (Boston: E. R. Broaders, 1836).

27   “Mary told Louisa Hawthorne”: SH to EPP, Apr. 20, 1838, Berg.

28   “I opened my door,” “He has a celestial”: SH to EPP, Apr. 23, 1838, Berg.

29   “He had taken”: SH to EPP, Apr. 23, 1838, Berg.

30   “To be the means”: SH to EPP, Apr. 23, 1838, Berg.

31   “I had a delightful”: SH to EPP, Apr. 26, 1838, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

32   “I like to hear”: EPP to SH, [May 1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

33   “I am diverted”: SH to EPP, May 10, 1838, Berg.

34   “He thought it ‘providential’ ”: SH to EPP, May 10, 1838, Berg.

35   “It makes me faint”: SH to EPP, May 3, 1838, Berg.

36   “too bad,” “insufferable,” “not fair”: SH to EPP, [spring 1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford; SH to EPP, May 14–16, 1838, Berg.

37   Just as often: SH to EPP, May 14–16, 1838, Berg.

38   She gave him: SH to EPP, July 23, 1838, Berg.

39   “a flower”: JH, notebook, Morgan.

40   “He has him in his mind”: EPP to SH, [May 1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

41   “a rose bathed”: [Park Benjamin], “Twice-told Tales,” American Monthly Magazine 5 (Mar. 1838), pp. 281–83.

42   What did Benjamin: [EPP], “Twice-told Tales,” p. 1.

43   “I was astonished”: SH to EPP, [spring 1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

44   “coquetting”: EPP to EH, fragment, [fall 1838], Berg.

45   But that spring: “Lost Notebook,” June 15 [1838], in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 202.

46   “On visiting”: “Lost Notebook” [spring 1838], in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 208.

47   “A story to show”: “Lost Notebook” [entry written circa 1838], in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 192.

48   “break off all intercourse”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, Nov. 5, 1838, C XV p. 278.

49   “sense that all”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, Nov. 5, 1838, C XV, pp. 278–79.

50   Much like Hawthorne’s: SH to NH, Dec. [6, 1838], UVA.

51   “See if I don’t!”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 214.

52   The “fervor scribendi”: SH to EPP, [June 1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

53   Inspired by Sophia’s account: SH to EPP, May 14 and 28, 1838, Berg. For superb analyses of history and art in “Tales of the Province-House,” see Evan Carton, “Hawthorne and the Province of Romance,” ELH 4 (1980), pp. 331–54, and on Hawthorne and history, see Colacurcio, The Province of Piety, part 3.

54   “Never, surely”: “Lady Eleanore’s Mantle,” in Tales, p. 656.

55   Yet Helwyse: According to family legend, the Hawthorne ancestor Ebenezer Hathorne delivered smallpox into Salem in 1717.

56   “pale, ethereal creature,” “enthusiasm”: “Edward Randolph’s Portrait,” in Tales, p. 642. Her name also suggests the tolerant colonial governor Sir Henry Vane.

57   “We are no longer”: “Old Esther Dudley,” in Tales, p. 677.

58   The terrible conflict: See also Colacurcio, The Province of Piety, part 3. In his otherwise intelligent study of Hawthorne and history, Michael Colacurcio condescends toward John O’Sullivan and the Democratic Review, partly to render Hawthorne, as an author, more canny than O’Sullivan, which he was—as an author. But not as a politician. O’Sullivan was a complex, shrewd man who should not be dismissed by facile retrospective or wishful readings. It is not true that Hawthorne wrote for O’Sullivan under duress or without any very real commitment to Democratic politics. Hawthorne’s allegiance to the Democrats and to O’Sullivan (not Bancroft), as well as his ironic sense of history and grim view of human nature, present the compelling paradox that is his character. Colacurcio’s analysis, moreover, derives from several biographical falsehoods, such as the undocumented assertion that Elizabeth Peabody delivered O’Sullivan’s invitation to Hawthorne to write for the Democratic Review. Even Elizabeth Peabody, who told several different but related versions of her meeting Hawthorne, does not suggest as much. See, for instance, EPP to Francis Lee [1885], in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, pp. 420–21. Moreover, the evidence suggests, as Peabody does, that Hawthorne introduced Peabody to O’Sullivan, who corresponded with her through Hawthorne. Assuming the opposite, Colacurcio then deduces that Bancroft, via Peabody, had already been jockeying on Hawthorne’s behalf for a political appointment; this happened somewhat later, though not by much. In any event, the proleptic interpretation of Hawthorne’s politics and Colacurcio’s mistaking O’Sullivan for Bancroft, plus his misunderstanding Hawthorne’s relation to both of them, seriously mar his argument, although much of his interpretation of the Province-House tales and of Hawthorne’s irony is sensitive—and the best to date.

59   “Your life has been”: “Old Esther Dudley,” in Tales, p. 676. Published after I wrote this chapter, David T. Haberly’s “Hawthorne in the Province of Women,” New England Quarterly 74 (Dec. 2001), pp. 580–621, presents an argument about “Old Esther Dudley” somewhat similar to mine, although his biographical speculations are dubious.

60   “not to show”: “Old Esther Dudley,” in Tales, p. 677.

CHAPTER TEN: ROMANCE OF THE REVENUE SERVICE

1     “I rejoice”: SH to EPP, Nov. 25 [1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

2     “thousand brothers in one”: SH to EPP, Nov. 25 [1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

3     “I wish you could”: MM to Sally Gardiner, Dec. 10, 1838, MHS.

4     Hawthorne’s sacred “Word”: SH to EPP, Nov. 25 [1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

5     And back on Charter Street: SH to EPP, Nov. 25 [1838], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

6     “No two could be”: MM to Sally Gardiner, Dec. 10 [1838], Antioch.

7     “If, after so high”: NH, The Gentle Boy (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1838).

8     “Now does that not”: SH to NH, Dec. 6–7, 1838, UVA.

9     “I am afraid” … “Besides”: EPP to EH, [Oct. 19, 1838], PE; see Norman Holmes Pearson, “A Good Thing for Hawthorne,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 100 (Oct. 1964), p. 304.

10   “sort of man”: EPP to EH, [Oct. 19, 1838], PE.

11   “the quiet of nature” … “as a matter”: EPP to Elizabeth Bliss Bancroft, Nov. 6, 1838, LC.

12   Sitting in the square parlor: MM to SH, Jan. 5, 1839, Berg.

13   “He wants to come”: SH to EPP, Feb. [1839], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

14   “January Fourth 1839”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 218.

15   “I had a parting”: NH to SH, Mar. 6, 1839, C XV, p. 290.

16   “My surest hope”: NH to SH, Apr. 30, 1839, C XV, p. 305. 130. “How did I live”: NH to SH, Apr. 30, 1839, C XV, p. 303. 130. “It is I who”: NH to SH, May 26, 1839, C XV, p. 317.

17   “I felt it”: NH to SH, July 3, 1839, C XV, p. 320; July 24, 1839, C XV, p. 329.

18   “naughty” … “with pent-up love”: NH to SH, Aug. 8, 1839, C XV, pp. 333, 335.

19   In fact, they wouldn’t: Edwin Haviland Miller, in Salem Is My Dwelling Place, p. 165, oddly asserts that the lovers kept their engagement a secret to protect their two mothers. However, Hawthorne seems not to have concealed his intentions regarding Mary Silsbee, and Sophia Peabody had openly courted and rejected earlier suitors. As always, James Mellow is more temperate and reasoned in his speculations, suggesting Hawthorne could hardly afford to support a wife and, besides, still suffered embarrassment over his recent affair with Mary Silsbee (although he did not seem fazed when he announced to O’Sullivan that he’d fallen in love with Sophia). See Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times, pp. 159–60. Arlin Turner offers no explanation for the secrecy.

20   “brother measurers”: NH to SH, July 3, 1839, p. 323.

21   Such elaborate chicanery: Word of the engagement remained part of Boston scuttlebutt for many years. See, for example, Johnson to AF, July 7, 1864, Laura Winthrop Johnson Papers, NYPL, and chap. 8.

22   “I have great comfort”: NH to SH, Apr. 30, 1839, C XV, p. 305.

23   “What a trustful”: [June 1853], AN, C VIII, p. 552.

24   “having fallen in love”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, May 19, 1839, C XV, p. 312.

25   “She is a good old soul”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, May 19, 1839, C XV, p. 312.

26   “a thing I had set”: EPP to SH, June 23, 1839, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

27   “I am very sorry”: SH to EPP, June 29, 1839, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

28   “to enjoy such elements”: EPP to SH, June 23, 1839, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

29   “I have often doubted”: SH to EPP, July [1839], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

30   “We will wait”: NH to SH, July 24, 1839, C XV, p. 329.

31   “The world might”: NH to SH, July 24, 1839, C XV, p. 330.

32   “It is true”: EPP to Amelia Boelte, May 2, 1886, quoted in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, pp. 431–32.

33   “with as much confidence,” Tongue in cheek: NH to HWL, Jan. 12, 1838, C XV, p. 287.

34   But he was still: See NH to George P. Morris, [Jan. 11, 1839], C XV, p. 285; NH to HWL, Jan. 1839, C XV, p. 288. 132. “Uncle Sam is rather”: NH to HWL, May 16, 1839, C XV, p. 310.

35   “TO stand on”: Feb. 19 [1839], AN, p. 193.

36   “Henceforth forever”: NH to SH, July 3, 1839, C XV, p. 320.

37   “If I ever come”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, May 19, 1839, C XV, p. 312.

38   “It was exhilarating”: NH to SH, Apr. 3, 1840, C XV, pp. 434–35.

39   “I think, too”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, May 19, 1839, C XV, p. 314.

40   “Tell it down”: EPP to SH, June 23, 1839, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

41   “What fame!”: SH to EPP, July 5 [1839], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

42   “Does Mr. Hawthorne ever”: ED to HWL, Nov. 14, 1840, bMS Am 1340. 2 (1734), Houghton.

43   In the fall of 1839: Christian Examiner 27 (Sept. 1839), pp. 132–35.

44   “I have a note”; he informed Longfellow: NH to SH, Dec. 18, 1839, C XV, p. 388; HWL, journal, Jan. 4, 1840, MS Am 1340(195), Houghton.

45   He also earned: See Franklin B. Sanborn to Samuel T. Pickard, June 18, 1901, Autograph File, Houghton.

46   Hawthorne liked: Feb. 19 [1839], AN, p. 191.

47   “As long as there”: NH to William Pike, Feb. 10, 1840, C XV, p. 410.

48   Recalled Pike: “The Dinner,” Norman Holmes Pearson manuscripts file, n.d., BY.

49   “I will retire”: NH to John Louis O’Sullivan, Mar. 15, 1840, C XV, p. 418–19.

50   “effect—which”: “The Custom House,” in The Scarlet Letter, p. 153.

51   “he thinks matters”: NH to SH, Oct. 23, 1839, C XV, p. 358.

52   “the most beautiful”: SH to George Peabody, Nov. 3–5, 1839, Berg.

53   “bought” he said: NH to SH, Dec. 11, 1839, C XV, pp. 385–86.

54   “I do not get”: NH to SH, Nov. 17, 1839, C XV, p. 364.

55   “Thou only has”: NH to SH, Oct. 4, 1840, C XV, p. 495.

56   “Indeed, we are but”: NH to SH, Oct. 4, 1840, C XV, p. 495.

57   “Your wisdom is not”: NH to SH, 1839, C XV, p. 343.

58   “grant me freedom”: NH to SH, July 30 [1839], C XV, p. 332.

59   “Thy husband is”: NH to SH, Mar. 30, 1840, C XV, p. 431.

60   “Lights and shadows”: NH to SH, May 19, 1840, C XV, p. 462.

61   “I cannot gush”: NH to SH, Feb. 27, 1842, C XV, pp. 611–12.

62   “untoward circumstances”: NH to SH, June 2, 1840, C XV, p. 469.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE WORLD FOUND OUT

1     Salem artist Charles Osgood: “The portrait came home a fortnight ago,” Louisa Hawthorne writes Hawthorne, “and gives great delight”: see LH to NH, May 10, 1841, Berg. Most scholars speculate that Robert Manning commissioned the portrait, although Hawthorne’s mother may have. For a good discussion, see Rita Gollin, Portraits of Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Iconography (De Kalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1983), p. 20.

2     “We never had”: Quoted in Margaret Armstrong, Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Pilgrim (New York: Macmillan, 1938), p. 326. Although Holmes had not yet published his famous poems, in 1831 and 1832 he used the phrase in two essays published in the New-England Magazine.

3     “A revolution of all Human”: See EPP to John S. Dwight, Sept. 20, 1840, BPL; Bronson Alcott to Samuel J. May, Aug. 10, 1840, in The Letters of Bronson Alcott, ed. Richard L. Hernnstadt (Ames: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1969), p. 53.

4     “God incarnates”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Divinity School Address,” in Selected Writings, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library, 2000), p. 67.

5     Soon these seekers: The best introduction to the transcendental movement is Barbara L. Packer, “The Transcendentalists,” in The Cambridge History of American Literature, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 329–603.

6     “Did you ever hear”: SH to Mrs. EPP, July 4, 1841, Berg.

7     “The true democratic”: George Ripley to George Bancroft, Sept. 20, 1837, MHS.

8     Politics and political: For the subsequent discussion of Brook Farm, I have drawn on the invaluable material contained in Zoltán Haraszti, The Idyll of Brook Farm as Revealed by Unpublished Letters (Boston: Boston Public Library, 1937); Henry Sams, Autobiography of Brook Farm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958); John Van der Zee Sears, My Friends at Brook Farm (New York: Desmond FitzGerald, 1912); Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm (1900; reprint, New York: Corinth Books, 1961); Anne C. Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1981); and Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), as well as Joel Myerson, “James Burrill Curtis and Brook Farm,” New England Quarterly 51:3 (Sept. 1978), pp. 396–423; Joel Myerson, “An Ungathered Sanborn Lecture on Brook Farm,” American Transcendental Quarterly, suppl. (spring 1975), pp. 1–10; Joel Myerson, “Two Unpublished Reminiscences of Brook Farm,” New England Quarterly 48:2 (June 1975): pp. 253–60; Amelia Russell, “Home Life of the Brook Farm Association,” Atlantic Monthly 42 (Oct.—Nov. 1878), pp. 458–66, 556–63; Ora Gannett Sedgwick, “A Girl of Sixteen at Brook Farm,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 85 (1949), pp. 394–404. Interested readers should also consult The Brook Farm Book: A Collection of First-Hand Accounts of the Community, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1987).

9     “We talk of savages”: Bentley, Diary, vol. 4, p. 71.

10   “The expression [seven gables]”: NH to Horace Conolly, May 1840, C XV p. 456.

11   But he seized: As early as 1838, he had proposed a similar idea to Longfellow for their collaboration on a book of fairy tales. “Ought there not to be a slender thread of story running through the book, as a connecting medium for the other stories?” NH to HWL, Mar. 21, 1838, C XV, p. 266.

12   The gifted author: [MF], “Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth,” Dial 3 (Jan. 1841), p. 405.

13   “dullest of all books”: NH to SH, Nov. 27 [1840], C XV, p. 504.

14   “We are all”: The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 283–84.

15   “It is astonishing”: Sarah Clarke to James Freeman Clarke, Dec. 6, 1840, bMS Am 1569.3(12), Houghton.

16   “more natural union”: George Ripley to RWE, Nov. 9, 1840, quoted in Sams, Autobiography of Brook Farm, p. 6.

17   “Thought would preside”: Sams, Autobiography of Brook Farm, pp. 3, 8.

18   “His own mind”: MF to William Henry Channing, Oct. 25–28, 1840, quoted in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1983–94), vol. 2, p. 174.

19   “The farming” … “There are to be”: Sarah Clarke to James Freeman Clarke, Dec. 6, 1840, bMS Am 1569.3(12), Houghton.

20   “Can I not get”: RWE to William Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, 1836–1841, ed. Ralph Rusk (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1939), p. 365. Sarah Clarke informed her brother that because the Brook Farm venture brought Emerson “to a crisis”—of conscience—he wished to adopt the Alcott family into his own, improve his own property for their support, and unite everyone, including servants, in common and equal labor. See Sarah Clarke to James Freeman Clarke, Dec. 23, 1840, bMS Am 1569.3(12), Houghton.

21   “Whenever I return”: NH to SH, Jan. 27, 1841, C XV, p. 517.

22   “Here sits thy husband” … “He ought to make”: NH to SH, Oct. 4, 1840, C XV, p. 494.

23   “Think that I”: NH to SH, Apr. 13, 1841, C XV, p. 527.

24   “The whole experience”: Swift, Brook Farm, p. 174.

25   “solitary characters”: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, ed. RWE, William H. Channing, and James Freeman Clarke (London: Richard Bentley, 1852), vol. 2, p. 269 (henceforward given as Memoirs).

26   “the essential equality”: [John O’Sullivan], “Dr. Channing’s Recent Writings,” Democratic Review 9:40 (Oct. 1841), p. 319.

27   “A true democracy”: [O’Sullivan], “Dr. Channing’s Recent Writings,” p. 320; [John O’Sullivan], “The Course of Civilization,” Democratic Review 6:21 (Sept. 1839), p. 215.

28   “The community aims”: EPP, “Plan of the West Roxbury Community,” Dial 2 (Jan. 1842), p. 364.

29   “I doubt they will”: MF to William H. Channing, Mar. 29, 1841, The Letters of Margaret Fuller, p. 194.

30   “Spring and summer”: NH to SH, Apr. 13, 1841, C XV, p. 526.

31   Teasing the Brook Farm: Sears, My Friends at Brook Farm, p. 117; Ora Gannett Sedgwick, “A Girl of Sixteen at Brook Farm,” Atlantic Monthly 85:400 (Mar. 1900), pp. 395–97.

32   “He was a sort”: The Journals of Charles King Newcomb, ed. Judith Kennedy Johnson (Providence, R.I.: Brown Univ. Press, 1946), pp. 149, 151.

33   “Hawthorne has taken hold”: EPP to John S. Dwight, Apr. 26, 1841, BPL, quoted in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, p. 250.

34   “defiles the hands”: NH to SH, May 4, 1841, C XV, p. 542.

35   “What is the use”: LH to NH, June 11, 1841, Berg.

36   “I have never felt”: NH to David Mack, July 18, 1841, C XV, p. 552.

37   “there are private”: NH to David Mack, July 18, 1841, C XV, p. 552.

38   “I have not written”: NH to GH, July 16, 1841, C XV, p. 550.

39   “We expect”: NH to LH, Aug. 3, 1841, C XV, p. 555.

40   “I confess”: NH to SH, Aug. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 563.

41   “How much depends” … “I am becoming”: NH to SH, Aug. 22, 1841, C XV p. 563.

42   “I shall see”: NH to SH, Sept. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 575.

43   “the ground, upon which”: NH to SH, Sept. 25, 1841, C XV, p. 578.

44   “My accession to these”: NH to SH, Sept. 29, 1841, C XV, p. 582.

45   “I have not the sense”: NH to SH, Sept. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 575.

46   “The woods have” … “It is wonderful”: Oct. 18 [1841], AN, pp. 217–18.

47   “The grown people”: Sept. 28 [1841], AN, p. 202.

48   “her upper lip”: Quoted in Bell Gale Chevigny, The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life and Writings (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1994), p. 162.

49   “Yes,” says Margaret: Sarah Clarke to James Freeman Clarke, Dec. 14, 1839, bMS Am 1569.3(12), Houghton.

50   Her self-regard: Carolyn Healey Dall, diary, Feb. 3, 1851, MHS; JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Aug. 12 [n.y.], Huntington.

51   “Womanhood is”: Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 297.

52   “She broke her lance”: Sarah Clarke, reminiscences, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Special Collections.

53   “contorted like a sybil”: SH to George Peabody, Oct. 27, 1839, Berg.

54   “Would that Miss Margaret”: NH to SH, Jan. 13, 1841, C XV, p. 511.

55   In the spring of 1841: Carolyn Healey Dall, journals, Apr. 15, 22, 29, 1841, MHS.

56   “transcendental heifer,” “she is very fractious”: NH to SH, Apr. 13, 1841, C XV, p. 527.

57   “is compelled to take”: NH to SH, Apr. 16 [1841], C XV, p. 531. See also the interpretation of the Fuller-Hawthorne relationship in Thomas Mitchell, Hawthorne’s Fuller Mystery (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1998).

58   “in the amusing position”: Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 77.

59   “This frigidity”: [Margaret Fuller], “Record of the Month,” Dial 3 (July 1842), pp. 130–31.

60   “The real Me”: NH to SH, Sept. 3, 1841, C XV, p. 565.

61   “A man’s soul”: NH to SH, June 1, 1841, C XV, p. 545.

62   “and nobody can meddle”: NH to SH, Aug. 12, 1841, C XV, p. 556.

63   The book did appear: It also included “The Sister Years,” “Snow-flakes,” “Peter Goldthwaite’s Treasure,” “Chippings with a Chisel,” “The Shaker Bridal,” Night Sketches,” “Endicott and the Red Cross,” “The Lily’s Quest,” “Foot-prints on the Sea-shore,” “Edward Fane’s Rosebud,” and “The Threefold Destiny.”

64   “Surely the book”: NH to GH, Nov. 26, 1843, C XVI, p. 11.

65   The reviews were laconic: [John O’Sullivan], “Twice-told Tales,” Democratic Review 10:44 (Feb. 1842), p. 198; [HWL], “Twice-told Tales,” North American Review 54:115 (Apr. 1842), pp. 496–99; Orestes Brownson, “Literary Notices and Criticisms,” Boston Quarterly Review 5:2 (Apr. 1842), p. 252.

66   “These effusions”: [Edgar Allan Poe], “Twice-told Tales,” Graham’s Magazine 20:5 (May 1842), p. 299.

67   “paint with blood-warm colors”: [Fuller], “Record of the Month,” p. 132.

68   “who must stand”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Oct. 9, 1842, Berg. “Is to observe” is quoted in the same letter.

69   “I love thee”: NH to SH, Sept. 14, 1841, C XV, p. 569.

70   “where my youth”: NH to SH, Sept. 3, 1841, C XV, p. 565; NH to SH, Jan. 27, 1841, C XV, p. 517.

71   “at least, not like”: NH to Cornelius Mathews and ED, Dec. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 600.

72   “During the last three”: NH to Cornelius Mathews and ED, Dec. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 600.

73   “I do not think”: NH to SH, Feb. 27, 1842, C XV, pp. 612–13.

74   “It is this”: NH to SH, Feb. 27, 1842, C XV, pp. 612–13.

75   “Mr. Hawthorne hid”: SH to unknown recipient, [June 1864], Berg.

CHAPTER TWELVE: BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH

1     TO him—to both: See, for instance, NH to SH, Apr. 6, 1842, C XV, p. 620.

2     “We are Adam”: SH to Mrs. EPP, July 10, 1842, Berg.

3     “mutual love”: See MF to SH, June 4 [1842], The Letters of Margaret Fuller, vol. 3, p. 66.

4     “Both Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Wedded Isolation,” Woman’s Journal, Dec. 20, 1884, p. 407. See also Henry James, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” in Literary Criticism, vol. 1, p. 388.

5     “The execution”: NH to LH, July 10, 1842, C XV, p. 639.

6     “particularly as it”: EH to SH, May 23, 1842, Berg.

7     “All in good time”: NH to SH, May 27, 1842, C XV, p. 626.

8     “I dare say we”: EH to SH, June 15, 1842, Berg.

9     “There seems to be”: NH to SH, Feb. 27, 1842, C XV, p. 611.

10   “our mother”: NH to SH, June 9, 1842, C XV, p. 628.

11   “cut off from”: “A Virtuoso’s Collection,” in Tales, p. 713, published originally in the May issue of the Boston Miscellany.

12   There is ice: See “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 221; see also “There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer” (Graham Greene, A Sort of Life [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971], p. 188).

13   “Thou art”; “Without thee”; “It is thou”: NH to SH, Oct. 4, 184[i], C XV, p. 584; Jan. 13, 1841, C XV, p. 511; Sept. 3, 1841, C XV, p. 565.

14   “I devoutly believe”: SH to MF, May 11, 1842, MS Am 1086 v. XVI, Houghton.

15   “He seems pleased”: Sarah Clarke to MF, May 25, 1842, MS Am 1086 v. XVII, Houghton.

16   But Hawthorne was so nervous: MM to SH, July [11–12], 1842, Berg.

17   Apparently none of the Hawthornes: George Holden file, PE. The watch may have belonged to Joseph Hathorne.

18   “I am the happiest”; “We are as happy”: SH to Mrs. EPP, July 10, 1842, Berg; NH to LH, July 10, 1842, C XV, p. 639.

19   “as if something”: Aug. 10 [1842], AN, p. 329.

20   “We did not think”: SH to Mary Foote, Dec. 18, 1842, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

21   “I would put on”; “fills me”: SH, diary, Dec. 1, 1843, Berg; SH to Mrs. EPP Aug. [6], 1842, Berg.

22   “This vigilance”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. [6], 1842, Berg.

23   “I send up”: SH to Mary Foote, Apr. 6, 1843, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

24   “A good deal of mud”: Aug. 15 [1842], AN, p. 337. See also Sept. 24 [1843], AN, p. 395.

25   “This dull river”: Aug. 7 [1842], AN, p. 321.

26   “world just created”: Aug. 7 [1842], AN, p. 322.

27   “Before our marriage”: SH, notebooks, [1842–43], Morgan. See Patricia Valenti, “Sophia Hawthorne’s American Notebooks,” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1996, ed. Joel Myerson (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia), p. 133.

28   “It might be a sin”: Aug. 13 [1842], AN, pp. 333–34.

29   “The general sentiment”: MM to SH, July 17, 1842, Berg.

30   “I felt that I”: Aug. 15 [1842], AN, p. 334.

31   Mrs. Peabody came: See MM to SH, [Apr. 1845], Berg.

32   “Agreeable & gentle”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 30—Sept. 4, 1842, Berg.

33   “He is ugly as sin”: Sept. 1 [1842], AN, pp. 353–54.

34   “A vein of humor”: William Ellery Channing, Thoreau: The Poet-Naturalist (Boston: Charles Goodspeed, 1902), p. 273.

35   “Life is”; “man without”: “Compensation,” in Emerson: Essays & Poems, ed. Joel Porte (New York: Library of America, 1996), p. 300; James quoted in Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), p. 83.

36   “We have no questions”: Nature, in Emerson: Essays & Poems, p. 7.

37   “I comprehend nothing”: Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), p. 280.

38   “It is no easy matter”: Sept. 18–32, 1839, quoted in Emerson in His Journals, p. 288.

39   “N. Hawthorn’s reputation”: Sept. 1842, quoted in Emerson in His Journals, p. 288.

40   “a great searcher”: Aug. 15 [1842], AN, p. 336.

41   “the narrow but earnest”: Aug. 16 [1842], AN, p. 339.

42   “Our love is so wide”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 30—Sept. 4, 1842, Berg.

43   “Waldo Emerson knows”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 3 [1843], Berg. For a discussion of Hawthorne and Emerson, see Larry Reynolds, “Hawthorne and Emerson in ‘The Old Manse,’ ” Studies in the Novel 23 (Spring 1991), pp. 403–24.

44   “Salem inquisitiveness”: See SH to Mrs. EPP, Oct. 2, 1842; see also SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 13 and 20–21, 1843, Berg.

45   Dear noble Margaret: SH to MF, May 11, 1842, MS Am 1086 v. XVI, Houghton.

46   “Sydnean showers”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 22, 1842, Berg.

47   “he should be much more”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal: At Concord with the Emersons,” ed. Joel Myerson, Harvard Library Bulletin 21 (July 1973), p. 325.

48   “Thus, even without”: Aug. 28 [1842], AN, p. 349.

49   “I suspect”: Nathan Hale Jr. to ED, Aug. 29, 1842, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL.

50   “would take but a trifle”: NH to MF, Aug. 25, 1842, C XV, p. 648.

51   “The lad seems”: Sept. 2 [1842], AN, p. 357.

52   he was trying to write a sketch: “The Old Apple-Dealer,” based on earlier notebook jottings, appeared in Sargent’s New Monthly Magazine in January 1843.

53   He’d come to Salem: NH to LH, Oct. 12, 1842, C XV, p. 653.

54   “It is a very cold”: SH to Mary Wilder Foote, Dec. 30, 1842, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

55   “The mighty spirit”: “Fire-Worship,” in Tales, pp. 84!, 843, published originally in the Democratic Review, Dec. 1843.

56   “A person with an ice-cold”: n.d., AN, p. 235.

57   “bores,” he said: “The Old Manse,” preface to Mosses from an Old Manse, in Tales, p. 1147.

58   “his one idea”: “The Hall of Fantasy,” in Tales, p. 741, originally published in The Pioneer 1:2 (Feb. 1843). When revising the story for inclusion in Mosses from an Old Manse, Hawthorne shortened it, omitting the copious references to contemporaries like Catharine Sedgwick, John Neal, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, and John O’Sullivan.

59   “most of whom,” Hawthorne gibes: See “The Hall of Fantasy,” pp. 55–56. Emerson, at this time, didn’t entirely disagree with Hawthorne: “The abolitionists with their holy cause; the Friends of the Poor; the ministers at large; the Prison Discipline Agents; the Soup Societies; the whole class of professed Philanthropists—it is strange & horrible to say—are an altogether odious set of people, whom one would be sure to shun as the worst of bores & canters.”

60   By contrast, the narrator: See “The Hall of Fantasy,” p. 52. Recently O’Sullivan had been sparring publicly with the Reverend George B. Cheever, Hawthorne’s classmate, over the issue of capital punishment, which O’Sullivan fiercely opposed.

61   “These originals”: Sept. 2 [1842], AN, p. 357.

62   “These factory girls”: “The Procession of Life,” in Tales, p. 798, published originally in the Democratic Review, Apr. 1843.

63   “All through the winter”: n.d., AN, p. 238.

64   “men’s accidents”: n.d., AN, p. 236.

65   “like a schoolboy”: NH to MF, Feb. 1, 1843, C XV, p. 670.

66   “with pretty commendable”: Mar. 31, 1843, AN, p. 367.

67   “It is rather singular”: NH to HB, May 3, 1843, C XV, p. 688.

68   “It is an annoyance”: Mar. 31, 1843, AN, p. 367.

69   “Could I only have”: June 23 [1843], AN, pp. 387–88.

70   “at least to achieve”: “The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1123.

71   “At the entrance”: n.d., AN, p. 237.

72   “sole token of human”: “The Birth-mark,” in Tales, p. 780, published originally in The Pioneer, Mar. 1843.

73   “Our creative Mother”: “The Birth-mark,” in Tales, p. 769.

74   “All persons, chronically”: “Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent,” in Tales, p. 785, published originally in the Democratic Review, Mar. 1843.

75   “establish a species,” “was fortunately,” “nourished with”: “Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent,” in Tales, pp. 786, 788, 790.

76   Rosina rescues Roderick: As his double, she also suggests that Roderick is part woman. Hawthorne evidently had Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in mind.

77   “always for purposes”: “The Artist of the Beautiful,” in Tales, p. 909, published originally in the Democratic Review, June 1844.

78   Loving “the Beautiful”: “The Artist of the Beautiful,” in Tales, p. 909.

79   “demand is for perfection”: Dec. 7, 1843, “A Sophia Hawthorne Journal, 1843–1844,” ed. John McDonald, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, 1974, p. 8.

80   When Annie Hovenden: Robert Danforth, a “man of earth and iron,” may resemble Hawthorne’s grandfather Manning, who had been a blacksmith, or Uncle Richard before his injury; both men must have seemed huge figures of strength to a frail or lame boy. The name “Robert” refers to uncles; the “Danforth,” an old New England name, evokes Hathorne/Hawthorne. See also “The Artist of the Beautiful,” in Tales, p. 921.

81   She finally gave birth: In 1836 Mrs. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody had published a child’s version of The Faerie Queene, called Holiness; or, The Legend of St. George: A Tale from Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Before her marriage Sophia had taken Una and St. George as the subjects of her paintings.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: REPATRIATION

1     “And when the men”: The entire passage is taken from N.d., AN, pp. 261–67.

2     “I suppose one friend”: AN, p. 266.

3     “melancholic temperament”: AN, p. 261.

4     “I find it is”: NH to GH, Mar. 24, 1844, C XVI, pp. 22–23.

5     “holy and equal” … One could bring: “ ‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June through October 1844,” ed. Martha L. Berg and Alice De V. Perry, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 102 (1990), p. 89.

6     Fuller … reclined lazily: Or so we gather from her bowdlerized journal.

7     “I love him much”: “ ‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June through October 1844,” p. 89.

8     “mild, deep and large”: “ ‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June through October 1844,” p. 85.

9     “I feel more like”: “ ‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June through October 1844,” p. 108.

10   “A woman of unemployed energy”: “The Christmas Banquet,” in Tales, p. 865, originally published in the Democratic Review, Jan. 1844. Pitting his proto-feminist next to a “half-starved, consumptive seamstress,” Hawthorne anticipates the juxtaposition of Zenobia and Priscilla in The Blithedale Romance.

11   “those [women] who would”: See “The Great Lawsuit,” in The Essential Margaret Fuller, ed. Jeffrey Steele (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1992), p. 30.

12   Rappaccini is also: See “ ‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June through October 1844,” p. 109. See also SH, notebook, [May 1843], Morgan.

13   Yet Hawthorne erases: For a good overview of the sources in “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” see Carole Marie Bensick, La Nouvelle Beatrice: Renaissance and Romance in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1985); for a reading of the story that focuses on Hawthorne’s relationship with Fuller, see Mitchell, Hawthorne’s Fuller Mystery, pp. 93–124.

14   “He has to contrive”: SH to Mrs. EPP, [Mar. 1844], Berg.

15   “What is this being?”: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” in Tales, p. 993, originally published in the Democratic Review, Nov. 1844.

16   “Oh, was there not”: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” in Tales, p. 1005.

17   “It somewhat startled”: “Earth’s Holocaust,” in Tales, p. 893, originally published in Grahams Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, May 1844. Misty-eyed reformers set the blaze, thinking it will eradicate the world’s misery and injustice. As an image, the bonfire recalls the vengeful blaze of “The Devil in Manuscript,” a fire sparked by despair, neglect, and revenge. There’s another interesting motif in “Earth’s Holocaust,” too. Hawthorne couples women’s independence with his own professional anxiety: just before a group of ladies discard their petticoats, a neglected American author pitches pen and paper into the flames “and betook himself to some less discouraging occupation.”

18   Alas, poor Monsieur de l’Aubépine: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” in Tales, p. 975.

19   “I think France”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Apr. 6, 1845, Berg.

20   “My husband’s time”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 19, 1844, Berg.

21   “We have no woman”: SH to LH, Oct. 27, 1844, Berg.

22   “He actually does”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 19 [1844], Berg. 183. “I wish Heaven”: NH to GH, May 29, 1844, C XVI, p. 41.

23   The plan lurched: See John Louis O’Sullivan to James Munroe, June 12, 1844, BPL.

24   He tried to work: See NH to Samuel Ripley, Oct. 3, 1845, CXXIII, p. 457.

25   “My husband says”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Nov. 20, 1844, Berg.

26   “else we shall”: NH to SH, Dec. 20, 1844, C XVI, p. 73.

27   “GOD gives us”: n.d. [June 1843?], SH, joint notebooks, Morgan.

28   “I am a husband!”: NH to SH, May 19, 1844, C XVI, p. 44.

29   “At any rate”: John Louis O’Sullivan to NH, Mar. 21, 1845, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 285.

30   He asked Evert Duyckinck: Hawthorne’s tale “A Select Party,” published in the July 1844 issue of the Democratic Review, also appeared in the first issue of the New York Morning News. Duyckinck solicited stories from Hawthorne for his magazine Arcturus 3 (Apr. 1842), p. 394.

31   “By manufacturing you”: John Louis O’Sullivan to NH, Mar. 21, 1845, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 285.

32   “A man in the midst”: n.d., AN, p. 253.

33   “Hawthorne is in a state”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, Apr. 19, 1845, MHS.

34   “The poet lives”: ED, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Democratic Review 16 (Apr. 1845), pp. 376–77.

35   “Hawthorne is dying”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, May 10, 1845, MHS.

36   “It sounds badly”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, May 31, 1845, MHS.

37   “Robinson Crusoe solitude”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, July 11, 1845, MHS.

38   “There could not possibly”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, July 11, 1845, MHS.

39   “Such is his character”: John Louis O’Sullivan to George Bancroft, Aug. 24, 1845, MHS.

40   Bridge would pay … Hawthorne would receive: See Personal Recollections, pp. 87–89.

41   “In this point”: Horatio Bridge, Journal of an African Cruiser, ed. Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1845), p. 164. The governor of Liberia was John Brown Russwurm, 1826 graduate of Bowdoin, fellow Athenaean, and acquaintance of Hawthorne and Bridge. See Patrick Brancaccio, “ ‘The Black Man’s Paradise’: Hawthorne’s Editing of the Journal of an African Cruiser,” New England Quarterly 53 (1980), pp. 23–41.

42   “My husband says”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 6, 1845, Berg.

43   “becomes less and less”: See [John O’Sullivan], “The Re-Annexation of Texas: In Its Influence on the Duration of Slavery,” Democratic Review 15 (July 1844), pp. 11–16. It’s important to note that O’Sullivan was a staunch supporter of Van Buren for the 1844 presidential nomination, which Van Buren, having opposed the annexation of Texas, lost. The pacifistic O’Sullivan also dreaded war with Mexico.

44   “knew nothing about slavery”: EPP to HB, June 4, 1887, quoted in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, p. 445.

45   “a patriarchal” … “would have been better”: “Old News,” in Tales, p. 257, originally published in installments in the February, March, and May 1835 issues of the New-England Magazine.

46   “Slavery, as it existed”: See “Old News,” in New-England Magazine 8 (Feb. 1835), pp. 81–88; (Mar. 1835), pp. 170–78; (May 1835), pp. 365–70. See also “Effect of Colour on Odours,” American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge 2 (July 1836), p. 468, where the author writes—with irony?—that “negroes should suffer more, in proportion to their numbers, than whites, by all sorts of pestilence, and unwholesome smell.” Even if ironic, the passage is cruel and unfunny.

47   “When the white man”: Journal of an African Cruiser, p. 164.

48   “It is quite an interesting”: See Emerson in His Journals, p. 356; Journal of an African Cruiser, p. 112.

49   “A civilized and educated”: NH to HB, Apr. 1, 1845, C XVI, p. 26.

50   “Though the burning”: Journal of an African Cruiser, p. 85.

51   Emerson, who shrugged off: SH to NH, Sept. 7, 1845, Berg. See also RWE to Carolyn Sturgis, Aug. 2, 1845, in The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8, 1845–59, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991), p. 44.

52   “promptly and forcibly”: NH to GH, Sept. 6, 1845, C XVI, p. 119.

53   Hawthorne eventually won: A fire destroyed much of the property at Brook Farm in March, just days before the suit was heard in Concord. Hawthorne claimed $800 in damages, and the court granted him $560.62 plus costs of $25.28. The judgment seems not to have been paid, then or later. See Hawthorne vs. Ripley and Dana, Mar. 9, 1846, University of Rochester Library. For a full discussion of Hawthorne’s suit, see Robert F. Metzdorf, “Hawthorne’s Suit Against Ripley and Dana,” American Literature 12 (1940), pp. 235–41.

54   “We are actually”: SH to LH, Sept. 1, 1845, Berg.

55   “I have got weaned”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 7, 1845, Berg.

56   Uncertain as wandering Arabs: “The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1148.

57   “with flying colors”: NH to HB, Oct. 7, 1845, C XVI, p. 122.

58   “I besieged Heaven”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 7, 1845, Berg. Sophia would pay room and board to William Manning, Mary Manning’s beneficiary. After her, the rooms at Herbert Street unoccupied by the Hawthornes were owned and rented out by him.

59   “Here I am again”: NH to HB, Oct. 7, 1845, C XVII, p. 122.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SALEM RECIDIVUS

1     “I am turned out”: NH to GH, June 8, 1849, C XVI, p. 273.

2     publishers of the Salem Advertiser: Varney Parsons & Co. to James K. Polk, Oct. 29, 1845, Personnel File of Nathaniel Hawthorne, record group 56, U.S. Treasury Department Records, National Archives and Records Service (hereafter cited as National Archives).

3     Even Benjamin Browne: H. L. Conolly to Thomas Bowles, Oct. 25, 1845, National Archives.

4     In gratitude, Hawthorne: Published in installments from January to September 1846. Hawthorne hoped to interest Duyckinck in their publication in book form, to no avail.

5     “I have grown considerable”: NH to HB, Mar. 1, 1846, C XVI, p. 148.

6     “Poor Hawthorne”: Charles Sumner to Elizabeth Bancroft, Jan. 9, 1846, [copy], MHS.

7     “What a devil”: NH to HB, Feb. 21, 1846, C XVI, p. 142.

8     “short stories that Evert Duyckinck … had solicited: ED to NH, Mar. 21, 1845, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL.

9     “MSS! MSS!” ED to NH, Oct. 2, 1845, Bowdoin.

10   “I have reached that point”: NH to ED, Dec. 24, 1845, C XVI, p.136.

11   “It is rather”: NH to ED, Jan. 24, 1846, C XVI, p. 140.

12   Then, in March: The political maneuvering had continued unabated. According to one Democratic Party member, G. W. Mullet, Hawthorne hadn’t been considered for the Custom House until arrangements had been concluded with others, which had to be undone. Mullet himself helped out by voluntarily withdrawing his application for the naval officer in favor of Hawthorne, and when the offer was rejected he managed to convince his friend Richard Lindsay to withdraw his name for surveyor, promising he’d do the same. They both then promoted Hawthorne’s candidacy for surveyor and that of Howard for naval officer. See G. W. Mullet to George Holden, Oct. 1, 1883, PE. See also Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller, The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury, 1989), p. 109: “James Polk recognized a political ornament when he saw one.”

13   “Ah,” writes Hawthorne: “The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1142.

14   “subserve some useful”: “The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1126.

15   “The treasure of intellectual gold”: The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1148.

16   “As a storyteller”: “The Old Manse,” in Tales, p. 1148.

17   In addition to the preface: Hawthorne continued to exclude “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” but not “Mrs. Bullfrog” or “Monsieur du Miroir,” both originally published in the 1837 Token, and “The Virtuoso’s Collection.” He did not, however, include more recent stories like “The Antique Ring,” “A Good Man’s Miracle,” or “A Book of Autographs.” The book sold in cloth as two-volumes-in-one for $1.25 and also appeared in printed paper wrappers, with the volumes sold separately or together.

18   “I am jogging”: NH to HB, Oct. 26, 1846, C XVI, p. 188.

19   “No masks deceive him”: See NH to ED, July 1, 1845, C XVI, p. 106. See also H. T. Tuckerman, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Lippincott’s Magazine 5 (May 1870), p. 502, and [William Henry Channing], “Mosses from an Old Manse,” Harbinger 3 (June 27, 1846), pp. 43–44, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 76.

20   “the specific remedy”: See [Charles Wilkins Webber], “Hawthorne,” American Whig Review 4 (Sept. 1846), pp. 296–316, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, pp. 79–93. In his long encomium, Webber elevated Hawthorne above all party lines, doubtless aware, all protestation to the contrary, of Hawthorne’s affiliation and friends. “We do not know, nor do we care, to what Party Nathaniel Hawthorne ostensibly belongs,” Webber postured, “—we should judge, not to any. If he has identified himself with any, it should be the Whig Party—for he is a Whig and can’t help himself. If it be the fact that he is ranked among the Loco-Focos [radical Democrats], it is the result of sheer accident or that indifference which is so characteristic of those Literary men of all countries who feel how much about the petty ends of Faction their sacred mission is, and accept from their Government—of whatever Party—whatever it has to offer, as a right.”

21   In her large review: SH had already cooled to Fuller, resenting the latter’s call for female independence and equality in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the book-length version of her essay in The Dial. “Altogether ignoble,” Sophia sneered. “I suspect a wife only can know how to speak with sufficient respect of man,” she told her mother, “—I think Margaret speaks of many things that should not be spoken of.” See SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 6, 1845, Berg.

22   “Hawthorne intimates”: [MF], “Mosses from an Old Manse,” New York Daily Tribune, June 22, 1846, p. 1

23   “the charm of womanhood” … “But she was not”: Apr. 3, 1858, FIN, pp. 156–57.

24   “Get a bottle”: Edgar Allan Poe, “Tale-Writing: Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book 35 (Nov. 1847), p. 256.

25   TO John Quincy Adams: See John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” Democratic Review 17 (July—Aug. 1845), pp. 2–10.

26   He liked his new life: NH to George William Curtis, June 12, 1846, courtesy Kent Bicknell.

27   “as good liquor”: Frank Sanborn, reminiscence, Aug. 28, 1901, Sanborn Collection, Concord Free Public Library.

28   Called the Black Prince: SH to Mrs. EPP, [Oct. 6, 1846], Huntington; Sophia’s letter contains the scribbling of names by NH: “Hawthorne Hawthorne Francis Hawthorne, Henry Hawthorne, Walter Hawthorne, Wilfred Hawthorne, George Hawthorne, Herbert Hawthorne, Arthur Hawthorne, Edward Hawthorne, Horace Hawthorne, Robert Hawthorne, Lionel Hawthorne, Bundleblock Hawthorne.” For the house on Chestnut Street, see Nevins S. Winfield, “The Homes and Haunts of Hawthorne,” New-England Magazine 9 (1893), p. 292.

29   Salem shipping was: See Luther S. Luedtke, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient, p. 19.

30   “This small income”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Dec. 19, 1847, Berg.

31   “as quiet up there”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. [9—]10, 1847, Berg.

32   As a matter of fact: Hawthorne’s reviews and short pieces have been collected in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, pp. 235–57: “Melville’s Typee,” Mar. 25, 1846; “Calvert’s Scenes and Thoughts in Europe and Dickens’s Travelling Letters,” Apr. 29, 1846; “Simms’s Views and Reviews; Hood’s Poems,” May 2, 1846; “Whittier’s Supernaturalism of New England,” Apr. 17, 1847; “A Ball at Ballardvale,” Oct. 6, 1847; “Evangeline,” Nov. 13, 1847; “A Salem Theatrical,” May 3, 1848; “A Salem Theatrical,” May 10, 1848; and later “Webber’s The Hunter-Naturalist,” Dec. 10, 1851.

33   Hawthorne asked Longfellow: NH to HWL, Nov. 11, 1847, C VI, p. 215; see Francis Shaw to NH, Jan. 26, 1848, Berg.

34   Yet Hawthorne strolled: NH to HWL, Nov. 11, 1847, CVI, p. 215.

35   “His taste was”: George Batchelor, “The Salem of Hawthorne’s Time,” Salem Gazette, Mar. 11 and 18, 1887.

36   “high & dry”: SH to MM, Oct. 15, 1848, Berg.

37   “I think your white guests”: SH to MM, Jan. [16], 1848, Berg. Though she was well intentioned, Mary Mann’s attitudes are not above reproach, for she contradictorily defended her action by noting that “the more I know of Miss Lee’s beautiful soul, which is snowy white before God … the more I mourn for her that it is clothed in such an integument, and the more glad I am, that I have had an opportunity of seating her at my table with the magnates of the land, and showing the respect I bear to merit irrespective of colour,” MM to SH, [Jan. 1848], Antioch.

38   He did; but that table: RH, memoir, Morgan.

39   “When shall you want”: NH to Charles Wilkins Webber, Dec. 14, 1848, C XVI, p. 251. The Centenary editors reasonably suggest that the story was “The Unpardonable Sin.” See J. Donald Crowley, “Historical Commentary” on The Snow-Image, C XI, pp. 382–83.

40   “In short, I now” … “I’m tired”: June 20, 1847, AN, p. 398.

41   “If it [language] is Babel”: Charles Kraitsir, Significance of the Alphabet (Boston: E. P. Peabody, 1846), p. 3.

42   The alphabet and language: Despite its cursory and often erroneous assumptions, Patricia Crain’s The Story of “A” (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000.), chap. 5, attempts to deal with these issues.

43   “But what shall we say”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 252.

44   “has broken all”: See EPP to Ann Sargent Gage, [Mar. 1849]; EPP to Ann Sargent Gage, Feb. 15, 1849, Gage Family, Additional Papers, AAS.

45   “I wonder he do”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 8–9, 1849, Berg.

46   “Every body seems”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 8–9, 1849, Berg.

47   “Though everybody respectable”: EPP to Ann Sargent Gage, Feb. 15, 1849, Gage Family, Additional Papers, AAS. Scandal clung to EPP, so much so that Henry James Jr., hearing of it, incorporated the Kraitsir affair into his fictionalized EPP in The Bostonians. See James, The Bostonians, p. 826: “There was a legend that an Hungarian had once possessed himself of her affections, and had disappeared after robbing her of everything she possessed. This, however, was very apocryphal, for she had never possessed anything, and it was open to grave doubt that she could have entertained a sentiment so personal.”

48   “Wondrous strength”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 176.

49   “The Photographic study”: SH to JTF, Aug. 19, 1866, BPL. Similarly, Norman Holmes Pearson believed Hawthorne “had started writing The Scarlet Letter before his dismissal (although not before the possibility of it became clear) and then put it aside as more suitable for a novel than a short tale.” See Norman Holmes Pearson to Dean A. Fales, Aug. 4, 1865, BY.

50   “at odd times”: William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, Horace Conolly recollections, copy, Bowdoin. The ample parallels between both novels and the tales written during this period suggest Conolly is right. Compare, for instance, the attempt in “Main-Street” to “give a reflex of the very life that is flitting past us!” and the point of view, says Hawthorne in The House of the Seven Gables, “in which this Tale comes under the Romantic definition, lies in the attempt to connect a by-gone time with the very Present that is flitting away from us” (The House of the Seven Gables, p. 351).

51   “rather went on with”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Mar. 8–9, 1849, Berg.

52   “Kings, princes and potentates”: Armstrong, Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian, p. 311. Her notorious divorce from Pierce Butler, who sued on the grounds of desertion, was argued by Hawthorne’s Whig ally in the Custom House fight, Rufus Choate, and it included allegations of Butler’s adultery as well as their fight over custody of the children; it may be yet another source for The Scarlet Letter.

53   “She will bear it”: NH to GH, June 8, 1849, CVI, p. 273.

54   Foul, cried the press: The standard compilation of relevant data can be found in Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Firing of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 114:2 (Apr. 1978), pp. 57–86.

55   “Not one of Mr. Hawthorne’s”: Quoted in “The Removal of Mr. Hawthorne,” Salem Register, June 20, 1849, p. 2.

56   “The office”; “I am satisfied”; Another supporter; “I should as soon”: Rufus Choate to William Meredith, June 9, 1849, National Archives; George Ticknor to William Meredith, June 19, 1849, National Archives; Amory Holbrook, June 12, 1849, National Archives; John O’Sullivan, June 22, 1849, National Archives.

57   “If they will pay”: NH to HWL, June 5, 1849, CVI, p. 270.

58   “He seems to be”: EPP to Mrs. EPP, June 15, 1849, Antioch.

59   “He is either to be”: SH to Mrs. EPP, June 21, 1849, Berg.

60   With Hawthorne intransigent: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody (father), July 4, 1848, Berg.

61   The Whig War Committee: Charles W. Upham to William Meredith, July 9, 1849, National Archives.

62   “supported by all”: Charles Upham et al., to William Meredith, June 25, 1849, National Archives.

63   “I was yesterday”: Edward Everett to William Meredith, June 27, 1849, MHS.

64   “on account of an ancient”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, July 4, 1849, Berg.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: SCARLET LETTERS

1     “to make such a defence”: NH to Horace Mann, Aug. 8, 1849, C XVI, p. 293.

2     “I tried to keep,” “I love my mother”: July 29, 1849, AN, p. 429.

3     “There was the deepest”: SH to MM, Aug. 12, 1849, Berg.

4     “And then I looked”: July 29, 1849, AN, p. 429.

5     “I hope to get”: SH to MM, Nov. 4, 1849, Berg.

6     “It is only paying”: GH to NH, Jan. 17, 1850, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, pp. 354–55.

7     “It is something else”: NH to GH, Jan. 20, 1850, C XVI, p. 310.

8     “He writes immensely”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 27, 1849, Berg.

9     Slated for a collection: NH to JTF, Jan. 15, 1850, C XVI, p. 306; see Yesterdays, pp. 48–51.

10   “I have heard”: SH to Richard Manning, Feb. 12, 1871, PE. Some years after Hawthorne’s death, Sophia accused Fields of cheating her of Hawthorne’s royalties.

11   “In the process of writing”: NH to JTF, Jan. 15, 1850, C XVI, p. 305.

12   “the inmost Me”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 121.

13   “My imagination,” “a little pile,” “I endeavored,” “that of a person”: The Scarlet Letter, pp. 148, 152, 153, 155.

14   “as if the devil”: NH to Horace Conolly, June 17, 1850, C XVI, p. 345.

15   “a citizen of somewhere else”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 157.

16   “What is he?” The Scarlet Letter, p. 127.

17   “neutral territory,” “so they lose,” “the cold”: The Scarlet Letter, pp. 149, 150.

18   “all in one tone”: NH to JTF, Nov. 3, 1850, C XVI, p. 371.

19   “zeal for God’s glory”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 232.

20   “we have wronged”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 182.

21   “Mr. Dimmesdale, whose”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 229.

22   The literary sources of The Scarlet Letter: See also Larry J. Reynolds, “The Scarlet Letter and Revolutions Abroad,” American Literature 57 (1985), pp. 44–67, for a cogent account of Hawthorne’s use of the revolutions of 1848.

23   In his 1837 tale: Early journal entries tell of the woman who, “by the old colony law, was condemned always to wear the letter A, sewn on her garment, in token of her having committed adultery.” See n.d., AN, p. 254. Hawthorne doubtless read of the practice in Joseph Felt’s Annals of Salem.

24   “What we did had”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 286.

25   “None so ready,” “In all season”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 256.

26   “It is remarkable,” “Was existence worth”: The Scarlet Letter, pp. 259–60.

27   “The world’s law,” “essential to keep her”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 259.

28   “beloved, but gone hence”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 149.

29   “There was wild and ghastly”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 261.

30   “of her own free,” “mutual happiness”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 344.

31   To some readers: See, for instance, the enormously influential Sacvan Bercovitch, The Office of “The Scarlet Letter” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991); see also Gary Scharnhorst, ed., The Critical Response to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1992).

32   “A book one reads”: MM to Horace Mann, Mar. 20, 1850, MHS.

33   “To tell you the truth”: NH to HB, Feb. 4, 1850, C XVI, p. 311.

34   “Mr. Fields!”: SH to EPP, [Feb. 3, 1850], Berg.

35   Exhilarated, Fields: See SH to EPP, [Feb. 3, 1850], Berg.

36   “Nathaniel’s fame”: SH to LH, Apr. 28, 1850, Berg.

37   “Glorious” … “& raise”: JTF to ED, Mar. 5, 1850, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL.

38   “If I escape”: NH to HB, Apr. 13, 1850, C XVI, p. 329.

39   “The only remarkable”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 119.

40   “directly through”: [Edwin Percy Whipple], “Review of New Books,” Graham’s Magazine 36:5 (May 1850), pp. 345–46, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 124.

41   “He perpetuates bad morals”: [Arthur Cleveland Coxe], “The Writings of Hawthorne,” Church Review and Ecclesiastical Register 3:4 (Jan. 1851), in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 146.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE UNEVEN BALANCE

1     “Thou didst much amiss”: NH to SH, Apr. 26, 1850, C XVI, p. 333.

2     And with the children: Letters from MM to Horace Mann, Mar. [15]—23, 1850, MHS, do not suggest that Sophia Hawthorne had suffered another miscarriage, as sometimes alleged. See Miller, Salem Is My Dwelling Place, p. 551.

3     “I detest this town”: NH to Horace Mann, Aug. 8, 1849, C XVI, p. 293; NH to HB, Feb. 4, 1850, C XVI, p. 312.

4     “To give up the ocean”: Quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 353, Sept. 2, 1849.

5     “I infinitely prefer”: NH to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Sept. 5, 1851, C XVI, p. 481.

6     “Had this wish”: HHC, p. 20.

7     “Belladonna finally conquered”: SH to Mrs. EPP, June 9, 1850, Berg.

8     “with uneven floors”: Quoted in Franklin B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1909), vol. 2, p. 523.

9     She hung her reproductions … In the background: SH described it thus, SH to EPP, Aug. 8, 1850, Berg. See also Oct. 13 [1850], AN, p. 298.

10   “I find it very agreeable”: NH to Zachariah Burchmore, June 9, 1850, C XVI, p. 340.

11   “Perhaps he may remain”: HB to FP, Nov. 4, 1850, LC.

12   “Mr. Hawthorne thinks”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 1, 1850, Berg.

13   “the daily bulletin”: Quoted in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, vol. 5, p. 194.

14   “Think of the dry”: Fanny Longfellow, Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters and Journals of Fanny Appleton Longfellow, ed. Edward Wagenecht (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956), p. 159.

15   “I pity those”: Quoted in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, vol. 6, p. 77.

16   Approaching Fire Island: Details of the shipwreck in various books often contradict one another, so I have reconstructed events from various newspaper accounts in the New York press.

17   “Oh was ever any thing”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 1, 1850, Berg.

18   “I am really glad”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 10, 1850, Berg.

19   Evert Duyckinck, soon to visit: ED to Margaret Duyckinck, Aug. 9, 1850, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL.

20   The date was set: See Cornelius Mathews, “Several Days in Berkshire,” Literary World 7 (Aug. 24 and 31 and Sept. 7, 1850), pp. 145–47, 166, 185–86.

21   Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes: Mathews, “Several Days in Berkshire,” p. 145.

22   Later James Fields: Yesterdays, pp. 52–53; in addition to Mathews and Fields, I have used J. T. Headley, “Berkshire Scenery,” New-York Observer, Sept. 14, 1850, and the letters of ED to Margaret Duyckinck, NYPL, and SH to EPP, [summer 1850], Berg, to reconstruct events.

23   “remarkable literary column”; “Hawthorne was among”: See Headley, “Berkshire Scenery”; Yesterdays, p. 53.

24   “as if the Devil”: SH to EPP, Aug. 8, 1850, Berg.

25   “Mr. Typee is interesting”: SH to EPP, Aug. 8, 1850, Berg.

26   Defoe on the ocean: ED to George Duyckinck, Sept. 5, 1849, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL.

27   “He is married”: SH to EPP, [Sept. 1850], Berg.

28   “We landsmen”: NH to HB, [Dec. 1846], C XVI, p. 195.

29   “tolerant of codes”: HM, Correspondence, ed. Lynn Horth (Chicago: Northwestern Univ. Press and Newberry Library, 1993), p. 186; “Melville’s Typee,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 235.

30   Melville was no landsman: NH to HB, [Dec. 1846], C XVI, p. 195.

31   “Already I feel,” “He expands”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses, by a Virginian spending July in Vermont,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 112.

32   “the rich and rare”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 106.

33   “Some may start,” “For in this world”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 108.

34   “For spite of all”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 108. For a cogent discussion of the racial implications of this metaphor, see Bruce Neal Simon, “The Race for Hawthorne” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1998).

35   “derives its force”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, pp. 107–8.

36   “What I feel most moved”: HM to NH, [June 1], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 192.

37   Recognizing a fellow traveler: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 110.

38   “Let him write”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 111.

39   “For genius, all over”: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 111.

40   “There were few”: HHC, p. 33.

41   “A man with a true”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 4, 1850, Berg.

42   “careful not to interrupt”: SH to EPP, [Sept. 1850], Berg.

43   “He is an invaluable”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Oct. 24, 1852, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

44   “When conversing, he is full”: Jay Leyda, The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville (1951; reprint, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 393–94.

45   “No writer ever put”: NH to ED, Aug. 29, 1850, C XVI, p. 362.

46   During the next fifteen months: See also Brenda Wineapple, “Hawthorne and Melville; or, The Ambiguities,” ESQ 46:1, 2 (2000), pp. 75–98. Although this issue is devoted in its entirety to the Hawthorne-Melville friendship, it focuses primarily on Melville’s end of the equation, repeating much of the tired speculation of Miller. More useful is Hershel Parker, Herman Melville, vol. 2, 1851–1891 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 130–32, 136–61.

47   “had never lost”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 504.

48   “There was something of the woman”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 667.

49   He likely burned them: See HM to NH, July 22, 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 199, where Melville suggests Hawthorne’s letters to him were unguarded, lengthy, and well received.

50   “They shiver”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 472.

51   “their deeper meanings”: HM to ED, Feb. 12, 1851, quoted in Melville, Correspondence, p. 181.

52   Hawthorne called Moby-Dick: A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, C VII, p. 169: “On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman Melville, shaping out the gigantic conception of his ‘White Whale,’ while the gigantic shape of Graylock looms upon him from his study-window.”

53   “You are aware”: JTF to NH, Aug. 20, 1850, Berg.

54   “I must not pull”: NH to JTF, Aug. 23, 1850, C XVI, p. 359.

55   “His form is only”: JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Sept. 30, 1851, quoted in James C. Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1953), p. 209.

56   “We intend to push”: JTF to NH, Jan. 14, 1851, Berg.

57   “with the minuteness” … He also wished: NH to JTF, Nov. 3, 1850, C XVI, p. 371.

58   “There are points”: NH to JTF, Dec. 9, 1850, C XVI, p. 378.

59   He did compose …“for a good many years”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, p. 1150.

60   “Instead of passion”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, pp. 1151, 1152.

61   “The book, if you would”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, pp. 1151–52.

62   “Every sentence, so far”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, p. 1152.

63   “The spirit of my”: See, for instance, EN, vol. 1, p. 193.

64   “Nobody would think”: NH to SH, Jan. 1, 1840, C XVI, p. 395.

65   “on the internal evidence”: Preface to Twice-told Tales, in Tales, p. 1153.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF PROPERTY

1     “The book is an affliction”: quoted in Joel Pfister, The Production of Personal Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1991), p. 157.

2     “a great deal more”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 353.

3     “I’m no more a witch”: Loggins, The Hawthornes, p. 133.

4     “The impalpable claim”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 366. More recently the Hathorne clan included an eccentric sister and a brother, both unmarried, and a quarrel over a will that mysteriously disappeared.

5     “The wrong-doing of one generation”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 352.

6     “is to be transformed”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 383.

7     “where everything is free”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 508.

8     “In this republican country”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 384.

9     Ebe saw the Reverend Charles Upham: EH to NH, May 3, 1851, Berg. So did others. See George Holden, Aug. 18, 1883, notes, PE: according to Elizabeth Peabody (an unreliable source), Upham was annoyed that Hawthorne didn’t attend his church, although the Hawthorne family had a pew. Another story, also from Peabody, has Upham advising Hawthorne before his marriage that “a wife should be kept in subjection and brought up to wait upon the husband, [but] that this would be found especially desirable in the case of Sophia, as she had been in delicate health, and therefore petted and indulged at home.” Hearing this, Hawthorne was indignant—again, according to Peabody.

10   “I dwell in it”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 510.

11   “Shall we never”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 509. See also N.d., AN, p. 252: “To represent the influence which Dead Men have among living affairs;—for instance, a Dead Man controls the disposition of wealth; a Dead Man sits on the judgment-seat, and the living judges do but repeat his decisions; Dead Men’s opinions in all things control the living truth; we believe in Dead Men’s religion; we laugh at Dead Men’s jokes; we cry at Dead Men’s pathos; everywhere and in all matters, Dead Men tyrannize inexorably over us.”

12   “once in every half century”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 511.

13   “a house and a moderate”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 486.

14   “No great mistake”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 621.

15   Doubtless begun as one: See NH to JTF, Jan. 15, 1850, C XVI, p. 306. He counted circa two hundred manuscript pages to be included with “The Scarlet Letter” for a volume of tales. See Chapter 15.

16   “a cough took up”: Quoted in Edward W. Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 211.

17   “There is still a faint”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 589. The passage seems to me to anticipate the “Time Passes” section of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse; Woolf clearly knew of Hawthorne’s work, and her father, Leslie Stephen, wrote eloquently of him in “Hawthorne and the Lessons of Romance,” Cornhill Magazine 26 (Dec. 1872), pp. 717–34.

18   “There is a certain”: HM to NH, [Apr. 16], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 186.

19   “his atmospherical medium”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 351.

20   “a more natural and healthy”: NH to ED, Apr. 27, 1851, C XVI, p. 421. See Holgrave’s observation, when he reads from a story he’d written: “As one method of throwing it [his emotion] off, I have put an incident of the Pyncheon family-history, with which I happen to be acquainted, into the form of a legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine” (The House of the Seven Gables, p. 512).

21   “How slowly I have”: NH to HB, Mar. 15, 1851, C XVI, p. 407.

22   “There is a grand truth”: HM to NH, [Apr. 16], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 186.

23   “mulled wine”: HM to NH, [Jan. 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 176.

24   “I mean to continue”: HM to NH, [June 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 190.

25   “fresh, sincere” … “much of concession”: SH, Apr. 11, 1851, diary, Berg; SH to EPP, May 10, 1851, Berg.

26   “So upon the whole”: HM to NH, [June i], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 193.

27   “Though I wrote”: HM to NH, [June i], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 192.

28   But he approved: HM to NH, [Apr. 16], 1851, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 185.

29   “A weird, wild book”; “for having shown”: HWL, journal, Apr. 16, 1851, MS Am 1340(204), Houghton; NHHW, vol. 1, p. 391

30   “his lantern”: [ED], “House of the Seven Gables,” Literary World 8 (Apr. 26, 1851), p. 334.

31   From England: “The House of the Seven Gables,” Athenaeum 24 (May 1851), in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 164.

32   “It is evident”: EH to NH, May 3, 1851, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

33   “the daughter of my age”: NH to HB, July 22, 1851, C XVI, p. 462; NH to EPP May 25, 1851, C XVI, p. 441.

34   “Mr. Hawthorne’s passions”: JH, notebook, Morgan.

35   “I have never yet seen”: NH to EPP, May 25, 1851, C XVI, p. 440.

36   Hawthorne, who earned: See The Cost Books of Ticknor and Fields, 1832–1858, ed. W. S. Tryon and William Charvat (New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 1949), pp. 188–203.

37   “I feel remote”: NH to HWL, May 8, 1851, C XVI, p. 431.

38   “Mr. Hawthorne, even for a man”: Godfrey Greylock [Joseph E. A. Smith], Taghconic; or, Letters and Legends about our Summer Home (Boston: Redding, 1852), p. 101; The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8, p. 265.

39   “I dare say”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 7, 1851, Berg.

40   “He seems older”: Ellery Channing to Ellen Channing, Oct. 30, 1851, MHS.

41   “time and eternity”: Aug. 1, 1851, AN, p. 448.

42   Should his writing: SH to EPP, Oct. 2, 1851, Berg; NH to HB, July 22, 1851, C XVI, p. 462.

43   “I find that”: July 29 [1851], AN, p. 439.

44   Sophia thought Caroline: See SH to EPP, fragment, [Aug. or Sept. 1858], Berg.

45   She sent a note: See NH to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Sept. 5, 1851, C XVI, p. 480–82.

46   “The right of purchase”: NH to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Sept. 5, 1851, C XVI, p. 483.

47   “I am sick to death”: NH to JTF, Sept. 13, 1851, C XVI, p. 486.

48   “Did Mr. Hawthorne”: SH to MM, Sept. 23, 1851, Berg.

49   Since Mary and her family: Horace Mann had run on the Free-Soil ticket, having alienated Webster and other Whigs by his opposition to the Compromise of 1850.

50   “When a man is making”: NH to HB, Oct. 11, 1851, C XVI, p. 495.

51   “I have not, as you”: NH to Zachariah Burchmore, July 15, 1851, C XVI, p. 456.

52   “How glad I am”: NH to HWL, May 8, 1851, C XVI, p. 431.

53   “This Fugitive Law”: NH to HWL, May 8, 1851, C XVI, p. 431.

54   “bade farewell to all”: NH to Zachariah Burchmore, July 15, 1851, C XVI, p. 456.

55   “d—for office”: NH to Zachariah Burchmore, July 15, 1851, C XVI, p. 456.

56   “Ticknor & Co. promise”: NH to SH, Sept. 23, 1851, C XVI, p. 492.

57   “I begin to unlove”: SH to EPP, Oct. 2, 1851, Berg.

58   Early in November: See Hershel Parker, Herman Melville, vol. 1, 1819–1851 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 879–83.

59   “I have written a wicked”: HM to NH, [Nov. 17, 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 212.

60   “Your heart beat”: HM to NH, [Nov. 17, 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 212.

61   “What a book Melville”: NH to ED, Dec. 1, 1851, C XVI, p. 508.

62   “Don’t write a word”: HM to NH, [Nov. 17, 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 213.

63   “It is strange”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 163.

64   “But truth is ever”: HM to NH, [Nov. 17, 1851], in Melville, Correspondence, p. 213.

65   “a person of very gentlemanly”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 163.

66   On a sunless November morning: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 430. The story seems apocryphal, for when Caroline Tappan suggested she leave an annoying pet rabbit in the woods, Hawthorne dryly observed that “she would not for the world have killed Bunny, although she would have exposed him to the certainty of lingering starvation, without scruple or remorse.” He and Julian rescued the rabbit the next day. See Aug. 2 [1851], AN, p. 451.

67   “I suppose it is”: EH to LH, [fall 1852], PE.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: CITIZEN OF SOMEWHERE ELSE

1     As promised, Fields: See, for instance, JTF to NH, Mar. 12, 1851, Berg: “To ‘keep the pot boiling’ has always been the endeavor of all true Yankees from the days of the Colonies down to the present era. Will it now be a good plan for you to get ready a volume of tales for the fall, to include those uncollected stories, The Snow Image, the piece in the mag. got up by Audubon’s son & friend, etc. etc. and add to it any others not yet printed?”

2     A trim collection: The Snow-Image and Other Twice-told Tales cost seventy-five cents and gave Hawthorne 10 percent on royalty. See The Cost Books of Ticknor and Fields, pp. 210, 234, 409.

3     “If anybody is responsible,” “I sat down”: Preface to The Snow-Image, in Tales, p. 1155.

4     With his family of five: SH to LH, Dec. 1, 1851, C XVI, p. 511.

5     “to put an extra touch”: NH to HB, July 25, 1851, C XVI, p. 462.

6     “the most romantic,” “essentially a day-dream”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 634.

7     “The Shakers are”: Aug. 8 [1851], AN, p. 465.

8     “Insincerity in a man’s”: “Lost Notebook,” n.d., in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 173.

9     “Persons of marked individuality”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 686.

10   Hawthorne growled: See Mrs. EPP to EPP, Jan. 12, 1851, Antioch; SH to EPP, Feb. 3, 1851, Berg.

11   “felt Margaret Fuller’s presence”: Maria Mitchell, Jan. 30, 1858, journal, BY. In a sense, Hawthorne created his own memorial to Fuller in Blithedale, just as, shortly after Fuller’s death, her friends James Freeman Clarke, William Henry Channing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson set to work on a multi-volume collection, Memoirs, celebrating Fuller’s life through a highly selective tissue of her letters and journal entries. Hawthorne did not contribute; one supposes, however, that he was asked.

12   “Did you ever see”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 683.

13   But by drawing on: Zenobia’s drowning death comes as much from Ophelia’s as from Hawthorne’s own journal entries made after the drowning of Martha Hunt.

14   “They have no heart”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 693.

15   “cold, spectral monster”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 679.

16   Coverdale spies: The Blithedale Romance, p. 672.

17   “strike hands,” “never again”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 749.

18   “colorless life”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 846.

19   And with no native: NH to SH, July 10, 1840, C XV, p. 481.

20   “While inclining”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 694.

21   “No sagacious man”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 755.

22   “In all my stories”: NH to Charles Putnam, Sept. 16, 1851, C XVI, p. 488.

23   “He thinks Garrison”: MM to Horace Mann, Aug. 15, 1852, MHS.

24   “He is very anxious”: Mrs. EPP to MM, Feb. 25, 1852, Antioch.

25   Ice now … the raggediest: NH to ED, June 15, 1852, C XV, p. 548. Hawthorne bought the house from the trustees for Mrs. Abigail Alcott and her cousin Samuel Sewall, who owned the title, with the approval of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hawthorne also purchased from Emerson eight acres of farmland across the road for five hundred dollars.

26   “I never feel”: Study for “Septimius,” n.d., Berg, quoted in Elixir of Life, p. 499. No one has definitively dated the notes to the “Septimius” manuscripts or the manuscripts themselves. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the romance begun in October 1852 wasn’t a very early version of these manuscripts, inspired by Thoreau’s comment on the Wayside. This romance, or notes for it, may or may not still exist.

27   The water was pure: SH to Mrs. EPP, [spring 1852], courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

28   “I hate the man”: See [E. P. Whipple], review of Yesterdays, Boston Globe (Mar. 7, 1872), pp. 4–5.

29   “ ‘Miles Coverdale’s Three Friends’ ”: NH to E. P. Whipple, May 2, 1852, C XVI, p. 536.

30   Fields responded: SH to LH, July 17, 1852, Berg.

31   “Especially at this day”: HM to NH, July 15, 1852, in Melville, Correspondence, p. 231.

32   “the moody silences”: William Pike to NH, July 18, 1852, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

33   “You have a formidable”: Washington Irving to NH, Aug. 9, 1852, Houghton, quoted in C XVI, p. 571.

34   “Would he paint”: [George Eliot or Rufus Griswold], “Contemporary Literature of America,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 207.

35   “I have felt”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Oct. 31, 1852, Berg.

36   “Let us hope”: JTF to Mary Mitford, Oct. 24, 1852, Huntington.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE MAIN CHANCE

1     “My own experience”: SH to Mrs. EPP, n.d., BY, quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 483.

2     “It is mysterious”: Mrs. EPP to SH, Mar. 20 [1848], Berg.

3     Emerson would call: The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 15, p. 60.

4     As brigadier general in the Mexican War: I am indebted to Roy Franklin Nichols, Franklin Pierce (1931; reprint, Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), and Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1991), for background on Pierce and the general anecdotes in this chapter.

5     “just an average man”: GH to Frances Lieber, June 9, 1852, Huntington.

6     “dared to love”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 292.

7     “He has a subtle faculty”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, p. 605.

8     “but he’ll be monstrous”: Quoted in Conway, Life of Hawthorne, p. 146.

9     “it has occurred to me”: NH to FP, June 9, 1852, C XVI, p. 545.

10   The dark-browed writer: My account is based on the seemingly reliable account in Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Men and of Some Women (New York: Harper & Bros., 1874), p. 159; a far less reliable account appears in Henry T. Tuckerman, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Lippincott’s Magazine 5 (May 1870), p. 505. The latter part of the story was told to James Russell Lowell by Pierce himself in 1860; see James Russell Lowell to Grace Norton, misdated June 12, 1860, in The Letters of James Russell Lowell, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (New York: Harper & Bros., 1894), vol. 1, p. 303.

11   Hawthorne reportedly held: On the gathering at the Wayside, see Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, vol. 2, p. 514. Sanborn not only reports long after the fact, he was not even an eyewitness; nonetheless, Concord locals were likely invited to the Wayside to meet Pierce, and certainly party operatives were always welcome. Thoreau remembers Pierce visiting the Wayside that July. See The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, ed. Walter Harding and Carl Bode (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1958), p. 283. [Zachariah Burchmore] to NH, July 9, 1852, NHHS; FP to Charles O’Connor, June 23, 1852, courtesy Kent Bicknell.

12   Fields’s biographer insists: Given the tenor of the Atlantic Monthly, I disagree.

13   “intimate through life”: NH to JTF, June 17, 1852, C XVI, p. 551.

14   “I told him I hoped”: LH to EH, July 16, 1852, Berg.

15   If Louisa’s disdain: Early biographers of Hawthorne also tended toward this view, so uncomfortable were they with the political side of Hawthorne’s career and personality. See, for instance, Moncure Conway, The Life of Hawthorne, p. 145, who not only assumes Pierce forced Hawthorne to write the biography—“Hawthorne has an angry consciousness that he has been persuaded to descend from the sanctum of his genius”—but adds, more honestly, that “to the present writer it appears that Hawthorne descended from his height to write the book, and remained on that lower level while writing it.”

16   On the afternoon of July 28: The summary of events is based on several matching reports of the accident in the New York press.

17   As soon as he could … Then he shut himself: For these events, see SH to Mrs. EPP, July 30, 1852, Berg.

18   “I was glad”: SH to Mrs. EPP, Aug. 5, 1852, Berg.

19   “We are politicians now”: NH to WDT, Aug. 25, 1852, C XVI, p. 588.

20   Ticknor began to advertise: Pierce had initially welcomed and encouraged David W. Bartlett before turning against him. Regardless, Bartlett’s Life of Gen. Franklin Pierce, of New-Hampshire, the Democratic President of the United States (Buffalo, N.Y.: G. H. Derby, 1852) did appear before Hawthorne’s, although Ticknor made sure that Hawthorne’s gleaned the lion’s share of reviews and sales. For an account of Bartlett, see Scott Caspar, “The Two Lives of Franklin Pierce,” American Literary History 5:2 (summer 1993), pp. 203–30.

21   “Being so little” … “customary occupations”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 273.

22   Hawthorne, however, interpreted … bumptious: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 289.

23   “a thorough, unmitigated” … “Is Hawthorne”: Horace Mann to MM, July 26, 1852, MHS.

24   “If he makes out”: Horace Mann to MM, Aug. 20, 1852, MHS.

25   “higher law”: See Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), vol. 1, pp. 298–302.

26   “unshaken advocate”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 350.

27   So did Pierce: In the winter of 1852, when pressed, Pierce admitted he considered the law inhumane. Once nominated, however, he dodged the issue and pretended he couldn’t remember what he had said.

28   “The fiercest, the least scrupulous”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, pp. 350–51.

29   “by some means impossible”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 352.

30   “There is no instance,” “The evil would be certain”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 351.

31   “Little as we know”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 698.

32   “whose condition it aimed”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 351. Compare Sophia Hawthorne’s views: “As regards the Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Law, it is his [Pierce’s] opinion that these things must be now allowed—for the sake of the slave! One of his most strenuous supporters said that, ‘viewed in itself, the Fugitive Slave Law was the most abominable of wrongs’; but that it was the inevitable fruit of the passionate action of the Abolitionists, and, like slavery itself, must be for the present tolerated. And so with the Compromise,—that it is the least of the evils presented. It has been said, as if there were no gainsaying it, that no man but Webster could ever be such a fool as really to believe the Union was in danger. But General Pierce has lately, with solemn emphasis, expressed the same dread; and it certainly seems that the severance of the Union would be the worst thing for the slave” (NHHW, vol. 1, p. 483). One wonders if Pierce’s “strenuous supporter” was Hawthorne himself.

33   “patriarchal, and almost a beautiful”: “Old News,” in Tales, p. 257. See Chapter 13.

34   His conscious sympathies: Hawthorne expresses a strange sort of (supremacist) sympathy, even if one reads him ironically, in the 1837 sketch “Sunday at Home.” Describing church congregations dispersing after a Sabbath service, he writes: “No; here, with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear, the minister, who softens his severe visage, and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them, the most captivating picture of bliss in Heaven, is—‘There we shall be white!’ ” (in Tales, p. 419).

35   “preserving our sacred Union”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 370.

36   “The biography has cost”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, p. 605. As for Sophia, she stood fast. “He does the thing he finds right, & lets the consequences fly.” SH to Mrs. EPP, Sept. 10, 1852, Berg.

37   “There are scores”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, pp. 605–6.

38   Reviews of Hawthorne’s book: “New Publications,” Springfield Republican, Sept. 20, 1852, p. 2; United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Sept. 31, 1852, pp. 276–88; “Literary Notices,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1852, p. 857; “Degradation of Literary Talent,” New York Herald, Sept. 23, 1852, p. 1; “Hawthorne’s Memoir of Mr. Pierce,” New York Times, Sept. 25, 1852, p. 1.

39   “All my cotemporaries”: NH to SH, Sept. 3, 1852, C XVI, p. 593.

40   “He is deep”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, p. 606.

41   “I love him”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, p. 607.

42   At his request, Mrs. Healy: George Healy to George Holden, Sept. 1885, PE.

43   “in the Scarlet Letter vein”: JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Oct. 24, 1852, Huntington. Scholars surmise that Hawthorne may have seriously entertained Melville’s suggestion that he write the story of Agatha Hatch Robertson, which Melville had first encountered during a trip to Nantucket the summer before. A patient Griselda, Robertson nursed a shipwrecked sailor back to health, married him, and then waited for him to return to her—although he’d married another woman. There’s room for speculation regarding Hawthorne’s plans but no clear indication as to what he may have had in mind, although Fields’s letter is suggestive.

44   “I am beginning to take”: NH to HWL, Oct. 5, 1852, C XVI, p. 602.

45   “Do not let my name”: NH to Zachariah Burchmore, Dec. 9, 1852, C XVI, p. 620.

46   “A subtile boldness”: NH to R. H. Stoddard, Mar. 16, 1853, C XVI, p. 649.

47   Nothing came of Hawthorne’s efforts: Leyda, The Melville Log, p. 464. During this visit Melville continued to press Hawthorne to write the story of Agatha Hatch Robertson, but Hawthorne evidently turned it down, possibly because of his own consular plans. Hershel Parker assumes that Melville himself used the story in the now lost manuscript Isle of the Cross. See Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, vol. 2, 1851–1891 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 136–61. Doubtless the subject of a possible appointment for Melville from Pierce was broached at this time, although the larger Melville family did not begin lobbying until the spring; see also Laurie Robertson-Lorant, Melville (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1996), p. 327.

48   “However, I failed only”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 162.

49   “several invitations”: NH to HB, Oct. 13, 1852, C XVI, p. 605; Happy Country This America: The Travel Diary of Henry Arthur Bright, ed. Anne Henry Ehrenpreis (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1978), p. 398.

50   “We shall have no more”: JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Dec. 11, 1852, Huntington.

51   “Bargain & sale”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Mar. 20, 1853, Berg.

52   He torched old letters: JTF to ED, Apr. 16, 1853, Duyckinck Family Papers, NYPL; June 1852, AN, p. 552.

CHAPTER TWENTY: THIS FARTHER FLIGHT

1     “Then this farther flight”: Sept. 2, 1853, EN, vol. 1, pp. 33–34.

2     “Partly necessity”: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 429.

3     proofs for Tanglewood Tales: First published in England by Chapman and Hall, in America the book was published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields and contained six stories: “The Minotaur,” “The Pygmies,” “The Dragon’s Teeth, “Circe’s Palace,” “The Pomegranate Seeds,” and “The Golden Fleece.”

4     “Who else could have”: Moncure D. Conway, Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), p. 135.

5     “A life of much smoulder”: NH to JTF, Feb. 25, 1864, C XVIII, p. 641

6     “I am a good deal”: NH to JTF, Apr. 13, 1854, C XVII, p. 201.

7     “The American stamp”: NHHW, vol. 1, p. 434.

8     “I do not like England”: UH to Rebecca Manning, n.d., PE.

9     “To tell you the truth”: NH to WDT, July 22, 1853, C XVII, p. 101.

10   “There we shall remain”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Aug. 6, 1853, Berg.

11   Hawthorne had already given: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Aug. 9 and 17, 1853, Berg. See Aug. 15, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 17: “After the removal of the cloth, the Mayor gave various toasts, prefacing each with some remarks—the first of course, the Sovereign, after which ‘God Save the Queen’ was sung; and there was something rather ludicrous in seeing the company stand up and join the chorus, their ample faces glowing with wine, enthusiasm, perspiration, and loyalty.”

12   “People who have not heard”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Oct. 21, 1853, Berg.

13   Each morning, he left: Aug. 9, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 13.

14   Located in the Washington Buildings: NH to William Pike, Sept. 13, 1853, C XVII, p. 119; NH to Henry Bright, Jan. 4, 1858, C XVIII, p. 133.

15   An American eagle: Aug. 4, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 4.

16   “The duties of the office”: “Consular Experiences,” in OOH, p. 31.

17   “The autograph of a living author”: Aug. 10, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 16.

18   “instead of Mr. Nobody”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Aug. 26, 1853, Berg.

19   Tea alone cost: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Oct. 4, 1853, Berg.

20   “We do not live”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Oct. 4, 1853, Berg.

21   “So very far from this”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, Oct. 4, 1853, Berg.

22   “we live as economically”: SH to MM, Mar. 17–24, 1855, Berg.

23   “kick the office”: NH to WDT, Dec. 8, 1853, C XVII, p. 152.

24   “got hold of something”: Aug. 20, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 19.

25   “Or perhaps the image”: June 22, 1855, EN, vol. 1, p. 188.

26   “My ancestor left England”: Oct. 9, 1854, EN, vol. 1, p. 138.

27   “How comfortable Englishmen”: Feb. 19, 1855, EN, vol. 1, p. 156. A fine study of Hawthorne’s changing attitudes toward the English is Frederick Newberry, Hawthorne’s Divided Loyalties (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1987); accounts of his daily activities can be found in Raymona E. Hull, Nathaniel Hawthorne: The English Experience, 1853–1964 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1980), still the best book of its kind despite the more recent but compendious Bryan Homer, An American Liaison: Leamington Spa and the Hawthornes, 1855–1864 (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1997).

28   “I HATE England”: NH to WDT, Nov. 9, 1855, C XVII, p. 401.

29   “I set my foot on”: July 4, 1855, EN, vol. 1, p. 222.

30   They had read Frederika Bremer’s: Frederika Bremer, The Homes of the New World; Impressions of America, trans. Mary Howitt (1853; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), vol. 2, p. 597.

31   William Story told: The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, 1836–1854, ed. Meredith B. Taymond and Mary Rose Sullivan (Winfield, Kan.: Wedgestone Press, 1983), vol. 3, p. 391; JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Sept. 30, 1851, Huntington; The Correspondence of Mary Russell Mitford with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, ed. Elizabeth Lee (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1914), p. 194.

32   James Fields told; “Was Hawthorne aware”: JTF to Mary Russell Mitford, Sept. 30, 1851, Huntington; The Correspondence of Mary Russell Mitford with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, p. 216; William Story to James Russell Lowell, Aug. 10, 1853, quoted in Browning to His American Friends, ed. Gertrude Reese Hudson (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), p. 277.

33   “Bright was the illumination”: OOH, p. 39.

34   Bright took Hawthorne; “interesting, sincere”: Aug. 4, 1853, EN, vol. 1, p. 4; Memories, p. 229.

35   “poor old man” … “You examine”: NH to Henry Bright, Apr. 4, 1854, C XVII, p. 198

36   “He wants to know”: SH to EPP, [Sept. 1854], Berg.

37   “I have had enough”: NH to HWL, Aug. 30, 1854, C XVII, p. 250.

38   According to Hawthorne; according to Sophia: See NH to HB, Mar. 30, 1854, C XVII, pp. 187–89; Memories, pp. 281–83.

39   “those Jackasses at Washington”: NH to WDT, Apr. 30, 1854, C XVII, p. 210.

40   If passed by Congress … not nearly: SH to EPP, Mar. 24, 1855, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

41   “For God’s sake, bestir”: NH to WDT, Mar. 30, 1854, C XVII, p. 190.

42   Hoping Pierce might forestall: Pierce objected to the bill on constitutional grounds, arguing that it abrogated executive prerogative, ceding it to the legislative branch of government. See Graham Stuart, The Department of State (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 120–21, and Warren Ilchman, Professional Diplomacy in the United States (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 33.

43   “H. ought to”: HB to WDT, Feb. 26, 1855, Berg.

44   “He shall, I think”: “Study i,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 473. I agree with the Centenary editors, who speculate that this sketch must have been written circa April 1855, given its similarity to an entry in his English Notebooks dated April 12, 1855, vol. 1, p. 163. I also believe the two other studies for the story, numbered by the Centenary editors “2” and “3,” may have been written sometime during Hawthorne’s consular service, for I imagine he began outlining ideas for the American claimant just when he feared he would be leaving his consular office prematurely.

45   “where no change”: June 24, 1855, EN, vol. 1, pp. 191–92.

46   “Royalty”: Mar. 24, 1856, EN, vol. 1, p. 429.

47   “Blood issued”: Apr. 7, 1855, EN, vol. 1, p. 160.

48   The image was tailor-made: See AN, p. 239: “The print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a town.”

49   He’d been happy … “quite failed”: Dec. 28, 1854, EN, vol. 1, p. 148.

50   “Now we are fixtures”: SH to MM, May 9–10, 1855, Berg. See also SH to EPP Mar. 24, 1855, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

51   “I have a right”: NH to WDT, May 27, 1855, C XVII, p. 347; NH to WDT, June 9, 1855, C XVII, p. 353.

52   Sarah Clarke visited: MM to Horace Mann, Aug. 7, 1856, MHS.

53   “The doctors said I must”: SH to MM, Nov. 13, 1855, Berg.

54   “This is the first”: Oct. 11, 1855, EN, vol. 1, pp. 388, 390.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION

1     “All women, as authors”: NH to JTF, Dec. 11, 1852, C XVI, p. 624. The ostensible catalyst for the remark was Camilla Crosland’s latest books, Lydia: A Woman’s Book and English Tales and Sketches, published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields and sent to Hawthorne.

2     “A false liberality”: “Mrs. Hutchinson,” in Tales, p. 18.

3     “America is now wholly”: NH to WDT, Jan. 19, 1855, C XVII, p. 303. For a recent cogent analysis of Hawthorne’s famed outburst, see Nina Baym, “Again and Again, The Scribbling Women,” in Hawthorne and Women, ed. John L. Idol Jr. and Melinda M. Ponder (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1999), pp. 20–35, and in particular the observation about Grace Greenwood and a “female discourse,” in opposition to Hawthorne’s, “in which the woman writer moves from the home fires to the public sphere without apology, registering absolutely no sense of impropriety.”

4     “truth of detail,” “a broader”: July 26, 1857, EN, vol. 2, p. 345.

5     Of course, a higher truth: In 1854, when Congress was debating the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Stowe published in The Independent “An Appeal to Women of the Free States of America, on the Present Crisis on Our Country” and also circulated petitions to defeat the bill. See Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 256–57.

6     “with the most lifelike”: July 26, 1857, EN, vol. 2, p. 345.

7     “a whole history”: NH to WDT, Feb. 17, 1854, C XVII, p. 177.

8     “Be true!”: The Scarlet Letter, p. 341.

9     “throw off the restraints”: NH to WDT, Feb. 2, 1855, C XVII, p. 308.

10   “The woman writes as if”: NH to WDT, Feb. 2, 1855, C XVII, p. 308.

11   “It does seem to me”: NH to SH, Mar. 18, 1856, C XVII, p. 457.

12   “Neither she nor I”: NH to WDT, June 5, 1857, C XVIII, p. 64.

13   “I think it is designed”: SH to EPP, Dec. 29, 1850, Berg.

14   “I have such an unmitigated”: SH to EPP, Oct. 31, 1854, Berg.

15   “My principle is not”: SH to MM, Aug. 28 [1857], Antioch.

16   “The repose of art”: SH to EPP, Aug. 7–12, 1857, Berg.

17   “Life has never been”: NH to SH, Dec. 13, 1855, C XVII, p. 418. On Una’s headaches, see UH to NH, Dec. 18 [1856], Berg. The letter is misdated 1858.

18   She wore a violet brocade: See UH to MM, Oct. 31, 1855, Berg, and NHHW, vol. 2, p. 88.

19   Hawthorne had told her: NH to SH, Nov. 3, 1855, C XVII, p. 398.

20   “Oh, my wife”: NH to SH, Apr. 7, 1856, C XVII, p. 465. 285. “I have learned”: Jan. 16, 1856, EN, vol. 1, p. 406.

21   Hawthorne sullenly reminded; “Heretofore”: NH to SH, Apr. 7, 1856, C XVII, p. 465.

22   “What a mill-stone”: SH to NH, [1856], fragment, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

23   His cicerone was: Mitford, The Correspondence of Mary Russell Mitford with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, p. 226.

24   He also wrote a little poetry: See Bennoch’s preface, Poems, Lyrics, Songs and Sonnets (London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 1877).

25   “sparkling black eyes”: HHC, p. 92.

26   Rose Hawthorne recalled: Memories, p. 308.

27   “I never saw a man”: Francis Bennoch, “A Week’s Vagabondage with Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1971, ed. C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., p. 33.

28   “They have found me out”: NH to SH, Apr. 7, 1856, C XVII, p. 463.

29   Afterwards, he decided: Apr. 13, 1856, EN, vol. 1, p. 485.

30   “If this man has”: May 24, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 37. 287. “friend whom I love”: Nov. 10, 1857, EN, vol. 2, p. 404.

31   “If anything could bring”: NH to WDT, Dec. 7, 1855, C XVII, p. 414.

32   “the pure unadulterated”: Quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, p. 114. Among the books I’ve consulted in this and subsequent chapters, particularly useful are George Frederickson, The Inner Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995); Roy Franklin Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1948); David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: HarperPerennial, 1976); Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970).

33   “I must say”: GH to Francis Lieber, Mar. 2, 1854, Huntington.

34   “this cruel attempt”: Quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, p. 490.

35   “How insane all”: SH to MM, July 3, 1854, Berg.

36   “persons angelic in goodness”: SH to MM, July 3, 1854, Berg. The remaining sections of this letter strongly suggest that her arguments were derived from Hawthorne: “I have no doubt that this measure of President Pierce will be considered a wise, courageous & disinterested one, as far as he is concerned, & that it will be seen that he dared to do what he believed his duty against the fiercest hue & cry—There was very much such a condemnation of President Jackson about the Bank—& the result proved his wisdom & foresight though he was accused of every mean & base motive all the time.”

37   “I find it impossible”: NH to HB, Dec. 14, 1854, C XVII, p. 292; see NH to WDT, July 7, 1854, C XVII, p. 237.

38   “Oh how much harm”: SH to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, July 4–5 [1854], Berg.

39   “To say the truth”: NH to William Pike, July 17, 1856, C XVII, p. 521.

40   “stupendous, grand” … She wanted to meet: SH to MM, Aug. 12, 1856, Berg.

41   Monckton Milnes: See James Pope-Hennessy, Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1955), p. 4.

42   “Unquestionably, she was”: “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” in OOH, p. 106.

43   “I want some literary”: Delia Bacon to NH, May 8, 1856, Folger, quoted in Vivian Hopkins, Prodigal Puritan: A Life of Delia Bacon (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959), p. 200. For information on Delia Bacon, I am grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library, and indebted to Vivian Hopkins’s biography and Theodore Bacon’s Delia Bacon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888).

44   “But I feel”: NH to Delia Bacon, May 12, 1856, C XVII, pp. 488–89.

45   “too weak to bear”: Harriet Beecher Stowe to NH, Dec. 18, 1862, bMS Am 2010 129, Houghton.

46   “Delia Bacon, with genius”: RWE to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Oct. 13, 1857, quoted in The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997), p. 395.

47   “If you really think”: NH to Delia Bacon, May 2, 1856, C XVII, p. 488.

48   “It is a very singular”: “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” in OOH, p. 106.

49   “The more absurdly”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Oct. 27, 1856, C XVII, p. 569.

50   “How funny”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Oct. 27, 1856, C XVII, p. 570. See also NH to WDT, Nov. 6, 1856, C XVII, p. 574.

51   “It is a strange”: Sept. 9, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 149.

52   His literary ebullience: See Parker, Herman Melville, vol. 2, pp. 297–98.

53   “He certainly is”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 170.

54   “If he were a religious”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 163.

55   “I do not know”: Nov. 20, 1856, EN, vol. 2, p. 170.

56   “an utterly stupid”: SH to EPP, Nov. 19, 1856, Berg.

57   “Our life here”: May 10, 1857, EN, vol. 2, p. 209.

58   “I rather wished them”: Mar. 1, 1857, EN, vol. 2, p. 182.

59   “the moral victory”: ED to George Duyckinck, Oct. 20, 1856, NYPL. He was right: Frémont won a whopping 114 electoral votes.

60   “For the sake of novelty”: NH to WDT, Aug. 15, 1856, C XVII, p. 531.

61   “because the negroes”: SH to MM, Dec. 30 [1856]—Jan. 2 [1857], Berg.

62   “The country will stand”: SH to MM, Dec. 30 [1856]—Jan. 2 [1857], Berg.

63   “No man or woman”: Preface to Delia Bacon’s The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 395.

64   She wanted him: See SH to EPP, Apr. 27, 1857, Berg.

65   “I do not repent”: NH to WDT, Apr. 9, 1857, C XVIII, p. 49.

66   By then Bacon: NH to WDT, June 19, 1857, C XVIII, p. 74. Bacon did not return to America until a young nephew, who arrived in England, could accompany her, and then shortly after her return, on April 2, 1858, she died, faithful to the end to the truth as she saw it.

67   “I fell under Miss Bacon’s”: “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” in OOH, p. 114.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL

1     “Mr. H. came”: Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, Oct. 14, 1857, BY.

2     Lovable Una: See Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, Oct. 4 and 7, 1857, BY.

3     “It seems as though”: Ada Shepard to Kate [Shepard], Dec. 6, 1857, BY.

4     “The splendor” … But the biting: Jan. 8, 1858, FIN, p. 13.

5     A generous and kind man: Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, June 3, 1858, BY.

6     Longing for home: Jan. 12, 1858, FIN, p. 34.

7     “How I dislike”: Feb. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 54.

8     The Hawthorne entourage … “Had Mr. Hawthorne”: Maria Mitchell, journal, Jan. 15, 18, and 19, 1858, BY.

9     Arrive they finally did: Maria Mitchell, journal, Jan. 19, 1858, BY.

10   “How could wise and great”: SH to EPP, May 27, 1858, Berg.

11   Hawthorne lagged … Exhausted: Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals, ed. Phebe Mitchell Kendall (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1896), p. 90; Maria Mitchell’s lectures to her students, BY.

12   “Of course there are better”: Feb. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 54.

13   “Byron’s celebrated description”: See The Marble Faun, p. 980.

14   “Take away the malaria”: Nov. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 496.

15   “There is something forced” … “general apotheosis”: Feb. 25, 1858, FIN, pp. 115, 111.

16   “This lascivious warmth”: Apr. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 157.

17   He was also … “the statues kept”: Apr. 12, 1858, FIN, pp. 165–66.

18   “strange, sweet” … “a natural”: Apr. 1, 1858, FIN, pp. 173–74.

19   Three weeks later: JH to W. T. H. Howe, July 22, 1931, Bancroft; Apr. 22, 1858, FIN, pp. 178–79.

20   “which will make me”: NH to WDT, Apr. 14, 1858, C XVIII, p. 140.

21   Clutching Murray’s Handbook: Murray’s Handbook of Rome and Its Environs (London: John Murray, 1858); Hawthorne often quotes Murray’s descriptions and views in his journals.

22   “In the church of San Paulo”: Feb. 7, 1858, FIN, p. 60.

23   American expatriates: Ada Shepard to Lucy Shepard, Aug. 6, 1858, BY.

24   “the sky itself”: William Wetmore Story to James Russell Lowell, Dec. 30, 1855, quoted in Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), vol. 1, p. 298.

25   “Their public”: May 21, 1858, FIN, p. 220.

26   “With sparkling talents”: Oct. 4, 1858, FIN, p. 448.

27   “He is certainly sensible”: Feb. 14, 1858, FIN, p. 73.

28   “I cannot say”: SH, Roman journal, Feb. 18, 1858, Berg.

29   Like all of the other expatriate: For this chapter I’ve consulted Paul R. Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims: Americans in Italy, 1800–1864 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964); Van Wyck Brooks, The Dream of Arcadia: American Writers and Artists in Italy (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958); Hugh Honour, Neo-Classicism (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987); Joy S. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American sculpture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1990); Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., ed., The Lure of Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience, 1760—1914 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1992); William Vance, America’s Rome(New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1989); Nathalia Wright, American Novelists in Italy: The Discoverers: Allston to James (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1965).

30   “cleverness and ingenuity”: Apr. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 153.

31   Lander insisted on puffing: Maria Mitchell, journal, Mar. 9, 1858, BY.

32   “The likeness was destroyed”: NHHW, vol. 2, p. 183. For a refutation of JH’s story, see John Idol Jr. and Sterling Eisminger, “Hawthorne Sits for a Bust by Maria Louisa Lander,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 114 (1978), pp. 207–12.

33   “like a boy”: Maria Mitchell, journal, Feb. 4, 1858, BY.

34   “She was indeed”: Apr. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 158.

35   “I think Miss Hosmer”: UH to EPP, Feb. 24, 1858 [misdated 1859], BY.

36   “Hatty takes a high hand”: William Wetmore Story to James Russell Lowell, Feb. 11, 1853, quoted in James, William Wetmore Story, vol. 1, p. 254.

37   “entirely ignorant”: Apr. 3, 1858, FIN, p. 156.

38   “The amelioration of society”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 70.

39   “did nothing of importance”: Pocket diary, Apr. 30, 1858, FIN, p. 594.

40   “I doubt greatly”: NH to WDT, Apr. 14, 1858, C XVIII, p. 140.

41   Yet at about the same time … “Mr. Hawthorne commenced”: Mozier visited the Hawthornes on April 2; Hawthorne wrote of Fuller in his journal the next day. While Ada Shepard noted April 13 (Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, Apr. 14, 1858, BY), the extant “Ancestral Manuscript” bears a date of April i, with an earlier leaf having been cut out. Hawthorne’s remarks about women and social change were written on May 14, 1858.

42   This new book comes: Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and her husband George Lathrop published the manuscript partly to fend off Julian’s latest gambit, passing off some of the fragments discovered among his father’s papers as a newly discovered work. (These fragments, cobbled together, became known as Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret). For textual information and details about the publishing history of these drafts, see C XII, pp. 491–515, 523–34. For more information on the squabble between the Lathrops and Julian Hawthorne, see Brenda Wineapple, “The Biographical Imperative; or, Hawthorne Family Values,” Biography and Source Studies 6, ed. Frederick Karl (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 1–13.

43   “touches that shall puzzle”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 87.

44   “singular discoveries”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 11.

45   “so remorseful”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 50.

46   “He rather felt”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 60.

47   “what shall be the nature”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 53.

48   “withdraw himself”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 18.

49   “He [Hamlet] lived so”: SH to EPP, Apr. 22, 1857, Berg.

50   “The progress of the world”: “The Life of Franklin Pierce,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 352.

51   “The moral, if any”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 56.

52   “blessed words”: UH to Richard Manning Jr., May 3, 1858, PE.

53   “What a land!”: SH, Notes in England and Italy (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1869), p. 487.

54   The Hawthornes … like strayed: UH to MM, July 19, 1858, BY.

55   “Paradise of cheapness”: June 3, 1858, FIN, p. 283.

56   “What can man”: June 4, 1858, FIN, p. 283.

57   Their illustrious neighbors: SH, Notes in England and Italy, p. 344.

58   “Mr. Hawthorne has become”: SH to MM, June 7–10, 1858, Berg.

59   “Every day I shall”: June 4, 1858, FIN, p. 283.

60   Powers tickled Hawthorne … “full of bone”: June 13, 1858, FIN, p. 314; June 7, 1858, p. 290.

61   “after admiring”: June 10, 1858, FIN, p. 307.

62   “Until we learn”: June 15, 1858, FIN, p. 317.

63   “For my part”: June 15, 1858, FIN, pp. 317–18.

64   “Had it not been”: July 8, 1858, FIN, p. 367.

65   “wish it to be”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 58.

66   “I feel an impulse”: June 13, 1858, FIN, p. 316.

67   Hawthorne caught cold: See SH to MM, June 7–10, 1858, Berg; and SH to EPP, Aug. 14, 1858, Berg.

68   “big enough to quarter”: NH to JTF, Sept. 3, 1858, C XVIII, p. 150.

69   Marching through … The view: Aug. 4, 1858, p. 390; Aug. 2, 1858, p. 383, in FIN.

70   “I find this Italian”: NH to JTF, Sept. 3, 1858, C XVIII, p. 151.

71   Ada Shepard sent tidings: Manuscripts enclosed in RH to Clifford Smythe, July 3, 1925, courtesy Evelyn Hamby; Stanford.

72   “with a sad reluctance”: Sept. 28, 1858, FIN, p. 429.

73   “I am not loth”: Sept. 29, 1858, FIN, p. 436.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THINGS TO SEE AND SUFFER

1     “ROME ROME ROME”: SH, notebooks, Oct. 18, 1858, Berg.

2     “Now that I,” “Besides”: Oct. 17, 1858, FIN, p. 488.

3     “to such Arabs”: SH, notebooks, Oct. 18, 1858, Berg, quoted in Passages from the English Notebooks, ed. Sophia Hawthorne (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870), p. 541.

4     “uncommonly good terms”: John Rogers Jr. to Henry Rogers, Feb. 13, 1859, New-York Historical Society.

5     Punctilious, the American expatriate: See a note regarding the work of the so-called committee of investigation, Dec. 27, 1858, among the William Wetmore Story papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin: Lander evidently committed an unpardonable sin against society, or the committee, when she refused to let Benjamin Appleton, an American physician, testify in the form of an affidavit sworn before the United States ambassador. Appleton declined to testify in any other way. It’s not clear why Appleton insisted on an affidavit nor why Lander insisted he speak only before the committee, but the stalemate effectively disabled the committee, allowing, it seems, Lander neither defense nor recourse.

6     “Miss Lander’s life”: NH to Louisa Lander and Elizabeth Lander, Nov. 13, 1858, C XVIII, p. 158. For a highly speculative reading of Hawthorne’s relation to Lander, unsupported by evidence but entertaining, see T. Walter Herbert’s otherwise excellent Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family, pp. 231–34.

7     “I have suffered more”: NH to FP, Oct. 27, 1858, C XXVIII, p. 156.

8     She first was diagnosed: At the time, it was assumed that breathing bad air (mala aria) caused malaria; hence it was assumed that Una took ill after sitting to sketch in the Colosseum, somewhat like her descendant Daisy Miller. Oddly, contemporary critics repeat the account, although it is known that malaria is caused by a parasitic virus transmitted to humans through infected mosquitoes, which Una may have contracted before returning to Rome.

9     “like a tragic heroine”: Nov. 2, 1858, FIN, p. 495.

10   “The ill effects”: NHHW, vol. 2, p. 210. Acting as an antiseptic, quinine retards the progress of the disease, but when taken in large doses over long periods, it can produce gastric disorders and disorders of the nervous system, including vertigo, apprehension, confusion, delirium, excitability, and vision and hearing problems. Because quinine can depress the nervous system and the heart, it’s possible the effects of the drug were a material cause in Una Hawthorne’s final illness and death. See Gordon MacPherson, ed., Black’s Medical Dictionary (London: A. & C. Black, 1992), p. 493. I am also indebted to Carolyn Kelly Patten’s fine unpublished paper “Una Hawthorne: Seeking a Purpose,” written for my Hawthorne graduate seminar at NYU in 1997.

11   “I have been trying”: NH to JTF, Feb. 3, 1859, C XVIII, p. 160.

12   “As for my success”: NH to JTF, Feb. 3, 1859, C XVIII, pp. 160–61.

13   “I never knew”: NH to WDT, Mar. 4, 1859, C XVIII, p. 163.

14   “God help us!”: Apr. 8, 1859, FIN, p. 657.

15   “I don’t know”: Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Shepard, Apr. 9, 1859, BY; SH to EPP, July 3–4, 1859, Berg.

16   But Sophia … Una said: SH to EPP, July 3–4, 1859, Berg.

17   “We won’t play any more”: NHHW, vol. 2, p. 208.

18   “It is not natural”: SH to MM, Apr. 9, 1859, Berg.

19   “I do not remember”: SH to EPP, July 3–4, 1859, Berg.

20   Even Mrs. Browning: The foregoing is paraphrased from SH to EPP, July 3–4, 1859, Berg.

21   “No one else could”: SH to EPP, July 3–4, 1859, Berg.

22   “with a miraculous”: Mar. 23, 1859, FIN, p. 512.

23   “The Kansas outrages”: Quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, p. 455.

24   “I did not know what”: Apr. 19, 1859, FIN, p. 518.

25   “He says he should die”: SH to EPP, [Apr. 24, 1859], Berg.

26   “But (life being”: May 29, 1859, FIN, p. 524.

27   “My fatigue”: SH to JTF, June 26, 1859, BPL.

28   “I have known her”: Thomas Tryon, Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 211.

29   She liked Hawthorne: AF, diary, June 27, 1859, MHS.

30   He’d grown … The Italian adventure: Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, June 23, 1858, BY; NH to Francis Bennoch, June 17, 1859, C XVIII, p. 178.

31   “He is entirely”: FP to HB, Sept. 11, 1859, Bowdoin.

32   “It was a proposition”: FP to HB, Sept. 11, 1859, Bowdoin.

33   Again, the issue: Clark, Hawthorne at Auction, 1894–1971, p. 127.

34   “I think of Mamma”: UH to EPP, Aug. 13, 1859, BY.

35   “It is as bleak”: NH to Francis Bennoch, July 23, 1859, C XVIII, p. 182.

36   Hawthorne disappeared … In the evening: See UH to Ada Shepard, July 29, 1859, Antioch.

37   “The sea entirely”: SH to EPP, July 31, 1859, Berg.

38   “As usual he thinks”: SH to EPP, [Oct. 1859], Berg.

39   Aversion aside … minor suggestions: See, for instance, “Textual Introduction” to The Marble Faun, CIV, pp. xxv, lxviii.

40   “Monte Beni is our”: SH to EPP, Feb. 27, 1860, Berg.

41   He also played: NH to JTF, Oct. 10, 1859, p. 196; NH to WDT, Dec. 1, 1859, C XVIII, p. 206. The Hawthornes had visited St. Hilda’s Abbey while in Whitby, just before moving to Redcar, in July 1859, from which the name of Hilda was likely taken, especially because Una at the time was reading Scott’s Marmion. See UH to Ada Shepard, July 29, 1859, Antioch. Also, local legend explains that the lamp atop the medieval tower, built circa 1000, at the Palazzo Scapucci commemorates the Madonna’s rescue of a child once imprisoned in the tower by, of all things, a monkey. In Hawthorne’s day, the monkey tower’s inhabitant stoked the lamp; today a neighborhood organization uses electricity. It also claims that the monkey was named Hilda. See NH to WDT, Dec. 1 and 22, 1859, C XVIII, pp. 206, 211; see also Bookseller’s Medium and Publisher’s Advertiser 2 (Feb. 1, 1860), p. 223.

42   But he went along: NH to WDT, Feb. 3, 1860, C XVIII, p. 222; see SH to MM, Apr. 27, 1860, Berg, which implies that Hawthorne did suggest “The Transformation”—not as good a title, it seems, as “Transformation.”

43   “A wonderful book”: Quoted in Edward W. Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, p. 213.

44   “When we have known”: The Marble Faun, pp. 1123–24.

45   “a sort of poetic”; “between the real”; It’s also: The Marble Faun, p. 855; The Scarlet Letter, p. 149; The Marble Faun, p. 855.

46   “casual sepulchre” … “heap of broken”: The Marble Faun, p. 945.

47   “far gone,” “crust,” “pit”: The Marble Faun, pp. 1104, 1135, 987.

48   No matter how: I have found Joseph Riddel’s discussion of The Marble Faun instructive; see Joseph Riddel, Purloined Letters: Originality and Repetition in American Literature, ed. Mark Bauerlein (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1995). Millicent Bell’s eloquent “The Marble Faun and the Waste of History,” Southern Review 35:2 (spring 1999), pp. 354–70, dovetails with much of my thinking about the novel; “new historicist” interpretations of the novel include Robert S. Levine, “Antebellum Rome in The Marble Faun,” American Literary History 2:1 (spring 1990), pp. 19–38, and Nancy Bentley, The Ethnography of Manners: Hawthorne, James, Wharton (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), chap. 2. More recently issues of race and gender are discussed in the essays collected in Robert K. Martin and Leland S. Person, ed., Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2002). For intelligent speculation about Hawthorne and Una, see Herbert, Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family, chaps. 13–17; I don’t think Herbert’s speculations wrong-headed, though I think he overstates his case—so much so that I cannot include it in my narrative of the making of The Marble Faun without more palpable or textual evidence. I do think, however, that if one were to pursue this line of inquiry, it would be equally useful to contemplate the sprightly Julian as a model for the sprightly, beautiful Donatello and to wonder if the fantasy of incest includes sons as well as daughters.

49   “appeared before the Public”: The Marble Faun, p. 853.

50   And he knows he must: Washington Irving to NH, Aug. 9, 1852, Houghton, quoted in C XVI, p. 571; see Chapter 18. Richard Brodhead, The School of Hawthorne (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), chap. 4, expertly discusses Hawthorne’s need to surpass himself in terms of the larger culture issue of canon-making and Hawthorne’s collaboration with his own institutionalization. In this regard, see also Jane Tompkins’s justly renowned “Masterpiece Theater: The Politics of Hawthorne’s Literary Reputation,” in Sensational Designs (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985), chap. 1.

51   “It is strange”: Ada Shepard to Henry Clay Badger, June 23, 1858, BY.

52   Applying for his Italian passport: See NH to Benjamin Moran, Sept. 15, 1857, C XVIII, p. 97.

53   “We all of us”: The Marble Faun, p. 1059.

54   “ ‘The sky itself’ ”: The Marble Faun, pp. 1067, 1104.

55   Modeled loosely on William Story: Hawthorne places in Kenyon’s studio, for instance, Story’s sculpture Cleopatra. He also attributes Benjamin Paul Akers’s The Dead Pearl Diver to Kenyon as well as Harriet Hosmer’s The Clasped Hands.

56   “climb heights and stand”: The Marble Faun, p. 1068.

57   “guiltless of Rome”: The Marble Faun, p. 1044.

58   “neither man nor animal”: The Marble Faun, p. 861.

59   Later this nameless figure: Toward the end of the novel, Donatello again sybolically resembles the Model when he wears the white robes of the penitent and a “featureless mask over the face” (The Marble Faun, p. 1179).

60   “burning drop of African blood”: The Marble Faun, p. 870.

61   “he could not keep”: Francis Bennoch to George Holden, Dec. 3, 1885, UVA.

62   “She was, I suppose”: EN, vol. 1, pp. 481–82. Another source for Miriam may have been Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, the governess involved in the scandalous Praslin murder in Paris in the summer of 1847. The evidence is circumstantial but interesting; see Nathalia Wright, “Hawthorne and the Praslin Murder,” New England Quarterly 15:1 (1942), pp. 5–14. After the Duc de Praslin murdered his wife, who had fired the governess, and then killed himself before being tried for his crime, Mlle. Deluzy was arrested. Though proven innocent of any wrongdoing, she remained under so much suspicion that she eventually left France for America, where she married the son of one of Hawthorne’s Berkshire neighbors, David Dudley Field. Though Sophia Hawthorne did suggest that Hawthorne had a well-known case in mind when conceiving of Miriam, its exact identity remains unknown.

63   “such as one sees”: The Marble Faun, p. 891

64   “a Jewish aspect”: The Marble Faun, p. 891.

65   “Over and over again”: The Marble Faun, p. 890.

66   “I did what your eyes”: The Marble Faun, p. 997.

67   “fallen and yet sinless”: Feb. 20, 1858, FIN, pp. 92–93; see also The Marble Faun, p. 906. Hawthorne looted his own journals for fresh descriptions of everything from the worshippers at St. Peter’s to the blue-coated French soldiers quartered on the ground floor of the Barberini Palace to his and Sophia’s stumbling onto the bier of a dead monk in the darkly cool Capuchin church, reproduced in the chapter “The Dead Capuchin.” And of course he used his and Una’s experiences at the Carnival for the novel’s chapter “A Scene in the Corso” which, given Kenyon’s state of mind, appear to him as the “emptiest of mockeries” when contrasted with the esprit of the previous year: this too was Hawthorne’s experience, for the Carnival in the second instance took place during Una’s siege.

68   “with doves”: Sir Henry Layard to Miss Hosmer, London, June 27, 1860, in Harriet Hosmer, Letters and Memories, ed. Cornelia Carr (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1912), pp. 159–60.

69   As a consequence: Sophia took offense at her sister Elizabeth’s suggestion that Sophia was Hilda: “Mr. Hawthorne had no idea of portraying me in Hilda,” she claimed, adding the inadvertently amusing comment that “whatever resemblance any one sees is accidental.” Evidently EPP had also wondered why Hilda hadn’t asked for more information about the murder. SH’s answer also reveals her disapproval of Miriam and partial exoneration of Donatello, which the novel does not share: “Hilda, having seen Miriam allow Donatello to drop the monk over the Tarpeian rock, had no need to make enquiries about it” (italics mine). See SH to EPP [spring 1860], Berg.

70   “like a sharp steel sword”: The Marble Faun, p. 906.

71   “a great horror”: “ideal which”: UH to EPP, Oct. 4, 1859, BY; SH to Anna Parsons, Sept. 26, 1854, Smith.

72   “if I had had”: Feb. 7, 1858, p. 59, and May 1, 1858, FIN, p. 195.

73   “I am a daughter,” “live and die”: The Marble Faun, pp. 1153, 1157.

74   “whatever precepts”: The Marble Faun, p. 1236.

75   “Hilda had a hopeful”: The Marble Faun, p. 1238.

76   Perhaps to fill: See, for instance, Leslie Stephen, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Cornhill Magazine 2 (Dec. 1872), p. 724.

77   The Westminster Review: ” Contemporary Literature/Belles Lettres: Transformation,’ Westminster Review 17 (Apr. 1860), p. 626.

78   Nonetheless, not even: The Centenary editors estimate each British printing at one thousand three-volume sets, and I’ve found nothing to contradict them, or to verify these numbers. See Claude M. Simpson, “Introduction” to The Marble Faun, C IV, p. xxix. Smith & Elder and Ticknor & Fields paid Hawthorne a royalty of 15 percent. Ticknor ordered eight thousand two-volume sets of the novel printed and advertised the number in several newspapers as if the sheer volume would increase sales, which it probably did. See also Rosemary Mims Fisk, “The Marble Faun and the English Copyright: The Smith, Elder Contract,” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, pp. 263–75.

79   Pretty soon sightseers: See, for example, Susan Williams, “Manufacturing Intellectual Equipment: The Tauchnitz Edition of The Marble Faun,” in Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles, ed., Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 117–50. Published in England on February 28, 1860, Transformation appeared in three volumes and sold for slightly over three pounds. The Marble Faun appeared a week later in America with two volumes selling for $1.50.

80   Sophia curtly rapped: SH to Henry Fothergill Chorley, Mar. 5, 1860, C XVIII, pp. 238–39. For the Times review, “The Marble Faun, or The Romance of Monte Bene,” New York Times, Mar. 24, 1850, p. 3. The other reviews mentioned are cited in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, pp. 247–48.

81   “a want of finish”: [Henry Bright], “Transformation,” Examiner, Mar. 31, 1860, p. 197, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, p. 250.

82   Who was the man … Do they marry: SH to EPP, transcription and fragment, [1860], Berg.

83   “How easy it is”: NH to Henry Bright, Apr. 4, 1860, C XVIII, p. 259.

84   “was one of its essential”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Mar. 24, 1860, C XVIII, p. 251.

85   “not satisfactory”; “the actual experience”: “The Ancestral Footstep,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 11; The Marble Faun, p. 1232.

86   “The charm lay”: The Marble Faun, p. 968.

87   “The very dust”: The Marble Faun, p. 937.

88   “In weaving”: The Marble Faun, p. 929.

89   “I really put”: NH to JTF, Apr. 26, 1860, C XVIII, p. 271

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES

1     “The sweetest thing”: NH to WDT, Feb. 10, 1860, C XVIII, p. 227.

2     “where there is no shadow”: The Marble Faun, p. 854.

3     “How could he say”: MM to SH, [Mar.] 1860, Antioch. Among the many fine books about the American political situation during Hawthorne’s years abroad, I have found particularly helpful David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995); Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York: Viking, 1942); Eric L. McKitrick, Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. i, The Improvised War, 1861–1862 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959); Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987); Albert J. von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998); and David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

4     “I wholly and utterly”: SH to EPP, June 4, 1857, Berg.

5     “Because I suggested”: SH to MM, Sept. [between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26] 1857, Berg.

6     “no purpose”: Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1832–1858 (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 521.

7     “You surely must know”: SH to EPP, June 4, 1857, Berg.

8     “You always speak”; “My husband”: SH to MM, Sept. [between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26] 1857, Berg; SH to EPP, [1857], Berg.

9     “I have read”: SH to EPP, [1859–60], Berg.

10   “No doubt it seems”: NH to EPP, Aug. 13, 1857, C XVIII, p. 89.

11   “We go all wrong”: The Marble Faun, p. 1050.

12   “Vengeance and beneficence”: NH to EPP, Oct. 8, 1857, C XVIII, p. 116.

13   “The good of others”: NH to EPP, Oct. 8, 1857, CXXIII, p. 465.

14   “We human beings”: SH to EPP, [1859–60], Berg.

15   “a transcendentalist above all”: Henry David Thoreau, Reform Papers, ed. Wendell Glick (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973), p. 115. In 1862 Thoreau sent an essay called “The Higher Law” to James Fields for publication in the Atlantic Monthly. Understanding its political import, Fields suggested the title be changed to “Life Without Principle”; Thoreau complied. Particularly fine on Thoreau is Robert D. Richardson Jr., Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986). For an excellent account of abolitionism’s debt to transcendentalism, see Albert J. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns.

16   “I think him equal”: May 8, 1859, The Journals of Bronson Alcott, ed. Odell Shepard (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938), p. 316.

17   “will make the gallows”: Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), p. 402.

18   “Nobody was ever”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 427. Actually, the essay makes clear that “nobody was ever more justly hanged. He won his martyrdom fairly, and took it firmly” (pp. 427–28).

19   There, he’d write: HWL, Oct. 27, 1860, journal, MS Am 1340(209), Houghton.

20   “I should like to sail”: Yesterdays, p. 92. They disembarked from Liverpool, where the Hawthornes had again taken lodgings at Mrs. Blodget’s. Prior to departure they’d been stopping at Bath, partly for SH’s health and partly so that Hawthorne could avail himself of London social life and of Bennoch one last time.

21   “I fear I have lost”: NH to WDT, Jan. 26, 1860, C XVIII, p. 217.

22   “I am really”: NH to JTF, Feb. 3, 1859, C XVIII, p. 95.

23   “I feared his depression”: SH to AF, Dec. 8, 1861, Berg.

24   “Surely, the bright”: Feb. 18, 1860, EN, vol. 2, p. 463; see SH to Elizabeth Hoar, Apr. 15, 1860, Antioch.

25   “It is the school-boy’s”: See HWL, journal, June 30, 1860, MS Am 1340(209), Houghton.

26   “It is an excellent”: NH to Henry Bright, Dec. 17, 1869, C XVIII, p. 355.

27   “even if a Democrat”: quoted in Edward W. Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, p. 215.

28   “He has the look”: Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), p. 208.

29   “Beyond a general dislike”: NH to Horatio Woodman, Nov. 5, 1860, C XVIII, p. 336.

30   “He is used”: James Russell Lowell to Grace Norton, misdated June 12, 1860, in The Letters of James Russell Lowell, vol. 1, p. 303.

31   Hawthorne responded: When James Roberts Gilmore solicited a story for the Knickerbocker Magazine, Hawthorne resorted to his standard excuse, that his stories were too monotonous for serialization. He added that he needed the income from English copyrights that would be denied him should he publish serially in an American magazine. See NH to James Roberts Gilmore, Oct. 16, 1860, C XVIII, p. 331.

32   “I am very anxious”: JTF to SH, Nov. 25, 1859, Berg. On Fields’s encouragement of female writers, see, for instance, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Chapters from a Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896), pp. 146–47.

33   “You forget”: SH to JTF, Nov. 28, 1859, BPL.

34   “Perhaps I may”; “I don’t know”: NH to JTF, Nov. 28, 1859, and NH to Francis Bennoch, Nov. 29, 1859, C XVIII, pp. 203–4.

35   Bronson Alcott raced over: See UH to MM, [Aug.] 1860, Antioch; Bronson Alcott, journals, Sat., [late July] 1860, *59M-308(30), Houghton.

36   “doing exactly”: MM to Miss Rawlins Pickman, July 10, 1860, Antioch.

37   “Mrs. H is as sentimental”: Quoted in Marjorie Worthington, Miss Alcott of Concord (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 109–10.

38   When the cook: MM to Miss Rawlins Pickman, July 10, 1860, Antioch.

39   “Una is a stout”: Quoted in Worthington, Miss Alcott of Concord, pp. 109–10.

40   “bad for her darling son”: Franklin B. Sanborn to Eleanor R. Larrison, Mar. 29, 1907, Autograph File, Houghton.

41   Emerson asked: See SH to EPP, [1861], Berg.

42   “Her Byronic papa”: The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 57. Eventually NH’s friend George Bradford was hired to instruct Una, and Rose, at the age of ten, was sent to Concord’s East Quarter Public School. See UH to EH, June 5, 1861, BY.

43   And she’d be in Salem: UH to Richard Manning, July 20, 1860, PE.

44   Poor Una, screaming: SH to unknown recipient [AF?], [1860], Berg.

45   “His spirits”: SH to unknown recipient [AF?], [1860], Berg; SH to EPP, [early 1861], Berg.

46   Mrs. Rollins attributed: NH to FP, Oct. 9, 1860, C XVIII, p. 327.

47   “I lose England”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Dec. 17, 1860, C XVIII, p. 352.

48   Defeated, Una attended: Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, vol. 2, p. 524.

49   Weekdays, she mended: AF, diary, July 31, 1863, MHS.

50   Sophia recorded: See SH, diary, 1861, Bancroft.

51   “as if he feared”: Bronson Alcott, diary, Feb. 2, 1861, Houghton, quoted in The Journals of Bronson Alcott, ed. Odell Shepard (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938), p. 335.

52   “He seems not at home”: Bronson Alcott, diary, Feb. 2, 1861, Houghton, quoted in The Journals of Bronson Alcott, p. 335.

53   “unconquerable interest”: “Etherege,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 124. As the Centenary editors make clear, there are two sets of unfinished manuscripts dealing with the American claimant, likely composed during late 1860/early 1861, when Hawthorne took occupancy of his tower. For identification purposes, the first manuscript, concentrating mostly on the English chapters of the romance, is called “Etherege,” after the main character. The second manuscript, called “Grimshawe,” seems to me a reworking of the earlier manuscript. See also “Historical Introduction” to American Claimant Manuscripts, pp. 491–506. Moreover, since the Centenary editors have pieced together the various fragments in ways I find reliable, I will advert to their volume, with the caveat that the textual evidence does not make clear what Hawthorne composed when. However, I do find that the references in “Grimshawe” to war and politics reflect the events of the winter and spring of 1861. See also Edward H. Davidson, Hawthorne’s Last Phase (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1949), pp. 1–71.

54   “hereditary connections”: “Etherege,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 136.

55   “Oh home, my home”: The rightful heir of the estate is an old pensioner who dwells in the hospital where Etherege is taken after the lord of Braithwaite Hall attempts to murder him.

56   “Is there going to be”: NH to WDT, Dec. 7, 1860, C XVIII, p. 342.

57   “Secession of the North”: HWL, journal, Dec. 3, 1860, MS Am 1340(209), Houghton.

58   “this wicked & crazy”: John O’Sullivan to FP, Feb. 7, 1861, LC.

59   “It was the imbecility”: New York Herald, Apr. 30, 1861, p. 1.

60   “how little I care”: NH to Henry Bright, Dec. 17, 1860, C XVIII, p. 355.

61   “How can you feel”: “Etherege,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 162.

62   “There is still a want”: “Etherege,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, pp. 115, 198–99, 219, 265.

63   And both of them are Hawthorne: NH mentions the story of Wakefield as he puzzles out one of his characters, the doctor’s confidential servant, who intends to do mischief to the Braithwaite family. See “Etherege,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 327.

64   “I want you to be”: Grimshawe,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 476. This version of his story seems, at the outset, more polished than earlier ones. It reads far more smoothly than “Etherege,” and though Hawthorne makes notations to himself, he does not break the narrative to do so. Rather, he reminds himself where to fill out his story, as if planning to copy this draft of it into another and perhaps final one, with certain descriptions added.

65   “quiet recess”: “Grimshawe,” in American Claimant Manuscripts, p. 470.

66   On Saturday, April 13: SH, diary, Apr. 13, 1861, Berg.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE SMELL OF GUNPOWDER

1     “My literary success”: NH to JTF, Feb. 27, 1861, C XVIII, p. 365.

2     “the example par excellence”: Poe, “Tale-Writing: Nathaniel Hawthorne,” p. 252.

3     “I am sensible”: NH to JTF, Jan. 30, 1863, C XVIII, p. 533.

4     “He always, I believe”: Ellery Channing to Ellen Channing, Oct. 30, 1851, MHS.

5     “The war continues”: NH to WDT, May 16, 1861, C XVIII, p. 379.

6     “what we are fighting”: NH to HB, May 26, 1861, C XVIII, p. 381.

7     “We seem to have little”: NH to Francis Bennoch, [circa July 1861], C XVIII, p. 388.

8     “I wish they would”: NH to WDT, May 26, 1861, C XVIII, p. 382.

9     “all we ought”: NH to HB, Oct. 12, 1861, C XVIII, p. 412.

10   “Every man of you”: NH to Henry Bright, Nov. 14, 1861, C XVIII, p. 421.

11   “If this is the literary tone”: See The Life of Lord Houghton, ed. T. Wemyss Reid (New York: Cassell, 1891), vol. 2, p. 76.

12   Hawthorne sent him: “Near Oxford” appeared in the October 1861 Atlantic 8, pp. 385–97, and his “Pilgrimage to Old Boston” appeared in the January 1862 Atlantic 9, pp. 88–101; JTF to NH, July 24, 1862, in Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly, p. 220.

13   “He allowed the photographer”: SH to JTF, Jan. 1, 1862, BPL.

14   “I have no features”: SH to AF, Dec. 8, 1861, BPL.

15   “He says this”: Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), p. 262.

16   “take an antagonist”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, pp. 412–13.

17   Next day, Hawthorne: See Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher, pp. 258–82; N. P. Willis, (New York) Home Journal, Mar. 29 and Apr. 12, 1862.

18   “Set men face to face”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 421. Hawthorne kept a travel journal, drawing on it for “Chiefly About War Matters” and “Northern Volunteers: From a Journal.” See, for example, UH to EH, Mar. 16, 1862, Rosary Hill, where Una Hawthorne mentions her father’s journal. Doubtless it was later destroyed, probably by him; in any event, I unfortunately have found no trace of it. Meantime, after years of neglect, his “Chiefly About War Matters” essay has sparked some response; see, for instance, Patrick Brancaccio, “ ‘Chiefly About War-matters’: Hawthorne’s Reluctant Prophecy,” in Essex Institute Historical Collections, 118 (Jan. 1982), pp. 59–66; Thomas R. Moore. “Hawthorne as Essayist in ‘Chiefly About War Matters,’ ” American Transcendental Quarterly 6 (1992), pp. 263–78; Grace Smith, “ ‘Chiefly About War Matters’: Hawthorne’s Swift Judgment of Lincoln,” American Transcendental Quarterly 15 (June 2001), pp. 149–52; or Nancy Bentley’s proleptic, wide-ranging discussion in The Ethnography of Manners: Hawthorne, James, Wharton (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 36–45. Hawthorne’s racism is the focus of Jean Fagan Yellin’s censorious “Hawthorne and the American National Sin,” in Daniel Peck, ed., The Green American Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 75–97, but she does not address “Chiefly About War Matters” here or in her subsequent revisions of the essay, published in Larry J. Reynolds, A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000). Thus, Daniel Aaron remains the best interpreter of Hawthorne and the Civil War. See Daniel Aaron, The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), chap. 3.

19   “It was as if General McClellan”: “Chiefly About War Matters” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, pp. 408, 407.

20   “As a general rule”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 433.

21   “sacrificing good institutions”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 419.

22   “Man’s accidents”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 431.

23   “Whosoever may be benefited”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 420.

24   America is conceived: The best brief discussion of the image can be found in Larzer Ziff, “The Artist and Puritanism,” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 246–49.

25   “our brethren”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 420.

26   “This is somewhat” … “I think the political”: NH to WDT, May 17, 1862, C XVIII, p. 456.

27   “it will be politic”: JTF to NH, May 21, 1862, in Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly, p. 218.

28   “What a terrible”: NH to JTF, May 23, 1862, C XVIII, p. 461.

29   “the stupidest looking”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” holograph manuscript, UVA.

30   “I shall insert it”: NH to JTF, May 23, 1862, C XVIII, p. 461.

31   “we are compelled”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in NH, Miscellanies (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), p. 378.

32   “Can it be”: “Chiefly About War Matters,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII p. 427.

33   “What an extraordinary”: Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, June 26, 1862, bMS Am 1124(195), Houghton.

34   “ ‘A fig’ ”: “The Thorn that Bears Haws,” Liberator, June 27, 1862, p. 102.

35   Hawthorne dashed off … He contrasted: See Edward Dicey, Spectator of America, ed. Herbert Mitgang (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), p. 278. The reports were doubtless exaggerated, if at all true, but taken up by northern propagandists.

36   “If ever a man”: Edward Dicey, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Macmillan’s Magazine 10 (July 1864), p. 242.

37   “It was impossible”: Dicey, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” pp. 242–43.

38   “ ‘We cannot see’ ”: Rebecca Harding Davis, Bits of Gossip (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), pp. 34–35.

39   Whenever Hawthorne went: Henry James, “Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields,” in Literary Criticism, vol. 1, p. 166.

40   “the handsomest Yankee”: JTF to NH, [Sept. 18, 1861], Huntington.

41   Annie Fields bore: See “148 Charles Street,” in Willa Cather, Not Under Forty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), pp. 52–75.

42   Cloistered within his tower: See SH to UH, Dec. 11, 1862, Berg.

43   “I love you with”: SH to AF, Nov. 8 [1863], BPL. Readers interested in same-sex relationships and their cultural context in the early nineteenth century, before they had been labeled or criminalized, will find illuminating discussions, for example, in the work of Caleb Crain, American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2001); Martin Duberman et al., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (Markham, Ontario: New American Library, 1989); Lillian Federman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1981); David Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989); and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).

44   “I will say just”: SH to AF, Aug. 2, 1863, BPL.

45   “that grief”: AF, “To S.H.,” [Sept. 1871], Fields addenda, Huntington.

46   On the iron-cold day: AF, Dec. 6, 1863, diary, MHS.

47   Hawthorne’s reminiscence … In 1863: NH to WDT, Dec. 28, 1860, C XVIII, p. 358; NH to WDT, Jan. 30, 1861, C XVIII, p. 361; NH to HB, May 26, 1861, C XVIII, p. 380; NH to JTF, Oct. 6, 1861, C XVIII, p. 408. See Scott Derks, ed., The Value of a Dollar, 1860–1989 (Detroit: A. Manly, 1994).

48   “Have you not almost”: JTF to NH, Dec. 4, 1862, in Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly, pp. 222–23.

49   Though Hawthorne was … And he composed: AF, Mar. 3, 1863, miscellaneous papers, Huntington; NH to JTF, Apr. 30, 1863, C XVIII, p. 560; AF, Feb. 2[8] 1863, “Fragrant Memories,” Huntington. “A London Suburb,” sent in January, published in March, Atlantic Monthly 11, pp. 306–21; “Up the Thames,” sent in February, published in May, Atlantic Monthly 11, 598–614; and “Outside Glimpses of English Poverty,” sent by mid-April, published in June, Atlantic Monthly 12, pp. 36–51; the essay on Dr. Johnson, earlier published in The Keepsake (London, 1857), pp. 108–13, was also reprinted in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 14 (Apr. 1857), pp. 639–41. He completed this revision mid-May and sent “Civic Banquets” to the Atlantic (finished in early June, published in the August issue of Atlantic 12, pp. 195–212). On May 30, 1863, he completed the introductory essay, “Consular Experiences.” The twelve sketches that made up Our Old Home thus included, in the order in which they appeared in the volume: “Consular Experiences,” “Leamington Spa,” “About Warwick,” “Recollections of a Gifted Woman” (a reminiscence of Delia Bacon published in the Atlantic 11, January 1863, pp. 43–58), “Lichfield and Uttoxeter,” “Pilgrimage to Old Boston,” “Near Oxford,” “Some of the Haunts of Burns,” “A London Suburb,” “Up the Thames,” and “Civic Banquets.” With twelve essays in place, Fields sold the English rights to the volume to Smith & Elder for 150 pounds.

50   “to my life-long affection”: NH to JTF, May 3, 1863, C XVIII, p. 567. Hawthorne also considered dedicating the volume to Francis Bennoch “to show him that I am thoroughly mindful of all his hospitality and kindness,” but eventually decided in favor of Pierce, possibly because of the stir it might cause. One may suspect that Fields greeted NH’s suggestion with dismay, to say the least.

51   In the words of Pierce’s: See Nichols, Franklin Pierce, pp. 522–23; see also “The Voice of the Charmer,” Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 15, 1863, p. 515.

52   “He will not relent”: AF, diary, July 31, 1863, MHS.

53   “Such adherence”: AF, diary, July 26, 1863, MHS.

54   “The negroes suffer in NY”: Franklin Sanborn to Moncure Conway, July 24 [1863], Moncure Conway Papers, Butler.

55   “Higginson is only slightly”: Franklin Sanborn to Moncure Conway, July 24 [1863], Moncure Conway Papers, Butler.

56   “He is in despair”: An Englishman in the American Civil War: The Dairies of Henry Yates Thompson, 1863, ed. Christopher Chancellor (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 46, 52.

57   Devoted to him: See EPP to HB, June 4, 1887, Bowdoin.

58   “There is a certain steadfastness”: NH to EPP, July 20, 1863, C XVIII, p. 589. According to Peabody, this letter was one of the few from Hawthorne she did not destroy: “I promised not to dishonor his letters & every now & then he insisted on a mutual exchange of letters to be sure that they were destroyed,” she wrote circa 1887. “The only one I kept was the one he wrote me on the dedication of his ‘Old Home’ to Franklin Pierce from which I desired to dissuade him.” See EPP to Mrs. Lothrop, Sept. [1877], PE.

59   He added …“and never know they”: NH to EPP, July 20, 1863, C XVIII, pp. 589–91. See also NH to Henry Bright, Mar. 8, 1863, C XVII, p. 543. Sophia, however, retained a virulent hatred for the abolitionists, which she freely confided to her husband. When she heard more details about the defeat of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, she wrote NH, then visiting his sister, that she’d heard an eyewitness say “he saw thousands of them in a drove like cattle, urged on against their will, and that’s when many of the organized regiments were killed, the vacancies were filled up by some of these thousands in reserve. So much for Northern abolition accounts of the nigers [sic]” (SH to NH, [Aug./Sept. 1863], Morgan). To General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a new friend, she wrote, “I was glad to find that you believe that God’s law would without fail have removed slavery without this dreadful convulsive action. It always seems to me that Man is very arrogant in taking such violent measures to help God who needs no help.… For he can touch the body alone of his slave, while the slave’s soul may remain intact and becomes purified by endurance. The white man loses more than the black man, as the victim of wrong always is in a superior attitude to the inflictor of wrong, I suppose. I find no one in Concord or hardly in Boston to whom I can utter such sentiments without exciting fiery indignation. My sisters cannot hear me speak a word. They believe alone in instant vengeance on the slave owner and instant release of the slave, and I cannot hold any sweet counsel with them about it. Negro worship seems to cloud the vision of the mind and love for him shuts off love for mankind. To my husband only I can speak. He is very all-sided and can look serenely on opposing forces and do justice to each.” See SH to General Hitchcock, Aug. 9, 1863, LC.

60   “It would be a piece”: NH to JTF, July 18, 1863, C XVIII, pp. 586–87.

61   “Can it be”: “To a Friend: The Dedication to Pierce,” dated the Wayside, July 2, 1863, Fields papers, Huntington.

62   Before its publication … “bravely”: JTF to NH, [Sept. 1863], Huntington; JTF to NH, Oct. 28, 1863, in Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly, p. 233. Thirty-five hundred copies were printed July 22, 1863, and two thousand more in September. The book sold at $1.25 and gave NH a 12 percent royalty. A third printing in March ran a thousand copies. The numbers then dramatically drop.

63   “I have never believed”: “Ex-President Pierce’s Letter to Jeff. Davis,” New York Evening Post, Sept. 19, 1863, p. 2; EPP to HB, June 4, 1887, Bowdoin.

64   “Pierce’s infamy”: See “Hawthorne’s Letter to Pierce,” Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 3, 1863, p. 627.

65   “I was very sorry”: George William Curtis to Richard C. Manning, Oct. 2, 1863, PE.

66   “That one of the most gifted”: [George William Curtis], “Literary,” Harper’s Weekly 7 (Nov. 21, 1863), p. 739.

67   “His perception”: [Franklin B. Sanborn or Moncure Conway], “A Review of Hawthorne’s Our Old Home,” Commonwealth, Sept. 25, 1863.

68   “images reflected”: “Critical Notices,” North American Review 97 (Oct. 1863), p. 588.

69   “What was he to Liverpool”: See [Henry Bright], “Our Old Home,” Examiner, Oct. 17, 1863, pp. 662–63.

70   “reads like the bitterest”: Charles Norton to George William Curtis, Sept. 21 [1863, misdated 1862], bMS Am 1088.2, box 2, Houghton.

71   “I never read the preface”: Harriet Beecher Stowe to JTF, Nov. 3, 1863, Huntington.

72   Calling the book pellucid: AF, diary, Sept. 25, 1863, MHS.

73   Bright too was offended: Henry Bright to NH, Oct. 20, 1863, Berg; see [Bright], “Our Old Home,” pp. 662–63; “Leamington Spa” in OOH, p. 48.

74   “Whether it be”: “Hawthorne on England,” Blackwood’s Magazine 92:577 (Nov. 1863), pp. 610–23, quoted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: Critical Assessments, ed. Brian Harding (New York: Helm, 1990), vol. 2, p. 23. However, this reviewer also singled out for praise some of Hawthorne’s most chilling observations, especially in “Outside Glimpses of English Poverty”: “I come to the conclusion that those ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, were not fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshadowings of what so many of their descendants were to be.” See OOH, p. 287.

75   “Can any created woman”: “A Handful of Hawthorn,” Punch 45 (Oct. 17, 1863), p. 161.

76   It must seem; Sophia wondered: UH to EH, Nov. 22, 1863, Rosary Hill; SH to AF, Nov. 29, 1863, BPL.

77   “But they do me”: NH to JTF, Nov. 8, 1863, C XVIII, p. 613.

78   “It is impossible”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Oct. 12, 1862, C XVIII, p. 501.

79   “I feel as if”: NH to Francis Bennoch, Oct. 12, 1862, C XVIII, p. 501.

80   “Mr. Hawthorne cannot read”: SH to AF, May 3, 1863, BPL.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A HANDFUL OF MOMENTS

1     “He himself felt”: “Septimius Felton,” in Elixir of Life, pp. 22–23.

2     Six years after: See preface to Passages from the English Notebooks, vol. 1.

3     “charm lay partly”: The Marble Faun, p. 968.

4     “Septimius” opens: Hawthorne obviously took some of his material from the earlier “Grimshawe” manuscript, moving the date backward in time in order to deal with issues of civil strife.

5     “believing nothing”: “Septimius Felton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 13.

6     He’d written of the latter: See NH to George William Curtis, July 14, 1852, C XVI, p. 568, and NH’s notes to himself regarding his projected preface to an early version of the story: “Then come to the annals of the house,” he instructed himself, “and introduce Thoreau’s legend of the man who would not die” (in Elixir of Life, p. 504). In addition to its obvious connections to earlier stories like “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” see also “The Haunted Quack,” in Tales, p. 56: “This I dubbed in high flowing terms, ‘The Antidote to Death, or the Eternal Elixir of Longevity.’ ”

7     “an internal one”: “Septimius Felton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 15.

8     “We are the playthings”: “Septimius Felton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 79.

9     “the mud of his own making”: NH to JTF, Feb. 25, 1864, C XVIII, p. 641.

10   “A man no sooner”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 293.

11   “You are deluding”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 416.

12   Revising the first draft: Septimius Felton becomes Septimius Norton; by the end of the second draft, Hawthorne changed Septimius’s name to Hilliard Veren, sometimes called Hillard Veren. Also, Hawthorne changed the name of Septimius’s aunt and made the character identified as Rose Garfield into Septimius’s half sister. Septimius may refer to the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno, its first ring of tyrants or warmongers, its second with the despair of suicides, and its third filled with blasphemers, usurers, and sodomites. In the case of the third ring, moreover, Dante finds his former spiritual father, Latini, who had first inspired Dante to the “way man makes himself eternal,” via fame. The irony of Dante’s still limited perspective with Latini, whom he admires, would not have been lost on Hawthorne. See The Inferno of Dante, trans. Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), p. 155. In addition, the other topics of this canto—the desire for a father figure, suppressed homosexuality, and earthly fame—must have resonated with Hawthorne, who, admiring Dante, reckoned with these subjects in one way or another. For the additional significance of names and naming in Hawthorne’s “Septimius” manuscripts, see “Historical Commentary” on Elixir of Life, pp. 567–69, and Klaus P. Stich, “The Saturday Club as Intertext in Hawthorne’s The Elixir of Life Manuscripts,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 20:2 (fall 1994), pp. 11–20. Veren is an anagram for “never,” and although Hilliard Veren presumably refers to a seventeenth-century Salem customs official, Hilliard is written interchangeably with Hillard, Hawthorne’s friend and lawyer and the administrator of his estate.

13   “We are all linked”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 432.

14   “dark as a prophetic flight”: Memories, p. 422.

15   “He did not write”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., [May—June 1864], in Arlin Turner, “Hawthorne’s Final Illness and Death: Additional Reports,” ESQ 19 (1973), p. 125.

16   “just as real”: NH to JTF, Feb. 11, 1860, C XVIII, p. 229.

17   “In short, it was a moment”: “Septimius Felton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 101. Hawthorne rewrites this passage in “Septimius Norton,” making it seem less personal and asserting, at the end of the section, “And he is either a very wise man, or a very dull one, who can answer one way or the other for the reality of the very breath he draws, and steadfastly say ‘Yes!’ or ‘No!’ ” See “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 354.

18   “They make themselves at home”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 446.

19   “This path”: The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 15, p. 60.

20   “a hope while”: SH, diary, Jan. 14, 1862, Morgan.

21   When Hawthorne confided: JTF to NH, [Sept. 1861], Huntington.

22   “I don’t mean to let”: NH to JTF, Oct. 6, 1861, C XVIII, p. 408.

23   “Yes,” he said: Davis, Bits of Gossip, p. 63.

24   “It is a pain”: SH to EPP, [winter or fall 1863], OSU.

25   “I expect to outlive”: “No, no”: NH to WDT, July 27, 1863, C XVIII, p. 597; AF, diary, July 24, 1866, MHS.

26   “I do not know”: SH to AF, July 1863, BPL.

27   “It is a new”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 295.

28   “Life, which seems”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 330.

29   “The Present, the Immediate”: “To a Friend,” in OOH, p. 4. However, compare this rationalization to the observation in the chapter from The Marble Faun, “Fragmentary Sentences”: “In weaving these mystic utterances into a continuous scene, we undertake a task resembling, in its perplexity, that of gathering up and piecing together the fragments of a letter, which has been torn and scattered to the winds. Many words of deep significance—many entire sentences, and those possibly the most important ones—have flown too far, on the winged breeze, to be recovered.” See The Marble Faun, p. 929. Hawthorne’s outlook hadn’t changed, but his mood had.

30   “negative,” “I am afraid”: SH to AF, Oct. 11, 1863, BPL.

31   “Una thinks”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 15, 1864, Antioch.

32   “He thus had no”: Conway, Life of Hawthorne, p. 206.

33   “How Thoreau would scorn”: NH to JTF, Oct. 24, 1863, C XVIII, p. 605.

34   But as Fields pressed … Let’s just call: See JTF to NH, Oct. 28, 1863, in Austin, Fields of the Atlantic Monthly, p. 232; NH to JTF, Dec. 9, 1863, C XVIII, p. 619.

35   Sophia guessed … “bedevilment”: SH to AF, Nov. 29, 1863, BPL.

36   “I am amazed”: SH to UH, Dec. 19, 1863, Berg.

37   “He cannot bear”: SH to UH, Dec. 19, 1863, Berg.

38   “He is not a very manageable”: SH to HB, Apr. 5, 1864, BY.

39   “amid the sloth of age”: “The Dolliver Romance,” in Elixir of Life, p. 460.

40   “virgin bloom”; “forlorn widow”: Silsbee, A Half-Century in Salem, p. 37; “The Dolliver Romance,” in Elixir of Life, p. 457. In another example of correspondence, Dolliver’s great-granddaughter, Pansie, is likely named for Posy Loring, daughter of Dr. George B. Loring; later in the manuscript, Hawthorne calls her Posie. Moreover, that Dolliver’s grandson was a devoted horticulturist reminds the Hawthorne reader of his uncle Robert Manning; that Dolliver is a man of medicine, or tries to be, recalls Nathaniel Peabody, SH’s father.

41   So old Dolliver: Why does Dolliver persist in drinking his elixir? Hawthorne wasn’t sure, although he seems to have intended another satire of reform: his hero, in trying to eradicate poverty or slavery or war, “would have destroyed the whole economy of the world.” Or, Hawthorne continues, perhaps he just wanted to “see how the American Union was going to succeed.” See “The Dolliver Romance,” in Elixir of Life, “Study 2,” p. 532; “Study 5,” p. 537. The Centenary editors have approximated the date of composition of these fragments; “Study 2” can be internally dated July 22, 1863, or later, by the fragment in the Huntington Library.

42   “I wish, with all”: SH to HB, Apr. 5, 1864, BY.

43   “I am tired”; And what avails: NH to Donald Grant Mitchell, Jan. 16, 1864, C XVIII, p. 632; NH to HWL, Jan. 2, 1864, C XVIII, p. 626.

44   “two jovial Publishers”: HWL to JTF, in The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Andrew Hilen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), vol. 4, p. 380.

45   Hawthorne sat gazing: AF, diary, Jan. 9, 1864, MHS.

46   “I cannot help thinking”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., [Mar. 1864], Antioch.

47   “This mode of death”: The House of the Seven Gables, p. 613.

48   “Say to the Public”: NH to JTF, Feb. 25, 1864, C XVIII, p. 640.

49   Hawthorne was too weak: Conway, Life of Hawthorne, p. 210. See also UH to EH, Mar. 20, 1864, Rosary Hill.

50   “I think we could bear”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., June 6, 1864, UVA; Yesterdays, p. 117.

51   He was wraithlike; At night: MM to Horace Mann Jr., June 6, 1864, UVA; AF, diary, Mar. 28, 1864, MHS, quoted in M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields (New York: Arno Press, 1974), p. 63; see also Yesterdays, p. 117; AF, diary, Mar. 28, 1864, MHS.

52   Hawthorne, however, felt better: NH to RH, Apr. 3, 1864, Rosary Hill.

53   Later he conveyed: See James C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1884), pp. 345–46; Howe, Memories of a Hostess, p. 64; Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher, pp. 312–31.

54   The gleam had gone: SH to AF, [Apr. 18, 1864], BPL.

55   Yet he managed … stipulated: After Hawthorne’s death, Sophia Hawthorne discovered the bequest. See SH to FP, [June 1864], NHHS. See also SH to EH, Feb. 9, 1869, PE.

56   Years later, Rose: Memories, p. 477.

57   This pleased Sophia; But Sophia naively: See The Journals of Bronson Alcott, p. 362; SH to AF, [Apr. 19, 1864], BPL.

58   “He has become”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 15, 1864, Antioch.

59   “If sometimes it impels”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 241

60   “He had the choice”: “The Dolliver Romance,” in Elixir of Life, p. 241

61   “Think of the delight”: AF, Mar. 28, 1864, MHS; Howe, Memories of a Hostess, p. 63.

62   “Men die, finally”: “Septimius Norton,” in Elixir of Life, p. 322.

63   “His death was a mystery”: Franklin B. Sanborn, ms. dated Aug. 28, 1901, Concord Free Public Library.

64   “A man’s days”: Annie Sawyer Downs, “Mr. Hawthorne, Mr. Thoreau, Miss Alcott, Mr. Emerson, and Me,” ed. Walter Harding, American Heritage 30:1 (Dec. 1978), p. 99.

65   The morning of Hawthorne’s funeral: EPP to [Mary Pickman Loring], May 23, 1864, courtesy Kent Bicknell.

66   “like a snow image”: Memories, p. 478.

67   “My father did not”: Memories, pp. 480, 478.

68   They stopped by Charles Street: Yesterdays, p. 122.

69   In private, he said: See SH to JTF, May 21, 1864, BPL: “Will you be kind enough to refrain from saying a word to my sisters about what Mr. Hawthorne said of fear of not becoming able to—of not being himself as before because on any such suggestion I fear my sister would talk of it to others and inevitably exaggerate.… And you know his mind had not yet a shadow—Oh I wish Dr. Holmes would not say he feared it. Why not leave him intact as he is.”

70   But the shark’s tooth: Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Hawthorne,” Atlantic Monthly 14 (July 1864), pp. 98–101. AF, diary, May 11, 1864, MHS.

71   Pierce signed: From a photograph of the register, courtesy Kent Bicknell.

72   “Happy the man”: The Blithedale Romance, p. 667.

73   It would be a boon … “Not in my day”: To Horatio Bridge, Pierce confided that Hawthorne had grown so weak he decided he’d call Sophia and Una to come to Plymouth (Personal Recollections, p. 178), but he told Sarah Webster that “I was much impressed with the idea that his journey of life might terminate nearer the sea, which he so much loved, than Dixville Notch,” which suggests he knew Hawthorne was dying. See FP to Sarah Webster, Mar. 18, 1868, UVA.

74   After Hawthorne’s death: See FP to Sarah Webster, Mar. 18, 1868, UVA; see also SH to Anne O’Gara, Sept. 4, 1864, Bancroft; Yesterdays, p. 123; Personal Recollections, pp. 176–79: my account of Hawthorne’s last days is taken from these.

75   Later that day, May 19: Nichols, Franklin Pierce p. 525. I have not discovered Nichols’s source or found further corroboration of the story, but despite his scant notes, Nichols is reliable in all other instances and is likely reliable here.

76   “I need not tell you”: Personal Recollections, p. 179.

EPILOGUE: THE PAINTED VEIL

1     “He peacefully closed”: The foregoing depends on MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 22, 1864, UVA; SH to Anne O’Gara, Sept. 4, 1864, Bancroft; EPP to Elizabeth Curson Hoxie in The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, p. 455; SH to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, May 19, 1867, Berg.

2     “Trifling details stood out”: JH, The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, ed. Edith Garrigues Hawthorne (New York: Macmillan, 1938), pp. 156–57.

3     “Sophia does not wish”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 22, 1864, UVA.

4     “cannot bear to think”: UH to James Freeman Clarke, [May 1864], MHS.

5     Sophia asked … Annie got: UH to AF, [May 1864], BPL.

6     “It looked like”: The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 15, p. 59.

7     “We shall be alone”: [May 21, 1864], quoted in The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, p. 412.

8     Ebe Hawthorne was also: Sophia Hawthorne’s letter to EPP, May 25, 1864, Berg, has wrongly been interpreted to indicate that EPP did not attend the funeral; however, shortly after the funeral, SH described it to various persons in attendance, as if to offer them further consolation, which she clearly aims to do in the case of EPP. Moreover, in EPP to Samuel Foster Haven Jr., Elizabeth Peabody writes that she thought the funeral service lovely, adding that Emerson said “it did not sufficiently recognize the tragedy of his loss to our literature” (n.d., Haven Papers, AAS). Also EPP to Mary Loring, May 23, 1864, courtesy Kent Bicknell, makes her intention to attend the funeral clear.

9     He was the friend: MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 24, 1864, UVA.

10   Julian, his hand cold: SH to EPP, May 23, 1864, Berg.

11   Afterwards Sophia said: Louisa Alcott, diary, n.d., Houghton.

12   He died with one hundred twenty: Nathaniel Hawthorne, probate record 33844, Archives and Records, Supreme Judicial Court, Boston, Mass.

13   “I thought I could”: Memories, p. 456. The original letter contains slight variations. See RWE to SH, July 11 [1864], Morgan.

14   “tragic element”: The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 15, pp. 59–60.

15   “I don’t think people”: James Russell Lowell to JTF, Sept. 7, 1868, Huntington.

16   “It was pleasant”: Conway, Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences, vol. 1, p. 386.

17   “We are always finding”: William Dean Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintances, ed. David Hiatt and Edwin Cady (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968), p. 52.

18   “I never dared”: SH to unknown, [June? 1864?], Berg.

19   But not everyone: Charles King Newcomb, The Journals of Charles King Newcomb, ed. Judith Kennedy Johnson (Providence, R.I.: Brown Univ. Press, 1946), p. 151; Caroline Healey Dall, diary, June 3, 1864, MHS; Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Sept. 6, 1864, bMS Am 1088.2, box 2, Houghton; The Selected Letters of Louisa Alcott, p. 321.

20   “There can be companionship”: George S. Hillard, “The English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Atlantic Monthly 26:155 (Sept. 1870), p. 266.

21   “He was a man”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., May 22, 1864, UVA.

22   “Nobody would think”: NH to SH, Jan. 1, 1840, C XV, p. 395.

23   James T. Fields swiftly: Today Fields’s skill at making Hawthorne a “canonical” author is the subject of debate and concern, beginning with Jane Tompkins’s fine essay in Sensational Designs; see also Richard Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993). Partly as a consequence of Hawthorne’s undiminished popularity—his work has never suffered the eclipses that have occasionally shadowed Melville or James or Wharton—Hawthorne has become the canonical dead white male author that critics, particularly academic ones, love to hate, for his continuous popularity suggests, among other things, that his work confirms and constructs even while it undermines the “dominant ideologies” that presumably guarantee popularity.

24   “Is he human?”: Curtis, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” p. 354.

25   “What other man”: Curtis, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” p. 354.

26   “I said probably”: George William Curtis to Richard C. Manning, June 18, 1864, PE.

27   “His genius continually”: Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Sept. 6, 1864, bMS Am 1088.2, box 2, Houghton.