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 rea
son: 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 Ma
ria 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.
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