Hawthorne

by Brenda Wineapple

  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 durin
g 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.