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 Me
linda 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, w
ho 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.
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