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 “jus
t 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.
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