The Complete Novels. Nathaniel Hawthorne

and choosing another as their Mayor. I feel an infinite contempt for them, and probably have expressed more of it than I intended; for my preliminary chapter has caused the greatest uproar that ever happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good luck. I wish they would tar and feather me—it would be such an entirely new distinction for a literary man! And from such judges as my fellow-citizens, I should look upon it as a higher honor than a laurel-crown." In the same letter he states that he has taken a house in Lenox, and shall move to it on the 1st of May: "I thank Mrs. Bridge for her good wishes as respects my future removals from office; but I should be sorry to anticipate such bad fortune as ever again being appointed to me."

      Previous to this, he had written: "I long to get into the country, for my health latterly is not quite what it has been for many years past. I should not long stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led for the last few months. An hour or two of daily labor in a garden, and a daily ramble in country air or on the sea-shore, would keep me all right. Here I hardly go out once a week.... I detest this town so much, that I hate to go into the streets, or to have the people see me. Anywhere else I should at once be another man."

      It was not a very comfortable home, that small red wooden house at Lenox, overlooking the beautiful valley of the Housatonic and surrounded by mountains; but both Hawthorne and his wife bravely made the best of it. Mrs. Hawthorne ornamented an entire set of plain furniture, painted a dull yellow, with copies from Flaxman's outlines, executed with great perfection; and, poor as the place was, it soon became invested by its occupants with something of a poetic atmosphere. After a summer's rest, Hawthorne began "The House of the Seven Gables;" writing to Bridge in October:—

      "I am getting so deep into my own book, that I am afraid it will be impossible for me to attend properly to my editorial duties" (connected with a new edition of Lieutenant Bridge's "Journal of an African Cruiser").... "Una and Julian grow apace, and so do our chickens, of which we have two broods. There is one difficulty about these chickens, as well as about the older fowls. We have become so intimately acquainted with every individual of them, that it really seems like cannibalism to think of eating them. What is to be done?"

      His task occupied him all winter. To Mr. Fields at length, on the 27th of January, 1851, he sent the following message:—

      "I intend to put 'The House of the Seven Gables' into the expressman's hands to-day; so that, if you do not soon receive it, you may conclude that it has miscarried—in which case, I shall not consent to the universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest scribble of a first draught; so that it could never be restored.

      "It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the public to whose judgment it has been submitted: viz. from my wife. I likewise prefer it to 'The Scarlet Letter;' but an author's opinion of his book, just after completing it, is worth little or nothing; he being then in the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too high or too low. It has undoubtedly one disadvantage in being brought so close to the present time, whereby its romantic improbabilities become more glaring."

      The fac simile of a part of the above letter which is reproduced here serves as a fairly good specimen of Hawthorne's handwriting. At the time when it was written, he was not very well, and the fatigue of his long labor upon the book rendered the chirography somewhat less clear in this case than it often was. The lettering in his manuscripts was somewhat larger, and was still more distinct than that in his correspondence.

      After the new romance had come out and had met with a flattering reception, he inquired of Bridge (July 22, 1851): "Why did you not write and tell me how you liked (or how you did not like) 'The House of the Seven Gables?' Did you feel shy about expressing an unfavorable opinion? It would not have hurt me in the least, though I am always glad to please you; but I rather think I have reached the stage when I do not care very essentially one way or the other for anybody's opinion on any one production. On this last romance, for instance, I have heard and seen such diversity of judgment that I should be altogether bewildered if I attempted to strike a balance;—so I take nobody's estimate but my own. I think it is a work more characteristic of my mind, and more natural and proper for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter'—but for that very reason less likely to interest the public.... As long as people will buy, I shall keep at work, and I find that my facility of labor increases with the demand for it."

      In the May of 1851 another daughter was added to his family. Hawthorne, like his father, had one son and two daughters. Of this youngest one he wrote to Pike, two months after her birth: "She is a very bright and healthy child.... I think I feel more interest in her than I did in the other children at the same age, from the consideration that she is to be the daughter of my age—the comfort (so it is to be hoped) of my declining years." There are some other interesting points in this communication. "What a sad account you give of your solitude, in your letter! I am not likely ever to have that feeling of loneliness which you express; and I most heartily wish you would take measures to remedy it in your own case, by marrying.... Whenever you find it quite intolerable (and I can hardly help wishing that it may become so soon), do come to me. By the way, if I continue to prosper as hitherto in the literary line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a place; and if you should hear of one, say worth from $1,500 to $2,000, I wish you would keep your eye on it for me. I should wish it to be on the sea-coast, or at all events within easy access to the sea. Very little land would suit my purpose, but I want a good house, with space inside.... I find that I do not feel at home among these hills, and should not consider myself permanently settled here. I do not get acclimated to the peculiar state of the atmosphere; and, except in mid-winter, I am continually catching cold, and am never so vigorous as I used to be on the sea-coast.... Why did you not express your opinion of 'The House of the Seven Gables?'... I should receive friendly censure with just as much equanimity as if it were praise; though certainly I had rather you would like the book than not. At any rate, it has sold finely, and seems to have pleased a good many people better than the other; and I must confess that I myself am among the number.... When I write another romance I shall take the Community for a subject, and shall give some of my experiences at Brook Farm."

      On the first day of December, 1851, he left Lenox with his wife and children, betaking himself for the winter to West Newton, a suburban village a few miles west of Boston, on the Charles River; there to remain until he could effect the purchase of a house which could serve him as a settled home. The house that he finally selected was an old one in the town of Concord, about a mile easterly from the centre of the village on the road to Lexington, and was then the property of Mrs. Bronson Alcott. During the winter at West Newton he wrote "The Blithedale Romance," which was published early in 1852. In the brief term of two years and a half from the moment of his leaving the Custom House at Salem, he had thus produced four books,—"The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," "A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and "The Blithedale Romance,"—three of them being the principal works of his lifetime, with which "The Marble Faun" alone stands in the same category. Early in the summer of 1852 he took up his residence in his new home, The Wayside, of which he thus discoursed to Mr. George William Curtis, on the 14th of July, 1852:—

      My dear Howadji,—I think (and am glad to think) that you will find it necessary to come hither in order to write your Concord Sketches; and as for my old house, you will understand it better after spending a day or two in it. Before Mr. Alcott took it in hand, it was a mean-looking affair, with two peaked gables; no suggestiveness about it and no venerableness,