Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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inert. He had left the Manning homestead and hired a house in Chestnut Street, which he kept for a year and a half. During this period Mrs. Hawthorne went to Boston for a time, and in Carver Street, Boston, was born their second child and only son, Mr. Julian Hawthorne, who has since made a reputation for himself as a novelist. From Chestnut Street he went to another house, in Mall Street; and it was there that "The Scarlet Letter" was finished, in 1850, four years after he had announced to Bridge that he intended soon to begin composition. The Custom House routine disturbed his creative moods and caused a gradual postponement of literary effort. Of the figure that he made while fulfilling the functions assigned to him, slight traces have been left. We are told, for example, that two Shakers, leaders in their community, visited the Custom House one day, and were conducted through its several departments. On the way out, they passed Hawthorne, and no sooner had they left his room than, the door being shut behind them, the elder brother asked with great interest who that man was. After referring to the strong face, "and those eyes, the most wonderful he had ever beheld," he said: "Mark my words, that man will in some way make a deep impression upon the world." It is also remembered that a rough and overbearing sea-captain attempted to interfere with Hawthorne's exercise of his duty as an inspector of the customs, in charge of the ship. His attempt "was met with such a terrific uprising of spiritual and physical wrath that the dismayed captain fled up the wharf" and took refuge with the Collector, "inquiring with a sailor's emotion and a sailor's tongue: 'What in God's name have you sent on board my ship for an inspector?'" Unexpectedly, in the winter of 1849, he was deprived of his surveyorship; a great surprise to him, because he had understood certain of his fellow-citizens of Salem to have given a pledge that they would not seek his removal, and it appeared that they had, notwithstanding, gone to work to oust him.
On finding himself superseded, he walked away from the Custom House, returned home, and entering sat down in the nearest chair, without uttering a word. Mrs. Hawthorne asked him if he was well.
"Well enough," was the answer.
"What is the matter, then?" said she. "Are you 'decapitated?'"
He replied with gloom that he was, and that the occurrence was no joke.
"Oh," said his wife, gayly, "now you can write your Romance!" For he had told her several times that he had a romance "growling" in him.
"Write my Romance!" he exclaimed. "But what are we to do for bread and rice, next week?"
"I will take care of that," she answered. "And I will tell Ann to put a fire in your study, now."
Hawthorne was oppressed with anxiety as to means of support for his wife and children; the necessity of writing for immediate returns always had a deterrent and paralyzing effect on his genius; and he was amazed that Mrs. Hawthorne should take his calamity with so much lightness. He questioned her again regarding the wherewithal to meet their current needs, knowing well that he himself had no fund in reserve. His habit had been to hand her the instalments of salary as they came to him from the office; and when he was in need of money for himself he drew again upon her for it. He therefore supposed that everything had been used up from week to week. But Mrs. Hawthorne now disclosed the fact that she had about a hundred and fifty dollars, a sum which for them was a considerable one, their manner of living being extremely plain. Greatly astonished, he asked her where she had obtained so much.
"You earned it," she replied, cheerily.
Mrs. Hawthorne was in fact overjoyed, on his account, that he had lost his place; feeling as she did that he would now resume his proper employment. The fire was built in the study, and Hawthorne, stimulated by his wife's good spirits, set at once about writing "The Scarlet Letter."
Some six months of time were required for its completion, and Mrs. Hawthorne, who was aware that her savings would be consumed in a third of that space, applied herself to increasing the small stock of cash, so that her husband's mind might remain free and buoyant for his writing. She began making little cambric lamp-shades, which she decorated with delicate outline drawings and sent to Boston for sale. They were readily purchased, and, by continuing their manufacture, this devoted wife contrived to defray the expenses of the household until the book was finished.
Mr. James T. Fields, the publisher, who was already an acquaintance, and eventually became a friend, of Hawthorne's had been told of the work, and went down to Salem to suggest bringing it out. This was before the story had been fully elaborated into its present form. Hawthorne had written steadily all day, and every day, from the start, but, remembering in what small quantity his books sold, he had come to consider this new attempt a forlorn hope. Mr. Fields found him despondent, and thus narrates the close of the interview:—
"I looked at my watch and found that the train would soon be starting for Boston, and I knew there was not much time to lose in trying to discover what had been his literary work during these last few years in Salem. I remember that I pressed him to reveal to me what he had been writing. He shook his head, and gave me to understand that he had produced nothing. At that moment I caught sight of a bureau or set of drawers near where we were sitting; and immediately it occurred to me that, hidden away somewhere in that article of furniture, was a story or stories by the author of the 'Twice-Told Tales,' and I became so confident that I charged him vehemently with the fact. He seemed surprised, I thought, but shook his head again; and I rose to take my leave, begging him not to come into the cold entry, saying I would come back and see him again in a few days. I was hurrying down the stairs when he called after me from the chamber, asking me to stop a moment. Then, quickly stepping into the entry with a roll of manuscript in his hands, he said: 'How in Heaven's name did you know this thing was here? As you have found me out, take what I have written, and tell me, after you get home and have time to read it, if it is good for anything. It is either very good or very bad—I don't know which.' On my way up to Boston I read the germ of 'The Scarlet Letter;' before I slept that night I wrote him a note all aglow with admiration of the marvellous story he had put into my hands."
In a letter to Bridge (April 10, 1850), the author said: "'The Scarlet Letter' has sold well, the first edition having been exhausted in ten days, and the second (5,000 in all) promising to go off rapidly." Speaking of the excitement created among his townspeople by the introductory account of the Custom House, he continued: "As to the Salem people, I really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after permitting me ... to be deliberately lied down, not merely once but at two separate attacks, on two false indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf; and then sending one of their false witnesses to Congress 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:—