The Complete Autobiographical Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Герман Мелвилл
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of my words. Mrs. Park was not there, being gone, I believe, to some lecture. Mary and your husband talked with the utmost hopefulness and faith of my Dove's future health and well-being. Dearest, you are well (all but the naughty swelling) and you always will be well. I love Mary because she loves you so much;—our affections meet in you, and so we become kindred. But everybody loves my Dove—everybody that knows her—and those that know her not love her also, though unconsciously, whenever they image to themselves something sweeter, and tenderer, and nobler, than they can meet with on earth. It is the likeness of my Dove that has haunted the dreams of poets, ever since the world began. Happy me, to whom that dream has become the reality of all realities—whose bosom has been warmed, and is forever warmed, with the close embrace of her who has flitted shadowlike away from all other mortals! Dearest, I wish your husband had the gift of making rhymes; for methinks there is poetry in his head and heart, since he has been in love with you. You are a Poem, my Dove. Of what sort, then? Epic?—Mercy on me,—no! A sonnet?—no; for that is too labored and artificial. My Dove is a sort of sweet, simple, gay, pathetic ballad, which Nature is singing, sometimes with tears, sometimes with smiles, and sometimes with intermingled smiles and tears.
I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft's yesterday with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful. When my Dove and Sophie Hawthorne can go with me, I shall not be afraid to accept invitations to meet literary lions and lionesses, because then I shall put the above-said redoubtable little personage in the front of the battle. What do you think, Dearest, of the expediency of my making a caucus speech? A great many people are very desirous of listening to your husband's eloquence; and that is considered the best method of making my debut. Now, probably, will Sophie Hawthorne utterly refuse to be kissed, unless I give up all notion of speechifying at a caucus. Silly little Sophie!—I would not do it, even if thou thyself besought it of me.
Belovedest, I wish, before declining your ticket to Mr. Emerson's lectures, that I had asked whether you wished me to attend them; for if you do, I should have more pleasure in going, than if the wish were originally my own.
Dearest wife, nobody can come within the circle of my loneliness, save you;—you are my only companion in the world;—at least, when I compare other intercourse with our intimate communion, it seems as [if] other people were the world's width asunder. And yet I love all the world better for my Dove's sake.
Good bye, belovedest. Drive away that "naughty swelling."
Your Ownest Husband.
Do not expect me till seven o'clock on Saturday—as I shall not leave Boston till sunset.
Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Salem, Mass.
TO MISS PEABODY
Boston, Decr. 11th, 1839—7 P.M.
Belovedest,
I am afraid you will expect a letter tomorrow—afraid, because I feel very sure that I shall not be able to fill this sheet tonight. I am well, and happy, and I love you dearly, sweetest wife;—nevertheless, it is next to impossibility for me to put ideas into words. Even in writing these two or three lines, I have fallen into several long fits of musing. I wish there was something in the intellectual world analogous to the Daguerrotype (is that the name of it?) in the visible—something which should print off our deepest, and subtlest, and delicatest thoughts and feelings as minutely and accurately as the above-mentioned instrument paints the various aspects of Nature. Then might my Dove and I interchange our reveries—but my Dove would get only lead in exchange for gold. Dearest, your last letter brought the warmth of your very heart to your husband—Belovedest, I cannot possibly write one word more, to-night.
This striving to talk on paper does but remove you farther from me. It seems as if Sophie Hawthorne fled away into infinite space the moment I try to fix her image before me in order to inspire my pen;—whereas, no sooner do I give myself up to reverie, than here she is again, smiling lightsomely by my side. There will be no writing of letters in Heaven; at least, I shall write none then, though I think it would add considerably to my bliss to receive them from my Dove. Never was I so stupid as to-night;—and yet it is not exactly stupidity, either, for my fancy is bright enough, only it has, just at this time, no command of external symbols. Good night, dearest wife. Love your husband, and dream of him.
Decr. 12th—6 P.M. Blessedest—Dove-ward and Sophie Hawthorne-ward doth your husband acknowledge himself "very reprehensible," for leaving his poor wife destitute of news from him such an interminable time—one, two, three, four days tomorrow noon. After seven years' absence, without communication, a marriage, if I mistake not, is deemed to be legally dissolved. Does it not appear at least seven years to my Dove, since we parted? It does to me. And will my Dove, or naughty Sophie Hawthorne, choose to take advantage of the law, and declare our marriage null and void? Oh, naughty, naughty, naughtiest Sophie Hawthorne, to suffer such an idea to come into your head! The Dove, I am sure, would not disown her husband, but would keep her heart warm with faith and love for a million of years; so that when he returned to her (as he surely would, at some period of Eternity, to spend the rest of eternal existence with her) he would seem to find in her bosom the warmth which his parting embrace had left there.
Very dearest, I do wish you would come to see me, this evening. If we could be together in this very parlour of ours, I think you, and both of us, would feel more completely at home than we ever have before in all our lives. Your chamber is but a room in your mother's house, where my Dove cannot claim an independent and separate right; she has a right, to be sure, but it is as a daughter. As a wife, it might be a question whether she has a right. Now this pleasant little room, where I sit, together with the bed-room in which I intend to dream tonight of my Dove, is my dwelling, my castle, mine own place wherein to be, which I have bought, for the time being, with the profits of mine own labor. Then is it not our home?
(Rest of letter missing)
TO MISS PEABODY
Boston, Decr. 18th, 1839—nearly 7 P.M.
Belovedest,
I wish you could see our parlour to-night—how bright and cheerful it looks, with the blaze of the coal-fire throwing a ruddy tinge over the walls, in spite of the yellow gleam of two lamps. Now if my Dove were sitting in the easiest of our two easy chairs—(for sometimes I should choose to have her sit in a separate chair, in order to realise our individuality, as well as our unity)—then would the included space of these four walls, together with the little contiguous bed-room, seem indeed like home.—But the soul of home is wanting now. Oh, naughtiest, why are you not here to welcome your husband when he comes in at eventide, chilled with his wintry day's toil? Why does he not find the table placed cosily in front of the fire, and a cup of tea steaming fragrantly—or else a bowl of warm bread and milk, such as his Dove feeds upon? A much-to-be-pitied husband am I, naughty wife—a homeless man—a wanderer in the desert of this great city; picking up a precarious subsistence wherever I happen to find a restaurateur or an oyster-shop—and returning at night to a lonely fireside. Dearest, have I brought the tears into your eyes? What an unwise little person is my Dove, to let the tears gather in her eyes for such nonsensical pathos as this! Yet not nonsensical either, inasmuch as it is a sore trial to your husband to be estranged from that which makes life a reality to him, and to be compelled to spend so many God-given days in a dream—in an outward show, which has nothing to satisfy the soul that has become acquainted with truth. But, mine own wife, if you had not taught me what happiness is, I should not have known that there is anything lacking to me now. I am dissatisfied—not because, at any former period of my life, I was ever a thousandth part so happy as now—but because Hope feeds and grows strong on the happiness within me. Good night, belovedest wife. I have a note to write to Mr. Capen, who torments me every now-and-then about a book which he wants me to manufacture. Hereafter, I intend that my Dove shall manage all my correspondence:—indeed, it is my purpose to throw all sorts of trouble upon my Dove's shoulders. Good night now, dearest.—
December 20th—7 P.M. Blessedest wife—has not Sophie Hawthorne been very impatient for this letter, one half of which yet remains undeveloped in