The Complete Novels. Nathaniel Hawthorne

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СКАЧАТЬ 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:—

      "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, СКАЧАТЬ