A Study of Hawthorne

by George Parsons Lathrop

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he had bought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtis was at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes of American Authors," among which was to be included the new abode of Hawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:—

CONCORD, July 14, 1852.

MY HEAR 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, although from the style of its construction it seems to have survived beyond its first century. He added a porch in front, and a central peak, and a piazza at each end, and painted it a rusty olive hue, and invested the whole with a modest picturesqueness; all which improvements, together with its situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a place that one notices and remembers for a few moments after passing it. Mr. Alcott expended a good deal of taste and some money (to no great purpose) in forming the hillside behind the house into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems and branches and trees, on a system of his own. They must have been very pretty in their day, and are so still, although much decayed, and shattered more and more by every breeze that blows. The hillside is covered chiefly with locust-trees, which come into luxuriant blossom in the month of June, and look and smell very sweetly, intermixed with a few young elms and some white-pines and infant oaks,—the whole forming rather a thicket than a wood. Nevertheless, there is some very good shade to be found there. I spend delectable hours there in the hottest part of the day, stretched out at my lazy length, with a book in my hand or an unwritten book in my thoughts. There is almost always a breeze stirring along the sides or brow of the hill.

From the hill-top there is a good view along the extensive level surfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, that characterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as a gleam of lake or river in the prospect; if there were, it would add greatly to the value of the place in my estimation.

The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston road (along which the British marched and retreated), divided from it by a fence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Alcott's setting out. Whereupon I have called it "The Wayside," which I think a better name and more morally suggestive than that which, as Mr. Alcott has since told me, he bestowed on it,—"The Hillside." In front of the house, on the opposite side of the road, I have eight acres of land,—the only valuable portion of the place in a farmer's eye, and which are capable of being made very fertile. On the hither side, my territory extends some little distance over the brow of the hill, and is absolutely good for nothing, in a productive point of view, though very good for many other purposes.

I know nothing of the history of the house, except Thoreau's telling me that it was inhabited a generation or two ago by a man who believed he should never die. [Footnote: This is the first intimation of the story of Septimius Felton, so far as local setting is concerned. The scenery of that romance was obviously taken from the Wayside and its hill.] I believe, however, he is dead; at least, I hope so; else he may probably appear and dispute my title to his residence….

I asked Ticknor to send a copy of "The Blithedale Romance" to you. Do not read it as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm (which essentially it has not), but merely for its own story and character. Truly yours,

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when its owner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment." It characterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though the spell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself was small, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legend over Ariosto's door, Parva, sed apta mihi. In October, 1852, he wrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or two, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design this was cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in the preceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with the demand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of invention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he could produce as many books as he might have time for writing. But circumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as he was preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the "Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I have consented to do so," wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhat reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where a man careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting his acquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not be ashamed to tell the truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book was out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried to persuade Pierce that I could not perform it as well as many others; but he thought differently, and of course, after a friendship of thirty years, it was impossible to refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at the great pinch of his life." In this letter, also, he states that before undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce; though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly than heroism." In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:—