MR. HAWTHORNE,—You have expressed the kind hope that your writings might interest those who claim the same birthplace with yourself. And as we need but slight apology for doing what inclination suggests, I easily persuade myself that it will not be very inappropriate for me to assure you that in one heart, at least, pride in your genius and gratitude for high enjoyment owed to you have added to, and made still more sacred, the strong love otherwise felt for the spot where the precious gift of life was received.
In earlier days, with your "Twice-Told Tales," you played upon my spirit-harp a sweet melody, the notes of which have never died away—and years after, when my heart was just uplifting itself from a deep sorrow, I read the introduction to your "Mosses from an Old Manse;" and I rejoiced in your words, as a tree, borne down by the wind and storm, rejoices in the first gentle breeze or ray of kindly sunshine.
And now, as after repeated griefs and lengthened anxieties I think I am come to that period of second youth of which you speak, I am permitted to delight in the marvelous beauty and infinite delicacy of the narration of "The Scarlet Letter," and the deep insight into human hearts and minds shown in that and the later production. When I am tempted to lay down the burden which, of one kind or another, mortals must daily bear, and forget that "all human liberty is but a restraint self-imposed or consented to," I shall call to mind the touching moment when Hester Prynne sadly bound up her flowing tresses, but just released, and meekly reassumed the badge of her shame. And the little Phoebe,—with her genial sympathies and cheerful tones,—I am not altogether without hope that she may aid me to throw off some of the morbid tendencies which have ever clung to my life (if, perchance, this last moral lesson should not destroy the first); and these sorrows once overcome, existence would not lose its corresponding exquisiteness of enjoyment.
I once lived in the "Old Hawthorne house;" whether or not you, sir, ever crossed the threshold tradition hath not deigned to inform me. Possibly you lived there when a child. And if the spirit renew itself once in seven years, as the body is said to do, the soul of those younger hours may have remained, may have shared with us our more ethereal pleasures, while it frowned on our prosaic sports. At least, to some such fancy as this, united with the idea of second childhood before alluded to, must be referred the folly of which I have been guilty in addressing a person, who, so far as bodily presence is concerned, is to me an entire stranger, and to whom I am utterly unknown.
However, sir, humbly begging your pardon for this same folly, and entreating that by no accident may the shades of the Salem witches become aware of it,
I am yours with much esteem,
MARY A. PORTER.
Upon the envelope Hawthorne has written, "Answered, July 18th." The letter has been preserved out of many thrown aside, and Mrs. Hawthorne has spoken to me of Mary Porter as of a real friend. Her delicacy and good sense of expression contrast well with the over-fanciful, unliterary quality of the letters of persons who came prominently forward as teachers of thought and literature, and who no doubt jarred miserably in their letters, if not in their conversation, upon the refined skill of Hawthorne and his wife. At any rate (and though the intercourse with these persons to whom I refer with daring comment was received most gratefully and cordially as generally the best to be found) Mary Porter was never forgotten.
That my mother and father enjoyed their next home at The Wayside there are immediate letters to prove; but if they had not feasted their eyes upon a vision of beautiful spaces, it might have been less delightful to return to the haunts of friends, and a hollow among hills. One grandeur of the distance they did not leave behind at Lenox: the sunsets to be seen over the meadows between The Wayside and the west are spaciously revealed and splendidly rich. Economy had a restless manner of drifting them from place to place. Now, however, a home was to be bought (the title-deed exists, with Mr. Emerson's name, and that of his wife, attached); so that the drifting appeared to be at an end. I have reserved until now several letters from Concord friends, of an earlier date, in order to show to what the Hawthornes looked forward in the matter of personalities, when re-establishing themselves in the distinguished village.
Mr. Alcott was prominent. In her girlhood, Mrs. Hawthorne, hearing from Miss Peabody that Mr. James Freeman Clarke had talked with some amusement of the school prophet's ideas, etc., had written:—