II
LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE
Beloved of the Littérateurs—La Maison Rouge—Where The House of the Seven Gables was written—Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes—The Bowl—Beecher's Laurel Lake—Kemble—Bryant's Monument Mountain—Stockbridge—Catherine Sedgwick—Melville's Piazza and Chimney—Holmes—Longfellow—Pittsfield.
WE have only to accompany Eustace Bright of "Wonder-Book" from Williams College to his home, where Catherine Sedgwick's "Stockbridge Bowl" nestles among the summer-enchanted hills of central Berkshire, to find the abode of Hawthorne during the most fertile period of his life. This region of inspiring landscapes has long been a favorite residence of littérateurs. Here Jonathan Edwards compiled his predestined treatises; here Catherine Sedgwick wrote the romances which charmed her generation; here Elihu Burritt "the Learned Blacksmith," wrought out the "Sparks" that made him famous; here Bryant composed his best stanzas and made Monument Mountain and Green River classic spots; here Henry Ward Beecher indited many "Star Papers;" here Herman Melville produced his sea-tales and brilliant essays; here Headley and Holmes, Lowell and Longfellow, Curtis and James, Audubon and Whipple, Mrs. Sigourney and Martineau, Fanny Kemble and Frederika Bremer, the gifted sisters Goodale, and many other shining spirits, have had home or haunt and have invested the scenery with the splendors of their genius. Half a score of this galaxy were in Berkshire at the time of Hawthorne's residence there.
After his sojourn in northern Berkshire he returned to Salem, where he married the lovely Sophia Peabody, endured some years of custom-house drudgery, and wrote the "Scarlet Letter," which made him famous: he then sought again the seclusion of the mountains.
Hawthorne's Return to Berkshire
Poverty, which he had long and bravely endured, has been assigned as the cause of his removal to the humble Berkshire abode in 1850; one writer refers to the slenderness of his larder here, another says the rent for his poor dwelling was paid by his friends, another that the rent was remitted by the owner, who was his friend. But the success of the "Scarlet Letter" had relieved the necessitous condition of its author; and his landlord here—Tappan of "Tanglewood"—testifies and Hawthorne's letters show that he was able to pay his rent. His motive in returning to Berkshire is stated in a letter to Bridge: "I have taken a house in Lenox—I long to get into the country, for my health is not what it has been. An hour or two of labor in a garden and a daily ramble in country air would keep me all right." Doubtless, too, he hoped to find the quiet and seclusion of the place favorable for his work.
His Home and Study