Literary Shrines: The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors

by Theodore F. Wolfe

The habitation to which he brought his family he describes as "the very ugliest little bit of an old red farm-house you ever saw," "the most inconvenient and wretched hovel I ever put my head in." His wife's letters characterize it, "the reddest and smallest of houses," with such a low stud that she "fears to be crushed."

In later years we have found it scarcely changed since Hawthorne's occupancy; it was indeed of the humblest and plainest,—a low-eaved, one-and-a-half-storied structure, with a lower wing at the side, dingy red in color, with window-shutters of green. The interior was cosy and more commodious than the exterior would indicate, and one could readily conceive that the artistic taste and deft fingers of Mrs. Hawthorne might create here the idyllic home her letters portray. We have been indebted to the courtesy of Hawthorne's friend Tappan for glimpses of the rooms which Mrs. Hawthorne had already made familiar to us: the tiny reception-room, where she "sewed at her stand and read to the children about Christ;" the drawing-room, where she disposed "the embroidered furniture," and where, in the farther corner, stood "Apollo with his head tied on;" the dining-room, where the "Pembroke table stood between the windows;" the small boudoir, with its enchanting outlook; the "golden chamber" where the baby Rose was born; the room of the "little lady Una;" and the low, dingy apartment which was the study of the master-genius. Of this room she says, "it can boast of nothing but his presence in the morning and the picture out of the window in the evening." His secretary was so placed that as he sat at his work he could look out upon a landscape of forest and meadow, lake and mountain, as beautiful as a poet's dream. It was the exquisite loveliness of this scene—which Hawthorne thought surpassed all others in Berkshire—that for a time reconciled him to the deficiencies of his situation here.

Monument Mountain, looming almost across the valley, is the most prominent feature of this view, and it was from his study window that he noted most of its varying aspects which are depicted in the "Wonder-Book" and in his letters and journals. Its contour is to him that of a "huge, headless sphinx," and when—as on the days we beheld it from his window—it blazes from base to summit with the resplendent hues of autumn, his fancy suggested that "the sphinx is wrapped in a rich Persian shawl;" with the sunshine upon it, "it has the aspect of burnished copper;" now it has "a fleece of sun-brightened mist," again it seems "founded on a cloud;" on other days it is "enveloped as if in the smoke of a great battle." Upon the pane through which he had looked upon these changeful phases his hand inscribed, "Nathaniel Hawthorne, February 9, 1851."

Site of his Little Red House

He could scarcely have found a lovelier location for his home. The valley, which sometimes seemed to him "a vast basin filled with sunshine as with wine," is enclosed by groups of mountains piled and terraced to the horizon. As we behold them in the splendor of the October days, great patches of sunshine and sable cloud-shadows flit along the glowing slopes in the sport of the wind. On the one side, the ground sweeps upward from the cottage site to the "Bald Summit" of the "Wonder-Book;" on the other, a meadow—as long as the finger of the giant of "Three Golden Apples"—slopes to the lake a furlong distant. That beautiful water, sung by Sigourney, Sedgwick, and Fanny Kemble, stretches its bays three miles among the hills to the southward and mirrors its own wooded margins and the farther mountains. Beyond the lake, rising in mid-air like a great gray wall, are the sheer precipices of Monument Mountain, and in the hazy distance the loftier Taconics uprear their grand Dome in the illimitable blue.

Of "La Maison Rouge" of Hawthorne's letters, the pilgrim of to-day finds only the blackened and broken foundation walls: a devouring fire, from which Tappan saved little of his furniture, has laid it low. These walls (which remain only because relic-hunters cannot easily carry them away) measurably indicate the form and dimensions of the cottage and its general arrangement. Its site is close upon the highway, from which it is partially screened by evergreen trees. The gate of the enclosure is of course an unworthy successor to that upon which Fields found Hawthorne swinging his children, but these near-by elms have shaded the great romancer, the tallest of the evergreens is the tree his wife thought "full of a thousand memories," and all about the spot cluster reminders of the simple, healthful life Hawthorne led here. Here are the garden ground he tilled and where he buried the pet rabbit "Bunny;" the "patch," ploughed for him by Tappan, where he raised beans for himself and corn for his hens (he had learned something of agriculture at Brook Farm, albeit it was said there he could do nothing but feed the hogs); the now great fruit-trees whose leaden labels little Julian destroyed, as Tappan remembers; the place of the "scientific hennery," fitted up by the "Man of Genius and the Naval Officer,"—Hawthorne and Horatio Bridge; the long declivity where the novelist as well as his Eustace Bright used to coast "in the nectared air of winter" with the children of the "Wonder-Book;" the leafy woods—his refuge from visitors—where he walked with his children and where Bright nutted with the little Pringles; the lake-shore where Hawthorne loitered or lay extended in the shade during summer hours, "smoking cigars, reading foolish novels, and thinking of nothing at all," while the children played about him or covered his chin and breast with long grasses to make him "look like the mighty Pan."

Near by are other friends he has made known to us. Yonder copse shades a narrow glen whose braes border a brooklet winding and chattering on its way to the lake; this glen was a summer haunt of Hawthorne, where he doubtless pondered much of his work. Here he brought his children "to play with the brook" and helped them to build water-falls, or reclined in the shade and told them stories as described in the "Wonder-Book,"—for this is the "dell of Shadow-Brook," where the children picnicked with Bright and where he told them the story of "The Golden Touch" on such an afternoon as this, on which we behold the dell thickly strewn with golden leaves, as if King Midas had newly emptied his coffers there.

Tanglewood and Wonder-Book Scenes

Yonder mansion of Hawthorne's landlord, just beyond the highway, is "Tanglewood,"—place of the Pringles' home and still the abode of Tappan's daughters,—where Bright spent his vacations and where Hawthorne makes him tell many of the "Tales." The view described on the porch, where the "Gorgon's Head" was narrated, is the one Hawthorne saw from his study window. Glimpses of various rooms of the mansion which Tappan then inhabited and called "Highwood" are prefixed to the stories told in them. Beyond "Tanglewood" steeply rises an eminence whose bare acclivity Hawthorne often climbed with his family,—the "Bald Summit" where the Pringles listened to the tale of "The Chimera." We ascend by the novelist's accustomed way "through Luther Butler's orchard," and are repaid by a view extending from the mountains of Vermont to the Catskills and deserving the high praise Hawthorne bestowed. A golden cloud floating close to Graylock's shaggy head reminds us of Hawthorne's conceit that a mortal might step from the mountain to the cloud and thus ascend heavenly heights. The farther ranges enclose a valley of wave-like hills,—which look as if a tumultuous ocean had been transfixed and solidified,—dotted with farmsteads and picturesque villages whose white spires rise from embowering trees. At our feet the "Bowl" ripples and scintillates, farther away the "Echo Lake" of Christine Nilsson and many smaller lakelets "open their blue eyes to the sun," while the placid stream, fringed by overhanging willows, circles here and there through the valley like a shining ribbon. Here we may realize the immensity of Hawthorne's giant in the "Three Golden Apples," who was so tall he "might have seated himself on Taconic and had Monument Mountain for a footstool."

Resorts and Reminiscences