Literary Shrines: The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors

by Theodore F. Wolfe

Not far away, near another shore of the shimmering "Bowl," that versatile genius "Carl Benson"—Charles Astor Bristed—dwelt for some time in a quaint old farm-house which has since been destroyed by fire, and here accomplished some of his literary work. Laurel Lake (the Scott's Pond of Hawthorne's "Note-Books"), where Beecher "bought a hundred acres to lie down upon,"—and called them Blossom Farm in the "Star Papers" written there,—was another resort of Hawthorne. We find it a pretty water, although its margins are mostly denuded of large trees. A bright matron of the vicinage, who, when a child, thought the author of the "Wonder-Book" the "greatest man in the world save only Franklin Pierce," lived then by Hawthorne's road to Laurel Lake. Her admiration for him (heightened by his intimacy with Pierce) led her to daily watch the road by which he would come from Tanglewood, and when she saw him approaching—which would be twice a week in good weather—she would go into the yard and reverently gaze at him until his swift gait had carried him out of sight. To her he was a tall, dark man with a handsome clean-shaven face and lustrous eyes which saw nothing but the ground directly before him, habitually dressed in black, with a wide-brimmed soft hat. Usually his walk was solitary, but sometimes Herman Melville, who was well known in the neighborhood, was his companion, and one autumn he was twice or thrice accompanied by "a light spare man,"—the poet Ellery Channing. Fanny KembleOnce Hawthorne strode past toward the lake when Fanny Kemble, who lived near by, rode her black steed by his side and "seemed to be doing all the talking"—she was capable of that—and "was talking politics." Having secured a Democratic auditor, she doubtless "improved the occasion" with her habitual vivaciousness. A neighbor of Hawthorne's tells us this incident of the following year, when the novelist's friend Pierce had been named for the Presidency. One dark night this neighbor went on foot to a campaign lecture at Lenox Furnace. At its close, he essayed to shorten the homeward walk by a "short cut" across the fields, and, of course, lost his way. Descrying a light, he directed his steps toward it, but found himself involved in a labyrinth of obstacles, and had to make so many détours that when he finally reached the house whence the light proceeded, and when in response to his hail the door was opened by Kemble herself, he was so distraught and amazed at being lost among his own farms that he could hardly explain his plight; but she quickly interrupted his incoherent account: "Yes, I see, poor benighted man! you've been to a Democratic meeting; no wonder you are bewildered! Now I'll lend you a good Whig lantern that will light you safe home." We find Mrs. Kemble-Butler's "Perch"—as she named her home here—a little enlarged, but not otherwise changed since the time of her occupancy. She was a general favorite, and her dark steed, which had cost her the proceeds of a volume of her poems, used to stop before every house in the vicinage. She often came, habited in a sort of bloomer costume which shocked some of her friends, to fish in the "Bowl" at the time Hawthorne dwelt by its shore.

The death of Louis Kossuth, some time ago, reminded her former neighbors here that she led the dance with him at a ball in Lenox, when the exiled patriot was a guest of the Sedgwicks.

Monument MountainOur approach to Monument Mountain is along one of those sequestered by-ways which Hawthorne loved, with "an unseen torrent roaring at an unseen depth" near by. A rift in the morning mists which enshroud the valley displays the mountain summit bathed in sunshine. We ascend by Bryant's "path which conducts up the narrow battlement to the north," the same along which Hawthorne and his friends—Holmes, James T. Fields, Sedgwick, and the rest—were piloted by the historian Headley on a summer's day more than forty years ago. Standing upon the beetling verge, which is scarred and splintered by thunderbolts and overhangs a precipice of five hundred feet or more, we look abroad upon a landscape of wondrous expanse and beauty. Here we may realize all the prospect Bryant portrayed as he stood upon this spot:

"A beautiful river Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads; On either side The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond, Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise The mighty columns with which earth props heaven."

In the middle distance, across the Bowl, which gleams a veritable "mountain mirror," we see the site of the home whence Hawthorne so often looked upon these cliffs. Yonder detached pinnacle, rising from the base of the precipice beneath us, is the "Pulpit Rock" which Catherine Sedgwick christened when Hawthorne's party picnicked here; from the crag projecting from the verge Fanny Kemble declaimed Bryant's poem, and Herman Melville, bestriding the same rock for a bowsprit, "pulled and hauled imaginary ropes" for the amusement of the company. Among these splintered masses the company lunched that day and drank quantities of Heidsieck to the health of the "dear old poet of Monument Mountain." On the east, almost within sight from this eminence, is the spot where he was born, near the birthplaces of Warner and the gifted Mrs. Howe.

Hawthorne at Stockbridge

Another day we follow the same brilliant party of Hawthorne's friends through the Stockbridge Ice Glen,—a narrow gorge which cleaves a rugged mountain from base to summit, its riven sides being apparently held asunder by immense rocky masses hurled upon each other in wild confusion. Beneath are weird grottos and great recesses which the sun never penetrates, and within these we make our way—clambering and sliding over huge boulders—through the heart of the mountain. One of Hawthorne's company here testifies that in all the extemporaneous jollity of the scramble through the glen the usually silent novelist was foremost, and, being sometimes in the dark, dared use his tongue,—"calling out lustily and pretending that certain destruction threatened us all. I never saw him in better spirits than throughout this day."

From the glen we trace Hawthorne to the staid old house of Burr's boyhood, where lived and wrote Jonathan Edwards, and the statelier dwelling whence Catherine Sedgwick gave her tales to the world. Near by we find the grave where she lies amid the scenes of her own "Hope Leslie," and not far from the sojourn of her gifted niece whose translation of Sand's "Fadette" has been so well received. Overlooking the village is the summer residence of Field of the "Evangelist,"—author of the delightful books of travel.

Farther away is a little farm-house, with a "huge, corpulent, old Harry VIII. of a chimney," to which Hawthorne was a frequent visitor,—the "Arrow-Head" of Herman Melville. "Godfrey Graylock" says the friendship between Hawthorne and Melville originated in their taking refuge together, during an electric shower, in a narrow cleft of Monument Mountain. They had been coy of each other on account of Melville's review of the "Scarlet Letter" in Duyckinck's Literary World, but during some hours of enforced intercourse and propinquity in very contracted quarters they discovered in each other a correlation of thought and feeling which made them fast friends for life. Thereafter Melville was often at the little red house, where the children knew him as "Mr. Omoo," and less often Hawthorne came to chat with the racy romancer and philosopher by the great chimney. Once he was accompanied by little Una—"Onion" he sometimes called her—and remained a whole week. This visit—certainly unique in the life of the shy Hawthorne—was the topic when, not so long agone, we last looked upon the living face of Melville in his city home. March weather prevented walks abroad, so the pair spent most of the week in smoking and talking metaphysics in the barn,—Hawthorne usually lounging upon a carpenter's bench. When he was leaving, he jocosely declared he would write a report of their psychological discussions for publication in a volume to be called "A Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the title being a travesty upon that of Thoreau's then recent book, "A Week on Concord River," etc.

Melville's Arrow-Head