A spacious central hall, rich in antique panelling and sombre with grave tints, extends through the house. From its dusk and coolness we look out upon the bright summer day through its open doors; through one we see the "hill of the Emersons" beyond the highway, the other frames a pleasing picture of orchard and sward with glimpses of the river shining through its bordering shrubbery. The quaint apartments are darkly wainscoted and low-ceiled, with massive beams crossing overhead. Some of these rooms Hawthorne has shown us. The one at the left, which the novelist believed to have been the sleeping-room of Dr. Ripley, was the parlor of the Hawthornes, and—decked with a gladsome carpet, pictures, and flowers daily gathered from the river-bank—Hawthorne averred it was "one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the whole world." To this room then came the sage Emerson "with a sunbeam in his face;" the "cast-iron man" Thoreau, "long-nosed, queer-mouthed, ugly as sin," but with whom to talk "is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest tree;" Ellery Channing, with his wife and her illustrious sister, Margaret Fuller; the gifted George William Curtis, then tilling a farm not far from the Manse, long before he lounged in an "Easy Chair;" genial Bradford, relative of Ripley, and associate and firm friend of Hawthorne; Horatio Bridge, of the "African Cruiser" and of the recent Hawthorne "Recollections;" the critic George Hillard, at whose house Hawthorne was married; "Prince" Lowell, the large-hearted; Franklin Pierce, Hawthorne's life-long friend. Concerning the discussion of things physical and metaphysical, to which these old walls then listened, the host gives us little hint. Sometimes the guests were "feasted on nectar and ambrosia" by the new Adam and Eve; sometimes they "listened to the music of the spheres which, for private convenience, is packed into a music-box,"—left here by Thoreau when he went to teach in the family of Emerson's brother; once here before this wide fireplace they sat late and told ghost stories,—doubtless suggested by the clerical phantom whose sighs they used to hear in yonder dusky corner, and whose rustling gown sometimes almost touched the company as he moved about among them. In this room Dr. Ripley penned, besides his "History of the Concord Fight" and "Treatise on Education," three thousand of his protracted homilies,—a fact upon which Hawthorne found it "awful to reflect,"—and here in our day the gifted George B. Bartlett wrote some part of his Concord sketches, etc. Here, too, and in the larger room opposite, the erudite and versatile Mrs. Samuel Ripley held her social court and received the exalted Concord conclave, with other earnest leaders of thought.
In the front chamber at the right Hawthorne's first child, the hapless Una,—named from Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"—was born. Behind this is the "ten-foot-square" apartment which was Hawthorne's study and workshop. Two windows of small, prismatic-hued panes look into the orchard, and upon one of these Hawthorne has inscribed,—
"Nathl. Hawthorne.
This is his study, 1843."
Below this another hand has graven,—
"Inscribed by my husband at
Sunset Apr 3d 1843
In the gold light S. A. H.
Man's accidents are God's purposes.
Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843."
From its north window, said to have been cracked by the explosions of musketry in the conflict, we see the battle-field and a reach of the placid river. This room had been the study of Emerson's grandfather; from its window his wife watched the fight between his undrilled parishioners and the British veterans. His daughter Mary—aunt of our American Plato and herself a gifted writer—used to boast "she was in arms at the battle," having been held up at this window to see the soldiery in the highway. Years later Emerson himself came into possession of this room, and here wrote his "Nature," antagonizing many of the orthodox tenets. Perhaps it was well for the moral serenity of his ancestor—to whom the transcendental movement would have seemed arrant March-madness—that he could not foresee the composition of such a volume here within the sanctity of his old study. The book was published anonymously, and Sanborn says that when inquiry was made, "Who is the author of 'Nature?'" a Concord wit replied, "God and Waldo Emerson."
Next, the dreamy Hawthorne succeeded to the little study, and here, with the sunlight glimmering through the willow boughs, he worked in solitude upon his charming productions for three or four hours of each day. Here, besides the copious entries in his journals, he prepared most of the papers of his "Mosses," wrote many articles for the "Democratic Review" and other magazines, edited "Old Dartmoor Prisoner" and Horatio Bridge's "African Cruiser." It is note-worthy that the "Celestial Railroad," in which Hawthorne records his condemnation of the spiritual renaissance by substituting the "terrible giant Transcendentalist" (who feeds upon pilgrims bound for the Celestial City) in place of the Pope and Pagan of Bunyan's allegory, was written in the same room with Emerson's volume, which inaugurated the great transcendental movement in the Western World.
Among the recesses of the great attic of the Manse we may still see the "Saints' Chamber," with its fireplace and single window; but it is tenanted by sprouting clergymen no longer. The atmosphere of theological twilight and mustiness—acquired from generations of clerical inhabitants—which pervaded the place in Hawthorne's time has been dissipated by the larger and happier home-life of Mrs. Samuel Ripley and the blithe and brilliant company that gathered about her here. Dismayed by these beneficent influences, the ghosts have indignantly deserted the mansion: even the persistive clerical, who sighed in Hawthorne's parlor and noisily turned his sermon-leaves in the upper hall, has not disturbed the later occupants of the Manse.
One might muse and linger long about the old place which, as his "Mosses" and journals show, Hawthorne made a part of his very life. Its air of antiquity, its traditional associations, its seclusion, and all its peaceful environment were pleasing to the shy and susceptible nature of the subtle romancer, and accorded well with his introspective habit. Besides, it was "the first home he ever had," and it was shared with his "new Eve." No wonder is it that he could here declare, "I had rather be on earth than in the seventh heaven, just now."
It is saddening to remember that, from this paradise, poverty drove him forth.