The new turn of affairs of course made Hawthorne impatient to find some employment more immediately productive than that with the pen. He was profoundly dissatisfied, also, with his elimination from the active life of the world. "I am tired of being an ornament!" he said with great emphasis, to a friend. "I want a little piece of land of my own, big enough to stand upon, big enough to be buried in. I want to have something to do with this material world." And, striking his hand vigorously upon a table that stood by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself more of a man."

President Van Buren had entered on the second year of his term, and Mr. Bancroft, the historian, was Collector of the port of Boston. One evening the latter was speaking, in a circle of whig friends, of the splendid things which the democratic administration was doing for literary men.

"But there's Hawthorne," suggested Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who was present. "You've done nothing for him."

"He won't take anything," was the answer: "he has been offered places."

In fact, Hawthorne's friends in political life, Pierce and Jonathan Cilley, had urged him to enter politics; and at one time he had been offered a post in the West Indies, but refused it because he would not live in a slaveholding community.

"I happen to know," said Miss Peabody, "that he would be very glad of employment."

The result was that a small position in the Boston Custom House was soon awarded to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire about it, he received another and better appointment as weigher and gauger. His friend Pike was installed there at the same time. To Longfellow, Hawthorne wrote in good spirits:—

"I have no reason to doubt my capacity to fulfil the duties; for I don't know what they are. They tell me that a considerable portion of my time will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes In Dock,' 'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical work in two volumes on the subject of Duties; the first volume to treat of moral duties and the second of duties imposed by the revenue laws, which I begin to consider the most important."

His hopes regarding unoccupied time were not fulfilled; he was unable to write with freedom during his term of service in Boston, and the best result of it for us is contained in those letters, extracts from which Mrs. Hawthorne published in the first volume of the "American Note-Books." The benefit to him lay in the moderate salary of $1,200, from which the cheapness of living at that time and his habitual economy enabled him to lay up something; and in the contact with others which his work involved. He might have saved time for writing if he had chosen; but the wages of the wharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked, and Hawthorne—true to his instinct of democratic sympathy and of justice—made it a point to reach the wharf at the earliest hour, no matter what the weather might be, solely for the convenience of the men. "It pleased me," he says in one of his letters, "to think that I also had a part to act in the material and tangible business of life, and that a portion of all this industry could not have gone on without my presence."

But when he had had two years of this sort of toil the Whigs elected a President, and Hawthorne was dropped from the civil service. The project of an ideal community just then presented itself, and from Boston he went to Brook Farm, close by in Roxbury. The era of Transcendentalism had arrived, and Dr. George Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy and a man of wide information, sought to give the new tendencies a practical turn in the establishment of a modified socialistic community. The Industrial Association which he proposed to plant at West Roxbury was wisely planned with reference to the conditions of American life; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin or St. Simon, nor did it in the least partake of the errors of Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; although it agreed with Fourier and Owen both, if I understand the aim rightly, in respect of labor. Dr. Ripley's simple object was to distribute labor in such a way as to give all men time for culture, and to free their minds from the debasing influence of a merely selfish competition. "A few men of like views and feelings," one of his sympathizers has said, "grouped themselves around him, not as their master, but as their friend and brother, and the community at Brook Farm was instituted." Charles A. Dana and Minot Pratt were leading spirits in the enterprise; the young Brownson, George William Curtis, and Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles) were also engaged in it, at various times. The place was a kind of granary of true grit. Hawthorne has characterized the community in that remark which he applied to Blithedale: "They were mostly individuals who had gone through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as to lose their faith in the better time to come." Miss E. P. Peabody had at that time left Salem and begun a publishing business in Boston, being one of the first women of our time to embark in an occupation thought to appertain exclusively to men; and at her rooms some of the preliminary meetings of the new association were held. Thus it happened that the scheme was speedily brought to Hawthorne's notice. When his accession to the ranks was announced, Dr. Ripley, as he said to the present writer, felt as if a miracle had occurred, "or as if the heavens would presently be opened and we should see Jacob's Ladder before us. But we never came any nearer to having that, than our old ladder in the barn, from floor to hayloft." Besides his belief in the theory of an improved condition of society, and his desire to forward its accomplishment, Hawthorne had two objects in joining the community: one of which was to secure a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to hit upon a mode of life which should equalize the sum of his exertions between body and brain. Many persons went thither in just the same frame of mind.

From a distance, the life that was led there has a very pretty and idyllic look. There was teaching, and there was intellectual talk; there was hard domestic and farming work in pleasant companionship, and a general effort to be disinterested. The various buildings in which the associators found shelter were baptized with cheerful and sentimental names; The Hive, The Pilgrim House, The Nest, The Eyrie, and The Cottage. The young women sang as they washed the dishes, and the more prepossessing and eligible of the yeomen sometimes volunteered to help them with their unpoetic and saponaceous task. The costume of the men included a blouse of checked or plaided stuff, belted at the waist, and a rough straw hat; and the women also wore hats, in defiance of the fashion then ruling, and chose calico for their gowns. In the evenings, poems and essays composed by the members, or else a play of Shakespeare, would be read aloud in the principal gathering held at one of the houses. A great deal of individual liberty was allowed, and Hawthorne probably availed himself of this to keep as much as possible out of sight. One might fancy, on a casual glance, that Brook Farm was the scene of a prolonged picnic. But it was not so at all. Hawthorne had hoped that by devoting six hours a day to mechanical employments, he could earn the time he needed for writing; but, as it proved, the manual labor more nearly consumed sixteen hours, according to Dr. Ripley, who declared of Hawthorne that "he worked like a dragon!"

Sundry of Hawthorne's common sense observations and conclusions upon the advisability of his remaining at the farm are to be found in his "Note-Books," and have often been quoted and criticised. They show that, as might be expected in a person of candor and good judgment, he was considering the whole phenomenon upon the practical side. There is an instructive passage also in "The Blithedale Romance," which undoubtedly refers to his own experience:—

"Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of moss ... crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower."

The whole thing was an experiment for everybody concerned, and Hawthorne found it best to withdraw from a further prosecution thereof, as persons were constantly doing who had come to see if the life would suit them. He had contributed a thousand dollars (the chief part of his savings in the Custom House) to the funds of the establishment; and, some time after he quitted the place, an effort was made among the most influential gentlemen of Brook Farm to restore this sum to him, although they were not, I believe, bound to do so. Whether or not they ever carried out this purpose has not been learned. The community flourished for four years and was financially sound, but in 1844 it entered into bonds of brotherhood with a Fourieristic organization in New York, began to build a Phalanstery, attempted to enlarge its range of industry, and came to grief. No one of its chief adherents has ever written its history; but perhaps Mr. Frothingham is right in saying that "Aspirations have no history."[6] At all events Hawthorne, in "The Blithedale Romance," which explicitly disclaims any close adherence to facts or any criticism on the experiment, has furnished the best chronicle it has had, so far as the spirit of the scheme is concerned.

Having tried the utmost isolation for ten years in Salem, and finding it unsatisfactory; and having made a venture in an opposite extreme at Brook Farm, which was scarcely more to his liking, Hawthorne had unconsciously passed through the best of preparation for that family life of comparative freedom, and of solitude alternating with a gentle and perfect companionship, on which he was about to enter. In July, 1842, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, received the following note, dated from 54 Pinckney Street, which was the residence of Hawthorne's friend, George S. Hillard:—

The wedding took place quietly, and Hawthorne carried his bride to the Manse at Concord, the old parsonage of that town. It belonged to the descendants of Dr. Ezra Ripley, who had been pastor there at the close of the last century; they were relatives of the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had so recently been associated at Brook Farm. Hawthorne had succeeded in hiring the place for a time, and was happy in beginning his married life in a house so well in keeping with his tastes. The best account of this, his first sojourn in Concord, is to be found in the "American Note-Books," and in the Introduction to the "Mosses from an Old Manse." Here his first child was born, a daughter, to whom the name of Una[7] was given, from "The FaËrie Queen"; and here he saw something of Emerson and of Margaret Fuller. Among his visitors, who were never many, was George Stillman Hillard, a Democrat, a lawyer, an editor, an orator in high favor with the Bostonians, and the author of several works both of travel and of an educational kind. Mr. George P. Bradford, with whom Hawthorne had talked and toiled at Brook Farm, was a cousin of the Ripleys, and also came hither as a friend. Another Brook Farmer appeared at the Manse, in the person of one Frank Farley, a man of some originality, who had written a little book on natural scenery and had been a frontiersman, but was subject to a mild, loquacious form of insanity. (Mention of him as "Mr. F——" is made in the "American Note-Books," under date of June 6 and June 10, 1844.) A writer in one of the magazines has recorded the impression which Hawthorne left on the minds of others who saw him during this period, but did not know him. Among the villagers "a report was current that this man Hawthorne was somewhat uncanny—in point of fact, not altogether sane. My friend, the son of a Concord farmer and at that time a raw college youth, had heard these bucolic whisperings as to the sanity of the recluse dweller at the ancient parsonage; but he knew nothing of the man, had read none of his productions, and of course took no interest in what was said or surmised about him. And one day, casting his eye toward the Manse as he was passing, he saw Hawthorne up the pathway, standing with folded arms in motionless attitude, and with eyes fixed upon the ground. 'Poor fellow,' was his unspoken comment: 'he does look as if he might be daft.' And when, on his return a full hour afterward, Hawthorne was still standing in the same place and attitude, the lad's very natural conclusion was, 'The man is daft, sure enough!'" Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson has presented quite a different view, in his "Short Studies of American Authors." He says:—

"The self-contained purpose of Hawthorne, the large resources, the waiting power,—these seem to the imagination to imply an ample basis of physical life; and certainly his stately and noble port is inseparable, in my memory, from these characteristics. Vivid as this impression is, I yet saw him but twice, and never spoke to him. I first met him on a summer morning, in Concord, as he was walking along the road near the Old Manse, with his wife by his side and a noble looking baby-boy in a little wagon which the father was pushing. I remember him as tall, firm, and strong in bearing.... When I passed, Hawthorne lifted upon me his great gray eyes with a look too keen to seem indifferent, too shy to be sympathetic—and that was all."[8]

Hawthorne's plan of life was settled; he was happily married, and the problems of his youth were solved: his character and his genius were formed. From this point on, therefore, his works and his "Note-Books" impart the essentials of his career. The main business of the biographer is, after this, to put together that which will help to make real the picture of the author grappling with those transient emergencies that constitute the tangible part of his history. A few extracts from letters written to Horatio Bridge, heretofore unpublished, come under this head.

Concord, March 25, 1843.—"I did not come to see you, because I was very short of cash—having been disappointed in money that I had expected from three or four sources. My difficulties of this kind sometimes make me sigh for the regular monthly payments of the Custom House. The system of slack payments in this country is most abominable.... I find no difference in anybody in this respect, for all do wrong alike. —— is just as certain to disappoint me in money matters as any little pitiful scoundrel among the booksellers. For my part, I am compelled to disappoint those who put faith in my engagements; and so it goes round."

The following piece of advice with regard to notes for the "Journal of an African Cruiser," by Mr. Bridge, which Hawthorne was to edit, is worth observing and has never before been given to the public:—

"I would advise you not to stick too accurately to the bare facts, either in your descriptions or your narratives; else your hand will be cramped, and the result will be a want of freedom that will deprive you of a higher truth than that which you strive to attain. Allow your fancy pretty free license, and omit no heightening touches merely because they did not chance to happen before your eyes. If they did not happen, they at least ought—which is all that concerns you. This is the secret of all entertaining travellers.... Begin to write always before the impression of novelty has worn off from your mind; else you will soon begin to think that the peculiarities which at first interested you are not worth recording; yet these slight peculiarities are the very things that make the most vivid impression upon the reader." In this same letter (May 3, 1843) he reverts to the financial difficulty, and speaks of a desire to obtain office again, but adds: "It is rather singular that I should need an office; for nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable to the public than mine; and yet I still find it a tough match to gain a respectable living by my pen."

By November of 1844 he had put things seriously in train for procuring another government position; Polk having been elected to the Presidency. There was a rumor that Tyler had actually fixed upon Hawthorne for the postmastership of Salem, but had been induced to withdraw the name; and this was the office upon which he fixed his hope; but a hostile party made itself felt in Salem, which raised all possible obstacles, and apparently Hawthorne's former chief, Mr. Bancroft,—it may have been for some reason connected with political management,—opposed his nomination. Early in October, 1845, Hawthorne made his farewell to the Old Manse, never to return to the shelter of its venerable and high-shouldered roof. Once more he went to Salem, and halted in Herbert Street. The postmastership had proved unattainable, but there was a prospect of his becoming Naval Officer or Surveyor. The latter position was given him at length; but not until the spring of 1846. On first arriving at Salem, he wrote to Bridge: "Here I am, again established—in the old chamber where I wasted so many years of my life. I find it rather favorable to my literary duties; for I have already begun to sketch out the story for Wiley & Putnam," an allusion to something intended to fill out a volume of the "Mosses," already negotiated for. After his installation as Surveyor he wrote, speaking of his "moderate prosperity," and said further: "I have written nothing for the press since my entrance into office, but intend to begin soon. My 'Mosses' seem to have met with good acceptance." Time went on, however, and he remained, so far as literary production was concerned, inert. He had left the Manning homestead and hired a house in Chestnut Street, which he kept for a year and a half. During this period Mrs. Hawthorne went to Boston for a time, and in Carver Street, Boston, was born their second child and only son, Mr. Julian Hawthorne, who has since made a reputation for himself as a novelist. From Chestnut Street he went to another house, in Mall Street; and it was there that "The Scarlet Letter" was finished, in 1850, four years after he had announced to Bridge that he intended soon to begin composition. The Custom House routine disturbed his creative moods and caused a gradual postponement of literary effort. Of the figure that he made while fulfilling the functions assigned to him, slight traces have been left. We are told, for example, that two Shakers, leaders in their community, visited the Custom House one day, and were conducted through its several departments. On the way out, they passed Hawthorne, and no sooner had they left his room than, the door being shut behind them, the elder brother asked with great interest who that man was. After referring to the strong face, "and those eyes, the most wonderful he had ever beheld," he said: "Mark my words, that man will in some way make a deep impression upon the world." It is also remembered that a rough and overbearing sea-captain attempted to interfere with Hawthorne's exercise of his duty as an inspector of the customs, in charge of the ship. His attempt "was met with such a terrific uprising of spiritual and physical wrath that the dismayed captain fled up the wharf" and took refuge with the Collector, "inquiring with a sailor's emotion and a sailor's tongue: 'What in God's name have you sent on board my ship for an inspector?'" Unexpectedly, in the winter of 1849, he was deprived of his surveyorship; a great surprise to him, because he had understood certain of his fellow-citizens of Salem to have given a pledge that they would not seek his removal, and it appeared that they had, notwithstanding, gone to work to oust him.

On finding himself superseded, he walked away from the Custom House, returned home, and entering sat down in the nearest chair, without uttering a word. Mrs. Hawthorne asked him if he was well.

"Well enough," was the answer.

"What is the matter, then?" said she. "Are you 'decapitated?'"

He replied with gloom that he was, and that the occurrence was no joke.

"Oh," said his wife, gayly, "now you can write your Romance!" For he had told her several times that he had a romance "growling" in him.

"Write my Romance!" he exclaimed. "But what are we to do for bread and rice, next week?"

"I will take care of that," she answered. "And I will tell Ann to put a fire in your study, now."

Hawthorne was oppressed with anxiety as to means of support for his wife and children; the necessity of writing for immediate returns always had a deterrent and paralyzing effect on his genius; and he was amazed that Mrs. Hawthorne should take his calamity with so much lightness. He questioned her again regarding the wherewithal to meet their current needs, knowing well that he himself had no fund in reserve. His habit had been to hand her the instalments of salary as they came to him from the office; and when he was in need of money for himself he drew again upon her for it. He therefore supposed that everything had been used up from week to week. But Mrs. Hawthorne now disclosed the fact that she had about a hundred and fifty dollars, a sum which for them was a considerable one, their manner of living being extremely plain. Greatly astonished, he asked her where she had obtained so much.

"You earned it," she replied, cheerily.

Mrs. Hawthorne was in fact overjoyed, on his account, that he had lost his place; feeling as she did that he would now resume his proper employment. The fire was built in the study, and Hawthorne, stimulated by his wife's good spirits, set at once about writing "The Scarlet Letter."

Some six months of time were required for its completion, and Mrs. Hawthorne, who was aware that her savings would be consumed in a third of that space, applied herself to increasing the small stock of cash, so that her husband's mind might remain free and buoyant for his writing. She began making little cambric lamp-shades, which she decorated with delicate outline drawings and sent to Boston for sale. They were readily purchased, and, by continuing their manufacture, this devoted wife contrived to defray the expenses of the household until the book was finished.

Mr. James T. Fields, the publisher, who was already an acquaintance, and eventually became a friend, of Hawthorne's had been told of the work, and went down to Salem to suggest bringing it out. This was before the story had been fully elaborated into its present form. Hawthorne had written steadily all day, and every day, from the start, but, remembering in what small quantity his books sold, he had come to consider this new attempt a forlorn hope. Mr. Fields found him despondent, and thus narrates the close of the interview:—

"I looked at my watch and found that the train would soon be starting for Boston, and I knew there was not much time to lose in trying to discover what had been his literary work during these last few years in Salem. I remember that I pressed him to reveal to me what he had been writing. He shook his head, and gave me to understand that he had produced nothing. At that moment I caught sight of a bureau or set of drawers near where we were sitting; and immediately it occurred to me that, hidden away somewhere in that article of furniture, was a story or stories by the author of the 'Twice-Told Tales,' and I became so confident that I charged him vehemently with the fact. He seemed surprised, I thought, but shook his head again; and I rose to take my leave, begging him not to come into the cold entry, saying I would come back and see him again in a few days. I was hurrying down the stairs when he called after me from the chamber, asking me to stop a moment. Then, quickly stepping into the entry with a roll of manuscript in his hands, he said: 'How in Heaven's name did you know this thing was here? As you have found me out, take what I have written, and tell me, after you get home and have time to read it, if it is good for anything. It is either very good or very bad—I don't know which.' On my way up to Boston I read the germ of 'The Scarlet Letter;' before I slept that night I wrote him a note all aglow with admiration of the marvellous story he had put into my hands."

In a letter to Bridge (April 10, 1850), the author said: "'The Scarlet Letter' has sold well, the first edition having been exhausted in ten days, and the second (5,000 in all) promising to go off rapidly." Speaking of the excitement created among his townspeople by the introductory account of the Custom House, he continued: "As to the Salem people, I really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after permitting me ... to be deliberately lied down, not merely once but at two separate attacks, on two false indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf; and then sending one of their false witnesses to Congress and choosing another as their Mayor. I feel an infinite contempt for them, and probably have expressed more of it than I intended; for my preliminary chapter has caused the greatest uproar that ever happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good luck. I wish they would tar and feather me—it would be such an entirely new distinction for a literary man! And from such judges as my fellow-citizens, I should look upon it as a higher honor than a laurel-crown." In the same letter he states that he has taken a house in Lenox, and shall move to it on the 1st of May: "I thank Mrs. Bridge for her good wishes as respects my future removals from office; but I should be sorry to anticipate such bad fortune as ever again being appointed to me."

Previous to this, he had written: "I long to get into the country, for my health latterly is not quite what it has been for many years past. I should not long stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led for the last few months. An hour or two of daily labor in a garden, and a daily ramble in country air or on the sea-shore, would keep me all right. Here I hardly go out once a week.... I detest this town so much, that I hate to go into the streets, or to have the people see me. Anywhere else I should at once be another man."

It was not a very comfortable home, that small red wooden house at Lenox, overlooking the beautiful valley of the Housatonic and surrounded by mountains; but both Hawthorne and his wife bravely made the best of it. Mrs. Hawthorne ornamented an entire set of plain furniture, painted a dull yellow, with copies from Flaxman's outlines, executed with great perfection; and, poor as the place was, it soon became invested by its occupants with something of a poetic atmosphere. After a summer's rest, Hawthorne began "The House of the Seven Gables;" writing to Bridge in October:—

"I am getting so deep into my own book, that I am afraid it will be impossible for me to attend properly to my editorial duties" (connected with a new edition of Lieutenant Bridge's "Journal of an African Cruiser").... "Una and Julian grow apace, and so do our chickens, of which we have two broods. There is one difficulty about these chickens, as well as about the older fowls. We have become so intimately acquainted with every individual of them, that it really seems like cannibalism to think of eating them. What is to be done?"

His task occupied him all winter. To Mr. Fields at length, on the 27th of January, 1851, he sent the following message:—

"I intend to put 'The House of the Seven Gables' into the expressman's hands to-day; so that, if you do not soon receive it, you may conclude that it has miscarried—in which case, I shall not consent to the universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest scribble of a first draught; so that it could never be restored.

"It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the public to whose judgment it has been submitted: viz. from my wife. I likewise prefer it to 'The Scarlet Letter;' but an author's opinion of his book, just after completing it, is worth little or nothing; he being then in the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too high or too low. It has undoubtedly one disadvantage in being brought so close to the present time, whereby its romantic improbabilities become more glaring."

The fac simile of a part of the above letter which is reproduced here serves as a fairly good specimen of Hawthorne's handwriting. At the time when it was written, he was not very well, and the fatigue of his long labor upon the book rendered the chirography somewhat less clear in this case than it often was. The lettering in his manuscripts was somewhat larger, and was still more distinct than that in his correspondence.

After the new romance had come out and had met with a flattering reception, he inquired of Bridge (July 22, 1851): "Why did you not write and tell me how you liked (or how you did not like) 'The House of the Seven Gables?' Did you feel shy about expressing an unfavorable opinion? It would not have hurt me in the least, though I am always glad to please you; but I rather think I have reached the stage when I do not care very essentially one way or the other for anybody's opinion on any one production. On this last romance, for instance, I have heard and seen such diversity of judgment that I should be altogether bewildered if I attempted to strike a balance;—so I take nobody's estimate but my own. I think it is a work more characteristic of my mind, and more natural and proper for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter'—but for that very reason less likely to interest the public.... As long as people will buy, I shall keep at work, and I find that my facility of labor increases with the demand for it."

In the May of 1851 another daughter was added to his family. Hawthorne, like his father, had one son and two daughters. Of this youngest one he wrote to Pike, two months after her birth: "She is a very bright and healthy child.... I think I feel more interest in her than I did in the other children at the same age, from the consideration that she is to be the daughter of my age—the comfort (so it is to be hoped) of my declining years." There are some other interesting points in this communication. "What a sad account you give of your solitude, in your letter! I am not likely ever to have that feeling of loneliness which you express; and I most heartily wish you would take measures to remedy it in your own case, by marrying.... Whenever you find it quite intolerable (and I can hardly help wishing that it may become so soon), do come to me. By the way, if I continue to prosper as hitherto in the literary line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a place; and if you should hear of one, say worth from $1,500 to $2,000, I wish you would keep your eye on it for me. I should wish it to be on the sea-coast, or at all events within easy access to the sea. Very little land would suit my purpose, but I want a good house, with space inside.... I find that I do not feel at home among these hills, and should not consider myself permanently settled here. I do not get acclimated to the peculiar state of the atmosphere; and, except in mid-winter, I am continually catching cold, and am never so vigorous as I used to be on the sea-coast.... Why did you not express your opinion of 'The House of the Seven Gables?'... I should receive friendly censure with just as much equanimity as if it were praise; though certainly I had rather you would like the book than not. At any rate, it has sold finely, and seems to have pleased a good many people better than the other; and I must confess that I myself am among the number.... When I write another romance I shall take the Community for a subject, and shall give some of my experiences at Brook Farm."

On the first day of December, 1851, he left Lenox with his wife and children, betaking himself for the winter to West Newton, a suburban village a few miles west of Boston, on the Charles River; there to remain until he could effect the purchase of a house which could serve him as a settled home. The house that he finally selected was an old one in the town of Concord, about a mile easterly from the centre of the village on the road to Lexington, and was then the property of Mrs. Bronson Alcott. During the winter at West Newton he wrote "The Blithedale Romance," which was published early in 1852. In the brief term of two years and a half from the moment of his leaving the Custom House at Salem, he had thus produced four books,—"The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," "A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and "The Blithedale Romance,"—three of them being the principal works of his lifetime, with which "The Marble Faun" alone stands in the same category. Early in the summer of 1852 he took up his residence in his new home, The Wayside, of which he thus discoursed to Mr. George William Curtis, on the 14th of July, 1852:—

Quite possibly the name of The Wayside recommended itself to him by some association of thought like that which comes to light in the Preface to "The Snow-Image," where, speaking of the years immediately following his college course, he says: "I sat down by the wayside of life like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprung up around me, and the bushes grew to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no exit appeared possible through the entangling depths of my obscurity." If so, the simile held good as to his home; for there, too, the shrubbery has sprung up and has grown to saplings and trees, until the house is embosomed in a wood, except for the opening along the road and a small amphitheatre of lawn overlooked by the evergreen-clad hill.

Hawthorne's old college friend, Franklin Pierce, after having been to Congress and having risen to the rank of general in the Mexican War, was nominated by the democratic party for the presidency of the United States, at the time when the romancer had established himself in this humble but charming old abode; and it became manifest that the candidate wanted Hawthorne to write a life of him, for use in the campaign. Hawthorne, on being pressed, consented to do so, and a letter which he addressed to Bridge, October 13, 1852, contains some extremely interesting confidences on the subject, which will be entirely new to readers. As they do Hawthorne credit, if considered fairly, and give a striking presentment of the impartiality with which he viewed all subjects, it seems to be proper to print them here.

He begins by speaking of "The Blithedale Romance," regarding which he says: "I doubt whether you will like it very well; but it has met with good success, and has brought me (besides its American circulation) a thousand dollars from England, whence likewise have come many favorable notices. Just at this time, I rather think your friend stands foremost there as an American fiction-monger. In a day or two I intend to begin a new romance, which, if possible, I intend to make more genial than the last.

"I did not send you the Life of Pierce, not considering it fairly one of my literary productions.... I was terribly reluctant to undertake this work, and tried to persuade Pierce, both by letter and viv voce, that I could not perform it as well as many others; but he thought differently, and of course after a friendship of thirty years it was impossible to refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at the great pinch of his life. It was a bad book to write, for the gist of the matter lay in explaining how it happened, that with such extraordinary opportunities for eminent distinction, civil and military, as he has enjoyed, this crisis should have found him so obscure as he certainly was, in a national point of view. My heart absolutely sank at the dearth of available material. However, I have done the business, greatly to Frank's satisfaction; and, though I say it myself, it is judiciously done; and, without any sacrifice of truth, it puts him in as good a light as circumstances would admit. Other writers might have made larger claims for him, and have eulogized him more highly; but I doubt whether any other could have bestowed a better aspect of sincerity and reality on the narrative, and have secured all the credit possible for him without spoiling all by asserting too much. And though the story is true, yet it took a romancer to do it.

"Before undertaking it, I made an inward resolution that I would accept no office from him; but to say the truth, I doubt whether it would not be rather folly than heroism to adhere to this purpose, in case he should offer me anything particularly good. We shall see. A foreign mission I could not afford to take;—the consulship at Liverpool I might.... I have several invitations from English celebrities to come over there; and this office would make all straight. He certainly owes me something; for the biography has cost me hundreds of friends here at the North, who had a purer regard for me than Frank Pierce or any other politician ever gained, and who drop off from me like autumn leaves, in consequence of what I say on the slavery question. But they were my real sentiments, and I do not now regret that they are on record."

After discussing other topics, he observes further of Pierce: "I have come seriously to the conclusion that he has in him many of the chief elements of a great man; and that if he wins the election he may run a great career. His talents are administrative; he has a subtle faculty of making affairs roll around according to his will, and of influencing their course without showing any trace of his action." Hawthorne did not feel very confident of his friend's election. "I love him," he adds, "and, oddly enough, there is a kind of pitying sentiment mixed with my affection for him just now."

Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard has set down his reminiscences of two visits paid to Hawthorne at the beginning and after the end of the campaign. In the summer of 1852, Mr. Stoddard was making a short stay in Boston, and dropped in at the Old Corner Bookstore to call upon Mr. Fields, who then had his headquarters there. He found Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, the lecturer and critic, sitting with the publisher.

"'We are going to see Hawthorne,' Mr. Fields remarked, in an off-hand way, as if such a visit was the commonest thing in the world. 'Won't you come along?' He knew my admiration for Hawthorne, and that I desired to meet him, if I could do so without being considered an infliction. 'To be sure I will,' I replied.... When we were fairly seated in the train we met a friend of Hawthorne, whom Mr. Fields knew—a Colonel T. I. Whipple—who, like ourselves, was en route for Concord, ... and as General Pierce was then the democratic candidate for the presidency, he was going to see Hawthorne, in order to furnish materials for that work.

"We reached The Wayside, where Hawthorne, who had no doubt been expecting visitors, met us at the door. I was introduced to him as being the only stranger of the party, and was greeted warmly, more so than I had dared to hope, remembering the stories I had heard of his unconquerable shyness. He threw open the door of the room on the left, and, telling us to make ourselves at home, disappeared with Colonel Whipple and his budget of biographical memoranda. We made ourselves at home, as he had desired, in what I suppose was the parlor—a cosy but plainly furnished room, with nothing to distinguish it from a thousand other "best rooms" in New England, except a fine engraving on the wall of one of Raphael's Madonnas. We chatted a few moments, and then, as he did not return, we took a stroll over the grounds, under the direction of Mr. Fields.

"We had ascended the hill, and from its outlook were taking in the historic country about, when we were rejoined by Hawthorne in the old rustic summer-house. As I was the stranger, he talked with me more than with the others, largely about myself and my verse-work, which he seemed to have followed with considerable attention; and he mentioned an architectural poem of mine and compared it with his own modest mansion.

"'If I could build like you,' he said, 'I, too, would have a castle in the air.'

"'Give me The Wayside,' I replied, 'and you shall have all the air castles I can build.'

"As we rambled and talked, my heart went out towards this famous man, who did not look down upon me, as he might well have done, but took me up to himself as an equal and a friend. Dinner was announced and eaten, a plain country dinner, with a bottle or two of vin ordinaire, and we started back to Boston."

Pierce having become President-Elect, Mr. Stoddard made another trip to Concord, in the winter of 1852-3, to ask Hawthorne's advice about getting a place in the Custom House. He was taken into the study (at that time in the southeast corner, on the ground-floor and facing the road), where there was a blazing wood-fire. The announcement of dinner cut short their conversation, but after dinner they again retired to the study, where, as Mr. Stoddard says, Hawthorne brought out some cigars, "which we smoked with a will and which I found stronger than I liked. Custom House matters were scarcely touched upon, and I was not sorry, for while they were my ostensible errand there, they were not half so interesting as the discursive talk of Hawthorne. He manifested a good deal of curiosity in regard to some old Brook Farmers whom I knew in a literary way, and I told him what they were doing, and gave him my impressions of the individuality of each. He listened, with an occasional twinkle of the eye, and I can see now that he was amused by my out-spoken detestation of certain literary Philistines. He was out-spoken, too, for he told me plainly that a volume of fairy stories I had just published was not simple enough for the young.

"What impressed me most at the time was not the drift of the conversation, but the graciousness of Hawthorne. He expressed the warmest interest in my affairs, and a willingness to serve me in every possible way. In a word, he was the soul of kindness, and when I forget him I shall have forgotten everything else."

When Mr. Stoddard got back to New York, he received this letter:—

Concord, March 16th, 1853.

Dear Stoddard:

I beg your pardon for not writing before; but I have been very busy and not particularly well. I enclose a letter to Atherton. Roll up and pile up as much of a snow-ball as you can in the way of political interest; for there never was a fiercer time than this among the office-seekers....

Atherton is a man of rather cold exterior; but has a good heart—at least for a politician of a quarter of a century's standing. If it be certain that he cannot help you, he will probably tell you so. Perhaps it would be as well for you to apply for some place that has a literary fragrance about it—librarian to some department—the office that Lanman held. I don't know whether there is any other such office. Are you fond of brandy? Your strength of head (which you tell me you possess) may stand you in good stead in Washington; for most of these public men are inveterate guzzlers, and love a man that can stand up to them in that particular. It would never do to let them see you corned, however. But I must leave you to find your way among them. If you have never associated with them heretofore, you will find them a new class, and very unlike poets.

I have finished the "Tanglewood Tales," and they will make a volume about the size of the "Wonder-Book," consisting of six myths—"The Minotaur," "The Golden Fleece," "The Story of Proserpine," etc., etc., etc., done up in excellent style, purified from all moral stain, re-created good as new, or better—and fully equal, in their way, to "Mother Goose." I never did anything so good as those old baby-stories.

In haste,

Truly yours,

Nath. Hawthorne.