Moby-Dick: I have written a wicked book

In his home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Herman Melville received the first copies of Moby-Dick on November 14, 1851. It was in that home, Arrowhead, that he wrote the book, partly inspired by his own whaling trip a decade earlier. The book's opening lines, "Call me Ishmael," have become among the most famous in American literature.

The book was dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, in "admiration for his genius." The two authors had met only recently and instantly formed a friendship. The night he received his book, Melville visited Hawthorne (who was then living nearby in the town of Lenox). Though he was in the midst of packing in preparation for his move back to Concord, Hawthorne did not hesitate to read Moby-Dick. Only two days later, he wrote a letter of appreciation to Melville (now lost). Melville was pleased that Hawthorne "understood the book." As he wrote, "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb."

The book itself follows now-iconic characters like the exotic Queequeg, the mates Starbuck and Flask, and, of course, the vengeful Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for the white whale named Moby-Dick. It has also become the bane of students of American literature who find the detailed chapters on whaling tedious. Among its memorable scenes are the first meeting between Ishmael and Queequeg (who share a bed that night) and the fiery and foreboding sermon by Father Mapple. My personal favorite is the scene where Ahab nails a valuable doubloon to the mast to tempt his crewmen:

"I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true; and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won't smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out."

I shall take the Community for a subject

In a letter to a friend dated July 24, 1851, about a year after the publication of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne speculated about a new novel — or, "romance," as he called them. He wrote, "When I write another romance, I shall take the Community for a subject, and shall give some of my experiences and observations at Brook Farm." The book he had in mind became The Blithedale Romance (1852).

Soon after writing this letter, he borrowed several books by Charles Fourier, whose theories re-shaped George Ripley's Utopian experiment in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Hawthorne, a founding member of Brook Farm (despite not being part of the community of Transcendentalists) and its one-time treasurer, was not part of the project when it turned to Fourierism. In a sense, then, Hawthorne stepped away from his own "experiences and observations." As he went on with his idea, he went further and further away from Brook Farm anyway, instead constructing a highly-fictionalized version or, as he described it, the story became "a faint... shadowing of Brook Farm." By the time he wrote to his friend, the critic Edwin Percy Whipple, his suggestions of potential titles show an emphasis on his fictional characters rather than the actual community.

In reality, Hawthorne cared little for Brook Farm, having joined not because of its ideals but because of promises of financial gain and ample time for intellectual pursuits (like writing). In fact, it had the opposite effect: "Even my Custom House experience was not such a thraldom and weariness; my mind and heart were freer," he wrote. Among his many farm-related duties was shoveling manure. "Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap." It didn't take long for Hawthorne to realize the physical labor involved with farm life wasn't for him, calling it "the curse of the world." He worried it was making him "proportionately brutified." As for time to write, he noted, "I have no quiet at all."

Like Hawthorne, the main character of the book which became The Blithedale Romance realized that farm life was not conducive to creativity. Despite the fictionalization, there was still some real-life inspiration in the book; the protagonist, Miles Coverdale, arrives at the farm in a snowstorm, just like Hawthorne arrived at Brook Farm. Coverdale also displays Hawthorne's typical self-deprecation: "I am a poet, and, so the critics tell me, no great affair at that!" Further, at one point Coverdale refers to Robert Burns and notes: "He was no poet while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet."

Una Hawthorne: business on earth now

In which his torment often was so great,
That, like a lyon, he would cry and rore;
And rend his flesh; and his owne synewes eat.
His owne deare Una, hearing evermore
His ruefull shriekes and gronings, often tore
Her guiltlesse garments and her golden heare,
For pitty of his payne and anguish sore:
Yet all with patience wisely she did beare...

When Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody had their first child on March 3, 1844, they named her after a character in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (quoted above from Book I, Canto X). Extended family was not happy. Nathaniel protested to his sister, "Almost everybody has had something to say about [the name]; but only yourselves have found out that it does not sound prettily!" Una Hawthorne's godfather was John L. O'Sullivan, one of Hawthorne's early publishers.

The delivery took 10 hours, but mother remained happy: "It was a great happiness to be able to put her to my breast immediately and I thanked Heaven I was able to have the privilege of nursing her." The new father noted it was "a very sober and serious kind of happiness" and was concerned about financially supporting his growing family. "There is no escaping it any longer," he wrote to a friend, "I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it." Perhaps more prophetically, he predicted: "It will not do for me to continue merely a writer of stories for the magazines - the most unprofitable business in the world."

Scholars speculate that Una inspired the character of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter, published seven years after her birth (she was never allowed to read the novel). As a teenager, while the Hawthornes lived in Italy, Una came down with "Roman fever" (an illness similar to malaria). She later became engaged to a nephew of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, but the marriage was called off for reasons which remain unclear. When her younger sister Rose Hawthorne married, she reportedly became depressed and possibly insane. A later potential husband, Albert Webster, died at sea. She lived with her brother Julian Hawthorne in England (Julian and Una are pictured above, circa 1850). It was in England that she died in 1877 at the age of 33. She was originally buried next to her mother before both were reburied in Concord, Massachusetts.

After her father's death, Una provided a preface for the posthumous publication of his incomplete novel Septimius Felton: Or, The Elixir of Life:

I believe it is a striking specimen of the peculiarities and charm of his style, and that it will have an added interest for brother artists, and for those who care to study the method of his composition, from the mere fact of its not having received his final revision. In any case, I feel sure that the retention of the passages within brackets (e. g. p. 30), which show how my father intended to amplify some of the descriptions and develop more fully one or two of the character studies, will not be regretted by appreciative readers.

Death of Mrs. Hawthorne

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne outlived her husband Nathaniel Hawthorne by seven years. When Hawthorne died far from home in 1864, she wrote that he avoided "the pain of bidding us farewell." Publisher James T. Fields convinced the grieving widow that his various journals and notebooks, particularly those from his travels, should be published. Sophia became his posthumous editor and noted, "It is a vast pleasure to pore over his books in this way." The result was Notes in England and Italy, with "Mrs. Hawthorne" credited as author. As she prepared the book, she wrote:

I seem to be with him in all his walks and observations. Such faithful, loving notes of all he saw never were put on paper before. Nothing human is considered by him too mean to ponder over. No bird, nor leaf, nor tint of earth or sky is left unnoticed. He is a crystal medium of all the sounds and shows of things, and he reverently lets everything be as it is, and never intermuddles...

Even with these happy thoughts, however, Sophia was burdened with grief. As Annie Adams Fields (wife of James) remarked, "What an altered household! She feels very lonely, and is like a reed." Soon, the Hawthornes' home at The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts was unbearable, and she moved with their children to Europe. She had become distrustful of her husband's publisher and, at one point, accused him of not paying the royalties she was due for her husband's work. Fields blamed his former partner, the late William Davis Ticknor. Ticknor's close friendship with Hawthorne, he alleged, resulted in "the highest rate of copyright [the company] ever paid." The dispute was soon settled.

It was in England that Sophia died on February 26, 1871. She was 61. A week later, she was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. 135 years later, Sophia Hawthorne (as well as her daughter Una) was reburied in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where she remains next to her husband.

Bicentennial of Delia Bacon

Delia Bacon was born in a log cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio on February 2, 1811. Her father had moved the family there in a speculative venture that failed shortly after the young Delia's birth. The family returned to their roots in Connecticut, but father died shortly after. She was six years old. Her mother, already caring for four other children, sent Delia away to live with a family in Hartford. There, she studied for a time under Catherine Beecher (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe), who acknowledged that Delia possessed "one of the most gifted minds I have ever met" and was "an agreeable person."

Others would later disagree.

After a decade of research, in 1857, Bacon published The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded. Her proposition, as she called it, was that William Shakespeare did not exist as we know him, that the plays attributed to that name were written by a coterie of men (including Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser) and that, in fact, the plays were meant to show philosophy, not serve as entertainment, and that its authors hid their true identities due to political fears. This "little clique of disappointed and defeated politicians," as she speculated, "undertook to head and organize a popular opposition against the government, and were compelled to retreat from that enterprise, the best of of them effecting their retreat with some difficulty."

Among her supporters in her Shakespeare skepticism was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who helped publish her first essay on the subject. He even offered her advice on how to frame her argument (likely inspiring the introductory chapter "The Proposition"). The book's preface was provided by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had met her while serving as Consul in Liverpool. In the preface, he admitted he hadn't even read the book before endorsing it. After admitting most readers will first feel "repugnance" at the theory, he explained:

What I claim for this work is, that the ability employed in its composition has been worthy of its great subject, and well employed for our intellectual interests, whatever judgment the public may pass upon the questions discussed. And, after listening to the author's interpretation of the Plays, and seeing how wide a scope she assigns to them, how high a purpose, and what richness of inner meaning, the thoughtful reader will hardly return again — not wholly, at all events — to the common view of them and of their author. It is for the public to say whether my countrywoman has proved her theory. In the worst event, if she has failed, her failure will be more honorable than most people's triumphs; since it must fling upon the old tombstone, at Stratford-on-Avon, the noblest tributary wreath that has ever lain there.

Melville and Hawthorne: shrouded in blackness

Herman Melville claimed that he wrote his review of Mosses from an Old Manse just before he met Nathaniel Hawthorne. The second of two installments of "Hawthorne and His Mosses" was published in The Literary World on August 24, 1850. The collection included such classic Hawthorne tales as "The Birth-Mark," "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and his anti-Transcendentalist allegory "The Celestial Rail-road."

Melville, oddly, signed his review as "a Virginian spending July in Vermont." More than any other reviewer in the four years since Hawthorne's collection was published, Melville noticed that the stories emphasized a negative side of human nature. Most others had noticed his focus on stories with a moral, noting the positive aspect of teaching a lesson to general readers. Melville noted:

You may be witched by his sunlight—transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds.

Melville believed "this black conceit pervades him through and through." Hawthorne's writing was "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." That dark view of humanity must have influenced Melville's own writing. The author most known for his book Typee and its sequel Omoo was then working on a far deeper novel, one which explored the dark recesses of human nature. When the book was published later that year, Moby-Dick included this dedication:

In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The pleasures of getting lost in the woods

Margaret Fuller was visiting Concord, Massachusetts, staying at the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She paid a visit to Nathaniel Hawthorne, recently married to Sophia Peabody, at what is now called The Old Manse. Fuller later noted that, while the two were walking together, they paused to look at the moon: "H[awthorne] said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real possession in life, but still he never wished to leave this earth: it was beautiful enough." She accidentally left a book at Hawthorne's house, however.

The next day, August 21, 1842, she went to retrieve her book (though she got sidetracked). Hawthorne had already returned it to Emerson's house by then. Returning home, he came upon Fuller herself, sitting in Sleepy Hollow (not yet a cemetery). Despite Hawthorne's characteristic shyness and general avoidance of other people, he decided to join her.

They talked "about Autumn," Hawthorne recorded, "and about the pleasures of getting lost in the woods... and about other matters of high and low philosophy." Another voice interrupted them, and Emerson emerged from the trees. The conversation did not continue for too long after. "It being now nearly six o'clock, we separated," wrote Hawthorne, "Mr. Emerson and Margaret towards his house and I towards mine." Fuller's version of the day: "What a happy, happy day... all clear light. I cannot write about it."

The incident is certainly an obvious exception to Hawthorne's reclusive reputation. Fuller, renowned for her natural ability for conversation, must have been equally impressed by Hawthorne (who, you'll note, referred to her by her first name). It has been suggested that Hawthorne based the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter at least partially on Fuller; a character in The Blithedale Romance is more obviously inspired by her. In fact, Fuller is mentioned in that 1852 novel:

"Priscilla," I inquired, "did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller?"
"No," she answered.
"Because," said I, "you reminded me of her, just now..."

The author's wife, Sophia, was a participant in Fuller's "Conversations" (held at the bookstore owned by her sister Elizabeth Peabody; the Hawthornes were married in the same place) and was strongly impressed by her. In fact, Hawthorne got a bit jealous that his "Dove" (as he called his wife) was listening to Fuller more than himself: "Would that Miss Margaret Fuller might lose her tongue! — or my Dove her ears."

Speaking of wives, Emerson's wife Lidian grew to be concerned over how much time her husband spent with Fuller. She burst into tears at one point while hosting Fuller at the house. Fuller calmed her down by assuring her: "He has affection for me, but it is because I quicken his intellect."

*Much of the information from this post comes from Hawthorne in Concord by Philip McFarland and Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller by Joan Von Mehren.

Tramping over the soil

August 5, 1850 may have been the most exciting day in American literary history. A band of now-recognized literary giants (and a couple less gigantic) climbed Monument Mountain in western Massachusetts. According to the publisher James T. Fields:

I have just got back to my desk from the Berkshire Hills where we have been tramping over the soil with Hawthorne; dining with Holmes... and sitting... with Melville, the author of 'Typee.'

Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Herman Melville were joined by editor Evert Augustus Duyckinck and writer Cornelius Mathews. Once at the top, they read William Cullen Bryant's poem "Monument Mountain," and passed around a single silver mug frequently replenished with champagne (a prescription brought along for the trip by Dr. Holmes).

Perhaps most important to this incident is that it marks the beginning of the friendship of Hawthorne and Melville, who had never previously met. Melville was so taken by the author of the recently-published The Scarlet Letter that he would soon earn the dedication of Moby-Dick, which he was then writing. Some suggest that Melville's infatuation with Hawthorne was more than merely literary admiration and that, perhaps, the younger author was developing a romantic interest. "Where Hawthorne is known,” Melville wrote a few days later, “he seems to be deemed... a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and weighty thing would hardly be anticipated—a man who means no meanings.”

Melville soon wrote a particularly flattering review of Mosses from an Old Manse, then old by about four years. His pseudonymous review, "Hawthorne and his Mosses," was published by Duyckinck in his weekly periodical Literary World. He was the first to notice that Hawthorne's tales were significantly dark: "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." Hawthorne wrote to Duyckinck later that month that he had "a progressive appreciation" of Melville. "No writer ever put the reality before his reader more unflinchingly than he does."

*Image above is courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations.

Death of Samuel Griswold Goodrich

Peter Parley was the name most often used by Samuel Griswold Goodrich on his books aimed for children. Goodrich, who died on May 9, 1860, used the grandfatherly Parley character (see illustration at right) to introduce young people to legends, United States history, and American life. His book The Tales of Peter Parley About America (1828) begins:

Here I am! My name is Peter Parley! I am an old man. I am very gray and lame. But I have seen a great many things, and had a great many adventures, and I love to talk about them.

He is credited with having published over 40 such books, though some may have been ghost-written by others. Goodrich was also a publisher, a poet, a biographer, the editor of an annual gift book (The Token), a Massachusetts state representative and state senator and, later in life, United States Consul to Paris.

Goodrich was also an early booster for other American writers, including Nathaniel Parker Willis and Lydia Maria Child. One poetry anthology in the 1840s referred to him as a "liberal patron of American authors and artists; and it is questionable whether any other person has done as much to improve the style of the book manufacture." His writing was praised as "cheerful" and full of "pure morality" with a melodious flow. Connecticut-born, Goodrich settled in New York after returning from his consulship overseas; it was in that state where he died in 1860. His most important period, however, was spent in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, which now has a Peter Parley Road named in his honor (on land he once owned).

Goodrich was not without his critics, however. He supported the early career of a then-anonymous writer of short stories who frequently published in The Token. Nathaniel Hawthorne felt underpaid (and undervalued), calling Goodrich "a good-natured sort of man enough... but rather an unscrupulous one in money matters, and not particularly trustworthy in anything." Hawthorne determined Goodrich took advantage of writers, "born to do what he did, as maggots to feed on rich cheese."

Behold a huge bundle of scribble

Nathaniel Hawthorne joined the community at Brook Farm mostly for economic reasons, rather than philosophical ones. George Ripley and the other founders of the cooperative community believed that sharing responsibility would allow ample time for intellectual pursuits, like writing. Hawthorne quickly learned this wasn't the case. He complained about his role as a farmer, shoveling manure, and dealing with stubborn cows. "Even my Custom House experience was not such a thraldom and weariness," he wrote later. "Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap." Even his short-term role as treasurer for the venture left him annoyed. The experience, however, inspired a novel.

On May 2, 1852, Hawthorne wrote to his friend, the critic Edwin Percy Whipple with the opening line, "Behold a huge bundle of scribble, which you have thoughtlessly promised to look over!" (view the whole letter) He included a manuscript copy of the novel, Hollingsworth: A Romance. Hawthorne, however, was not certain of the title. "I wish, at least, you would help me to choose a name," he pleaded. The author offered several alternatives as well. Whipple's response no longer exists but when the book was finally published, it carried the title The Blithedale Romance.

Hawthorne admitted the work was inspired by Brook Farm (which had failed by then), but emphasized it was a work of fiction. Scholars, however, have dug deep into the work to find real-life connections. Most agreed upon is the basis of the character Zenobia, whose inspiration seems to have come from Margaret Fuller. Fuller never officially joined Brook Farm was a frequent enough visitor and lecturer there that she had her own teacup and a cottage was named in her honor. From chapter 6:

Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her dress could not conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenliness of her presence. The image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors...

Death of William Ticknor

William Davis Ticknor helped situate Boston and New England as a center of American literature. His work with partner James T. Fields led to the first true American publishing house. Ticknor & Fields (which later evolved to Houghton, Mifflin, and Company) aimed for a broad national audience, paid its authors well, introduced the concept of royalty payments, and staunchly defended their books from piracy. Though he was not a writer himself, Ticknor hoped that his name on a book's title page reassured readers that the book was a good one.

Ticknor was well-acquainted with all of his authors, who came to respect him as a literary adviser, businessman, marketer, and friend. He deserves extra credit for his unusually close relationship with the reclusive author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

When Hawthorne traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1862, his wife Sophia insisted that Ticknor accompany him. Ticknor handled all the travel arrangements, including purchasing train tickets and personal items for his favorite author. Ticknor had previously accompanied Hawthorne to the nation's capital in 1853 while the latter prepared to take a job as consul to Liverpool.

Their last trip together was in 1864. Hawthorne was getting sick and thought travel would do him good. Ticknor, the younger of the two, was in perfect health. However, sometime before leaving Boston he caught a cold. Amidst heavy rains in New York, it developed into pneumonia. In Philadelphia, Ticknor wrote to Mrs. Hawthorne that her husband "continues to improve." While visiting Fairmount Park, Ticknor offered Hawthorne his coat because of the cool air. Back at the Continental Hotel that night, however, Ticknor had trouble breathing. "I am sorry to say," Hawthorne wrote, "that our friend Ticknor is suffering under a severe billious attack... He had previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an alarming degree." A physician was called and the author never left his publisher's side.

The next morning, April 10, 1864, editor George William Childs went to visit at their rooms. Hawthorne, in a daze while mumbling and pacing, said Ticknor had died. "My best friend, on whom I depended, coming here for my benefit," Childs recorded; Hawthorne had expected his own death on that trip, not that of his friend William Ticknor, aged 53.

*The photo to the right shows Fields, Hawthorne, and Ticknor.

Hawthorne sworn in

Like most other early American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne struggled financially. In fact, it is said that he was kicked out of the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts for not paying rent. Knowing that his writing alone would not support him and his family (by this time, he was married and had two children, Una and Julian), he sought full-time work. As an avowed democrat, he looked to the political world and was soon offered a job at the Custom House in his home town of Salem, Massachusetts, an appointment approved by President James K. Polk. He was sworn in on April 9, 1846 as surveyor. His appointment earned him an annual salary of $1,200.

The author assumed the job overlooking Derby Wharf would allow ample time for him to write but, he soon learned, free time was not the issue. His experience at the Custom House was trying for other reasons. As he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

I am trying to resume my pen... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.

Hawthorne had previously worked at the Custom House in Boston so he should have known the drudgery of this line of work. The building is today preserved as part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Inside, the desk he used (pictured) is on display to the public.

He was forced out of his Salem position in the spring of 1849 when the democrats lost power. He did not take part in the public discussions about losing his job. As he wrote, "There is no use in lamentation. It now remains to consider what I shall do next." He eventually turned his experience into the sketch "The Custom-House," printed as an introduction to The Scarlet Letter in 1850.

Hawthorne and Longfellow's fairy tales

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote from Salem on March 21, 1838 to his former Bowdoin College classmate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow had turned down an invitation to dinner a few days earlier at which Hawthorne intended to discuss a possible literary collaboration. "I wanted to have a talk with you about that book of Fairy Tales which you spoke of," Hawthorne wrote. "I think it a good idea, and am well inclined to do my part toward the execution of it."

By this time, Longfellow had published a handful of books, while Hawthorne had published mostly short stories here and there. As he wrote, "I am terribly harassed with magazine scribbling." He was willing to let Longfellow have the title of editor for the project; "I will figure merely as a contributor," likely assuming that Longfellow had the more famous name. "Possibly we may make a great hit, and entirely revolutionize the whole system of juvenile literature," he wrote optimistically.

Though it seems it was Longfellow's original idea, he had second thoughts. Hawthorne even attempted a magazine project with Longfellow, which also went nowhere.

Even so, Hawthorne was pushed to continue the project of a children's book, partly by his future sister-in-law Elizabeth Peabody. Peabody contacted her future brother-in-law, Horace Mann, who was then secretary of the board of education in Massachusetts, to hire Hawthorne to write a series of books for children. Mann was not initially pleased with the idea, thinking there was not enough of a message to Hawthorne's work.

Eventually, the end result of Hawthorne's project of "juvenile literature" was a collection of historical sketches for children. Published in 1840, the collection, Grandfather's Chair, was printed in Elizabeth Peabody's book shop (with an illustration by Sophia Peabody, his future wife) and had "sequels" in Old People and Liberty Tree, both printed in 1841 by Peabody. The "fairy tale" idea would later evolve into A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, in which Hawthorne re-wrote several myths.

*The images are by the artist Eastman Johnson, who created these crayon and chalk portraits in 1846. He was commissioned by Longfellow himself and both portraits still hang in Longfellow's preserved study at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to war, part 2

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already an established literary figure when he traveled to Washington, D.C. with his publisher William Ticknor in 1862. Perhaps that is why he was able to get an audience with the President himself, Abraham Lincoln.

Hawthorne visited Lincoln at the White House on March 13, 1862, partly by squeezing into a private presentation from Massachusetts factory of a commemorative whip, "handsomely encased." The party arrived, as scheduled, at 9:00 a.m. on that Thursday morning. Lincoln was late and sent word he was still having breakfast. "His appetite, we were glad to think, must have been a pretty fair one," wrote Hawthorne, "for we waited about half an hour in one of his ante-chambers." When the moment of meeting arrived, they were rushed into another room, where sat the Secretaries of War and of the Treasury (Stanton and Chase). Apparently, many appointments were delayed by the President's ample breakfast.

"By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure," Hawthorne described. His first impression on seeing Lincoln? "(Being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe." Hawthorne, whose old friend Franklin Pierce was an earlier president, was not star-struck. In fact, scrutinizing the man with "his lengthy awkwardness... [and] uncouthness of movement," Hawthorne concluded that it was easier to assume he was a back-country schoolmaster, rather than the President of the United States.

Yet, Hawthorne admired Lincoln instantly. "I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage," he concluded.

On returning home, Hawthorne immediately set to writing about his experience, particularly emphasizing his encounter with the President. When he submitted the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" to James T. Fields for the Atlantic Monthly, Fields accepted it from the respected author sight unseen. Hawthorne was, oddly, disappointed, hoping the editor would offer feedback. It turned out to be a mistake for Fields, too; he immediately took issue with the descriptions of Lincoln. "Leave out the description of his awkwardness & general uncouth aspect," Fields insisted.

Hawthorne acquiesced but was not happy about it. "What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!" he lamented. He decided to cut "Uncle Abe" out entirely, but noted it was "the only part of the article really worth publishing."

Birth of Edwin Percy Whipple

Edwin Percy Whipple (that's E. P. Whipple to his readers) was born March 8, 1819. He got his feet wet as a critic for the Philadelphia-based Graham's Magazine for a time before joining the Literary World as a correspondent to the Duyckinck brothers. Ultimately, as historian Perry Miller noted, he became "Boston's most popular critic."

In fact, by the end of his life he was one of the most prolific critics and essayists in the United States. His diverse work led him to write introductions to Charles Dickens ("A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most thrilling narratives in the whole range of the literature of fiction."), to oversee the publication of the speeches of Daniel Webster, to become a trustee of the Boston Public Library, and to collaborate with publisher James T. Fields on a massive compendium of the history of British poetry. He was popular and hung out with all the literary greats; Whipple dedicated a book to John Greenleaf Whittier ("the people's poet" and "loyal friend") and even served as a pallbearer for Nathaniel Hawthorne (who he advised in naming one of his novels) upon his death in 1864.

But, Whipple had one major problem, one which tends to haunt even the best of critics: personal bias. When others made fun of Boston as a "mutual admiration society," they were likely referring to Whipple (and Fields, but that's a different story). Boston became a world where critics, editors, and writers often offered to scratch one's back for a scratch in return. Much of it was innocent, of course, and done without malice; many of these Bostonians were sincere friends, after all. Such is the case of the Saturday Club, of which Whipple was a member.

The Saturday Club met once a month beginning in 1855 at the Parker House (now the Omni Parker Hotel) for extravagant meals — and equally extravagant conversation. The group included writers, philosophers, historians, and scientists, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson's son Edward later wrote a history of the Saturday Club and its members, noting about Whipple (apparently without irony!): "No other member of the Saturday Club has ever been more loyally felicitous in characterizing the literary work of his associates." In other words, any Bostonian was guaranteed a good review from Boston critic E. P. Whipple.

Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to war

When fellow Bowdoin College classmate Horatio Bridge, then paymaster general of the United States Navy, invited his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne to Washington, D.C., his loyal publisher William D. Ticknor went along (invited by Sophia Hawthorne). They left via railroad on March 6, 1862 — a cold, wintry Thursday morning. Hawthorne hoped to see the Civil War for himself. Ticknor handled all the logistical arrangements, purchasing train tickets and even gloves on behalf of Hawthorne. "It is no trouble to me," Ticknor wrote to his wife.

Hawthorne saw the soldiers, fortifications, cannons, and encampments. An author of some status by then, Hawthorne was able to glimpse various important figures: Major General George McClellan, Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and, a couple days after his arrival, President Abraham Lincoln (more on that here).

The author of The Scarlet Letter was no stranger to Washington or of national politics, having visited there with Ticknor in 1853 before taking his role as an overseas diplomat. But Hawthorne's concern over the Civil War was not much more than curiosity. While his friends and neighbors — people like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson — were crying out for their pro-Union, anti-slavery causes, Hawthorne was merely an observer. He admitted to Bridge that he was not entirely sure what the war was about, or what it could accomplish. He did, cynically, conclude: "The old Union is smashed. We never were one people, and never really had a country since the Constitution was formed."

Hawthorne's only major response to the crisis in print was his essay "Chiefly About War Matters," written "by A Peaceable Man." Published in the Atlantic Monthly for July 1862, the essay is relatively empty. Even when he borders on passing judgment (dismissing John Brown as "deserving" his execution as a traitor), he undermines it (with a footnote decrying that no true son of Massachusetts would express such an "abominable sentiment" about the heroic efforts of the abolitionist; Hawthorne wrote the footnotes himself).

Dreams of Brook Farm burn down

Though it was not expressly a literary endeavor, Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was meant to foster intellectual goals. By pooling their labor on a farm, the founders believed, all members of the community would have the time for their literary, artistic, scientific, or philosophical pursuits. Proponents (who never joined) included Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Its biggest literary luminary, however, was Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of its founding members in 1841.

As a community based on tenets of Transcendentalism, Brook Farm's philosophies didn't necessarily appeal to Hawthorne (who, despite some false information out there, was never a Transcendentalist; if anything, he was anti-Transcendentalism). The struggling author joined in the hope of making enough money to start off his marriage to Sophia Peabody on secure financial footing. Hawthorne even became the community's treasurer for a time.

However, he soon learned that free time was nonexistent, and his farm duties (including shoveling manure) were too much for him. "Labor is the curse of the world," he wrote his fiancee, "and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified." Hawthorne left Brook Farm, later using his experience as an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance, at a time when it still had the potential of being successful.

It never was — and most historians agree the beginning of the end for Brook Farm was March 3, 1846.

Brook Farm had recently reorganized as a community based on the ideas of Charles Fourier and spent massive amounts of money on a central community building, the Phalanstery. As Brook Farm founder George Ripley described, it would have "a large and commodious kitchen, a dining-hall capable of seating from three to four hundred persons, two public saloons, and a spacious hall or lecture room." On March 3, it caught fire and burned to the ground within two hours, before construction was completed, after a $7000 investment (nearly $160,000 today).

Uninsured, the community lost most of its money. George Ripley quietly disassociated himself from his experiment at creating Utopia in America. Other participants, who had been very happy there despite financial difficulty, slowly broke away too. Today, most of the land that was Brook Farm is a series of cemeteries.


*The image above is "The Hive," a building which served as the main social center, library, and dining hall. The Phalanstery would have replaced many of its functions but also included living space.

Hawthorne resigns from Consulship

Nathaniel Hawthorne had few close friends but one of his closest was someone he met while a student at Bowdoin College: Franklin Pierce. When Pierce ran for President of the United States, Hawthorne wrote his campaign biography. After Pierce won the election, Hawthorne was rewarded with the role of Consul to Liverpool. He uprooted his family and moved to England, where he stayed for about four years.

However, Hawthorne and his family became homesick very quickly. As for the job itself, Hawthorne wrote:

The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroner's inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertaining to America.

Hawthorne also found his role just as oppressive to his creativity as his earlier role at the Salem Custom-House, a role he lost when political power changed hands. When Pierce did not win the nomination from his own party for re-election, Hawthorne expected the same to happen. So, on February 13, 1857, Hawthorne offered his letter of resignation to the new president, James Buchanan, effective at the end of August (Buchanan, who had not even taken office yet, had most recently served as Minister to the Court of St. James).

Hawthorne took his family to Italy and France (some time during these travels, he grew his trademark mustache). The Hawthornes returned to their home in Concord, Massachusetts in 1860. That year, he published The Marble Faun — his first new book in seven years.

Exactly 40 years before he wrote his resignation letter, a 12-year old Hawthorne dabbled in poetry. Dated "Salem, February 13, 1817," his poem, "Moderate Views," reads:

With passions unruffled, untainted by pride,
  By reason my life let me square;
The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied,
  And the rest are but folly and care.
How vainly through infinite trouble and strife,
  The many their labours employ,
Since all, that is truly delightful in life,
  Is what all if they please may enjoy.

Death of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody died on January 3, 1894, at the age of 89. Though not a major writer herself, she was connected to many of the important literary figures of the day and remains an important icon in American history.

Born in Billerica, Massachusetts on May 16, 1806, she began teaching in 1822. Then, in 1834, she began working with Bronson Alcott at his short-lived Temple School in Boston. Alcott believed young people were purer than adults and engaged them in conversation to hear what they had to say. Peabody meticulously recorded all of it and later published the book Records of a School.

Later, Peabody opened a bookstore on West Street in Boston, down the road from the Old Corner Bookstore, near Boston Common. Beginning in 1839, Peabody's bookstore hosted many of the "Conversations" organized by Margaret Fuller, who had met Peabody at the Temple School. Women who participated included Sophia Dana (wife of George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm) and Maria White (wife of James Russell Lowell).

Now a strong member of the male-dominated Transcendental circle, Peabody became the business manager of The Dial, the journal of the Concord-based group. It didn't last long, despite Peabody's warning that expenses were outweighing income.

Peabody also met a young man named Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though she denied it years later, the two seem to have had some kind of relationship. Hawthorne spurned her, however, for her younger sister, Sophia Peabody, whom he married. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody remained unwed her whole life.

Her most important contribution to history came in 1860, when she created the first Kindergarten in the United States. She believed children under six could be educated based on German practice and edited her own journal, the Kindergarten Messenger, as the practice's strongest advocate. She continued advocating kindergarten (even to Congress) until her death. She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Birth of James T. Fields

James Thomas Fields was born on December 31, 1817. That year, Sir Walter Scott published Rob Roy, Jane Austen published Northanger Abbey, and Lord Byron published Manfred. It would be three years before the first major American novelist (James Fenimore Cooper) published anything, and two years before Washington Irving published his Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon. In other words, when James T. Fields was born, quality American literature was nonexistent. By the end of his life, he had helped create it.

Though Fields dabbled in poetry and prose, he was not a writer. But, without him, American literature would not have had its Renaissance. He was only 14 when he took his first job at the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, Massachusetts. By 1839, he was junior partner with publisher William Davis Ticknor. In 1846, the company was named Ticknor & Fields — America's first major national publishing-house.

Nathaniel Parker Willis called it "the announcing-room of the country's Court of Poetry." George William Curtis called it "the hub of the Hub" (Boston's nickname) and that it "compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American literature."

What distinguished Ticknor & Fields was their interest in nationwide distribution. Other publishing houses were more regional, making them less influential outside of their center (such was the case with other publishing cities like New York, Philadelphia, Hartford). Fields in particular made it a point to seek out new talent, help them tap into their potential, and then he would personally promote them. In fact, Fields assisted them not only as writers but also in their personal lives. He built close relationships with all of his writers and can occasionally be given credit for inspiring their work: legend has it that Nathaniel Hawthorne was working on a short story about the Puritans; Fields urged him to expand it into a novel. The result was The Scarlet Letter, which Ticknor & Fields published in 1850.

The Old Corner Bookstore, the site of Ticknor & Fields, became a hang-out for authors. Among the bunch that Fields worked with: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry David Thoreau.

* In case I haven't dropped enough names, the image at the top of this page is by Julia Margaret Cameron, who photographed Fields when he was visiting Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at the Isle of Wight.

** The second image is Fields next to Hawthorne and Ticknor.